I rejoice, amazed, at how different they all are! But - they had to be stripped to their bare- bone branches for me to truly see them for who they are.
If we choose to follow God rather than capitulate to the fads and follies of others, sooner or later we will be challenged and stripped bare down to the bones of our beliefs. If we are courageous witnesses to the Gospel, all the inconsequential leaves of our lives will be blown away by the hurricane of the Holy Spirit so that the "bare bones" of who we are as individual Christians are exposed for the unbelieving world to see. And often laugh at. Or make fun of. The world's uncompromising blaze of misunderstanding or hatred will consume some of us. Recently, in an incomprehensible act of violence, sixteen individuals, including four religious women, members of the Missionaries of Charity, were brutally shot and killed in a church-run retirement home in Yemen. An editorial in the March 28, 2016 "America" magazine, "Take, Give, Do," notes:
"Calls for an international response followed the martyrdom of the sisters, and the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement reminding us of the deeper meaning found in what seems like senseless suffering: 'Through their sacrifice, (the sisters) were transformed into signs of Christ's victory over sin, violence, and death.'
"Few of us are called to be martyrs, yet the example given by these women remind us of our shared call to be witnesses to the Gospel and to the transformative power of service and sacrifice in our daily lives....
"Having been transformed through the power of the Resurrection, we too are called to action, to a new kind of awakening. We are called to go out into the world and to share the reality of this salvific love, even as we seek to understand it, even as we search for hope, even though we do not yet fully comprehend God's kingdom or our own role in its unfolding."
Some popular preachers today - who happen to have become millionaires - are Christians in name only. They preach about a God Who is our Therapist-in-the-Sky, Who is available when we're hurting and we need him, Who will heal us of all our fears and neuroses and liberate us so that we can have successful, prosperous careers. Then, obligingly, our Heavenly Therapist disappears when we no longer need Him and we can get on with living those prosperous lives God gave us. This Therapist God doesn't demand anything of us and is absent from our lives except when we call for His help.
Yes, God always comes near to us when we're suffering, when we carry the cross of individual failures, disappointments, sicknesses, and deaths. Yes, God is our Counselor Who heals us and gives us an inner peace which the world cannot take away. But God doesn't come and go from our lives. God stays with us, living within us, teaching us how to see the tumult of the world with His eyes, teaching us how to love with His heart which holds all peoples. Slowly God transforms us into living not just for ourselves but for others. The last thing that the Risen Jesus says to his apostles before returning to his Father is "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you. And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world."
God does not exist so that we can ask Him to help us win the Lottery. The only Lottery God is interested in is the Lottery of souls. He asks us "Are you being my witnesses? Who will come to know the power of My love and mercy, who will come to know that a merciful God forgives their sins, unless YOU tell them? Unless YOU show them MY mercy?"
A noted Lutheran theologian, preacher, writer, and World War II martyr,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was one of the first realists to recognize the danger of Adolph Hitler, whom he considered the Anti-Christ who corrupted his nation and whom people were revering as their god. He spoke out calmly and courageously against the genocides perpetrated by the Nazi government which was destroying Germany as a European and Christian nation.
The guiding force in Bonhoeffer's life was his faith and love in God. From his faith came the breadth of his vision which empowered him to discover what was really important in his life. He saw life through Christ's eyes, which caused him to seek truth, justice, honesty, and goodness for their own sake and to suffer for them in obedience to God, Who is the Source of all truth, goodness, and justice, and on whom he felt absolutely dependent. He believed that God suffers in this world in Christ and suffers from the world's remoteness from Him; he believed God Himself shared his sufferings. Because of God's nearness to him, he had great, uncompromising courage.
Bonhoeffer went overseas to warn other countries about Hitler, and friends in England and America urged him not to return to Germany because his life was in danger. His reply in a letter to a German friend was " I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people....Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make this choice in security."
Upon his return to Germany, this gentle man, a pacifist who swore never to fight in Hitler's army, believed that his conscience was impelling him to join an underground organization which sought to defeat the Nazis, possibly assassinate Hitler, and prevent the Nazi military from winning the war. He worked against his own nation, which had been subverted to evil by Hitler and which would subvert the world if it was not defeated. Eventually Bonhoeffer was captured and imprisoned. He ministered to the sick and other prisoners and comforted the anxiety-ridden and despairing. He exuded tremendous calm and self-control, especially when Berlin was bombed and prisoners howled in fear in their cells.
Yet, inside he suffered terribly. His courage, calmness, and care for others were tremendous, ongoing acts of his will united to God's will. His terrible interior struggles and conflicts remind us of Jesus' sufferings in Gethsemane and on the cross. He was a riddle to himself, as he writes in this poem composed while he was in prison:
WHO AM I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my Warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends, from an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This, or the Other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine,
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose, always, to follow God, not man. He once said succinctly "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." In his case, it was the literal truth. A short biography tells us
"In February, when the Gestapo prison in Berlin was destroyed by an air raid, Bonhoeffer was taken to the concentration camp of Buchenwald and from there to other places until he was executed by special order of Himmler at the concentration camp at Flossenberg on April 9, 1945, just a few days before it was liberated by the Allies."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew, to the marrow of his bones, that the Risen Christ himself guides us, accompanies us, suffers and rejoices with us every day of our lives. In this Lutheran Pastor's sufferings, his faith was purified and strengthened until, like a great and strong stripped tree, branches bare to the Winds of the Holy Spirit, the essence of who he was as a man of faith was revealed to the world. A martyr for his faith, like the martyred sisters in Yemen, he reminds us to be united with the Risen, transformed Christ, ready for each day's sacrificial reaching out to others in Christ's Name. The editorial in "America" concludes
"We are reminded of Christ's transformation and the need for our own week after week in the words of the Mass: 'Take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body, given up for you. Do this in memory of me.' We are called to receive the body of Christ. But we are also called to build it, and, as the martyred sisters did, to transform our indifference into involvement: take, give, do. Take time to pray. Give of yourself. Do something kind for someone. In leading merciful lives inspired by the resurrection, we both become and tend to the body of Christ."