The Truth is simple
by
Eberhard Heller
translated by Elisabeth Meurer
Our situation forces us to change our minds in how we structure our religious lives. When Christ founded His Church, he gave the apostles (and their successors) the mission of spreading this doctrine, of conveying His means of grace to the faithful worthy to receive them. This conveying by priests, i. e. The engaged ministers of the Church, is nowadays refused to most of the faithful. They cannot take advantage of its pastoral service any more: The Church as a mediator of salvation, as an institution of salvation, together with its clergy has become unfaithful to the Lord. And in the meantime, this revolution from above has already got its own tradition. Today's young people know the Christian faith with its rituals only in its modern, distorted resp. shortened form leading to an new Protestantism.
Those priests pretending to be committed to tradition have until now been unable to do a minimum of pastoral work. They largely refused any co-operation and only put all their activity into creating sectarian little groups where they live in a kind of spiritual niche. Therefore the idea of true Christianism has almost completely vanished from public life. (Just try to call for premarital abstinence without provoking a pitying smile everywhere).
Those among the faithful who want to face these realities and to get into a serious relationship with God have to admit first that they are abandoned by these appointed mediators and that they have to live their religious lives without any pastoral help. We kind of have to skip the mediation through the ministers who actually have this mission and vocation and to turn directly to God to whom any mediation (even the reception of sacraments) should lead. Before His ascension, the Lord promised to the disciples the following: „And when I have gone and prepared a place, I will come back and take you with me, so that you, too, are where I am.“ (John 14, 3)
We have already written several times about a life in the diaspora, i. e. in isolation, and given welldirected hints how to get spiritually independent. Now we need to take a look at the principles which our relationship to God is based on and on the base of which we should structure our whole lives.
We need to clarify first that we could not reach this aim – structuring a live in and from God – if we were adherents of a blind fideism which is practised today – and by the very modernists themselves! - and which is the reason for the supposed equivalence of all religions: If it is the subjective feeling which is decisive, then the content of faith itself is arbitrary, interchangeable. Everybody is obliged to accept the „truth“ of the content affecting the religious feeling – Christ or Mohammed or Rama Krishna or a fetish! (This fideism can also be found among many so-called traditionalists refusing to see that their faith is in itself conclusive and quite reasonable!)
We follow St. Anselm if we claim, together with him, that the faith has to be reasonable, i. e.: rationally comprehensible.
We are convinced – not: we only presume or believe (only believe, as if -), that Christ is the Son of God. You can get such a conviction by spiritual effort and with the graceful help of God Himself.
The knowledge about God methodically consists of two elements:
– the proof of the existence and validity of the absolute as an absolute principle (God);
– the conviction that God manifested Himself in Jesus Christ.
One must indeed have descended very much spiritually to deny the absolute (the truth). However, you need God's help to come to the realization that Christ, Who was preached to us, is the Son of God, that He has become a man and revealed Himself to us: „And the Word (God) has become flesh.“ (John 1, 14)
The proof of the existence of God (…) needs some clarification. If proving means deducting a consequence from a superior cause, the we need to say formal logically:
1. I presuppose a very first cause.
2. I cannot prove this very first cause itself which is to be the reason of all consequences – if I do not want to slip into a regressus ad infinitum. I can only show that it exists by getting with the reductive method up to that highest cause which is to be the reason of anything which follows.
Therefore Fichte could say for example: If anyone can find a disjunction in what I set as absolute – then he has proven my system to be wrong.”
But how do I know not only negatively (by excluding any further disjunction) about the truth of the insight into the absolute, but also positively, that what I set as absolute, what is then supposed to be valid as such, is in fact what is required? Formally said: It is the insight into the identity of image and being: It appears as it is and it is as it appears, i. e.: the difference between image and being is canceled out in the absolute. Religiously said: God's appearance bears in itself His truth: He appears as He is and He is as He appears. “I am Who I am.”
The truth is simple, and so is the revealed truth in itself! It is unambiguous, it is not ambiguous or mixed, it is clear! It is directed to us as an absolute claim: It claims for absolute acceptance: “I call you by your name, you are mine.” (Is. 43, 1) The truth is real and concrete. Jesus says to Thomas: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one will get to the Father but through me. If you have recognized me, then you will also recognize my Father.” (John 14, 6f.) Jesus Christ is not only love in itself, but he is also the epitome of the loving one who has given us His love. To the pharisee's question: “Master, what is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus answers: “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind (5 Moses 6,5). This is the highest and greatest commandment. But the other one is similar to it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as yourself” (3 Moses 19, 1). (Matthew 22, 34-40)
It was reserved to St. Paul to sing the praises of love (comp. 1. Cor. 13, 1-13). I allow myself to quote some verses from it: “Love is forbearing, love is generous, love is not jealous. It does not boast, it is not arrogant, it does not act unseemingly, it does not look for its interests, it knows no bitterness, it bears no grudge for the evil. (…) It bears everything, believes everything, hopes for everything, suffers everything. Love never ends; the gift of prophecy will vanish, the gift of tongues will end, knowledge will end. (…) For now remain faith, hope and love, these three. Love, however, is highest of all.” (1 Cor. 13, 4 ff.)
But Christ's love does not only refer to what is supposed to be – in mutual giving – but also to what is not supposed to be: to our sins. He wants that, what is not supposed to be, is not. He wants to lift the in-valid, i. e.: the evil, by expiation. He, Who is without a sin, became “a sin for us”, as St. Paul expresses it. By this expiating love, Christ has redeemed us from eternal death (of sin) and given us eternal life by calling us back into the covenant with Him. And He requires us to accept His sacrifice with humility and to return His love.
Nota bene: The refusal, however, can be just as ´simple': “He came into His property, but His people did not receive Him (John 1, 11). It is quite elucidating just for understanding our own situation, if you think about the fact that the high priests had Christ executed for blasphemy!!
Knowing that we are safe in God, we build up our lives by getting into contact with Him, by worshipping Him in spirit and praying to Him. So we have communion with Him, even the communion in sacrifice if we include ourselves in the Holy Masses said by a priest saying them in the name of the Church.
In the prayers of the mass it is repeatedly said that we are also supposed to try to include ourselves in the communion with the saints in heaven: “Us sinners as well, your servants trusting in your abundant mercy, let mercifully have part and communion with your saint apostles and martyrs.” (Prayer after consecration: “Nobis quoque peccatoribus”)
The love which God bestows on us and which we are to return, we are also to pass this love undividedly on to our neighbors, i. e.: the persons whom we are to deal with. In this sense we can also structure our lives in a world where we do not live in a normal community of faithful but in an area where no one shares our beliefs. “Do not pray for lighter loads but for a strong back”, St. Therese of Avila recommends.
To estimate what it means to be allowed to scoop from this source, just meditate the requirement Christ makes when giving His powers to Peter, His vicar on earth who is to lead the Church: “Do you love me?” (comp. John 21, 15-17) Christ asks him three times. And Peter answers: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” No exam about theological and ritual regulations, no oral test on ways of behavior … only the question: “Do you love me?”
In moments when you feel lonely, abandoned, superfluous in a world from which you know that it does not understand you any more, that it has no (more) access to what is valuable to you, where you feel socially amputated, I have often let myself be comforted by the words of St. Therese:
“Nothing is to frighten you, nothing is to terrify you. Everything will pass. God alone will remain
the same. He who is patient will achieve everything, and he who has God, has everything.
God alone is sufficient.”
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