Christ
heals the sick. On the very
pages of the Gospels he appears as the
healer. He had hardly begun his
teaching when the sick started coming.
They were brought to him from every
quarter, It was as if the masses of the
afflicted were always opening up
around and closing in on him. They carne
by themselves, they were led,
they were carried, and he passed through
the suffering multitude of people,
and "a power from God was present, and
healed" (Luke 5:17)....
At
times, one is prompted to look
behind the outward events at the inner
working of this sacred power.
A
blind man came to him. Jesus put
his hands on the man's eyes, drew them
away, and asked, "What do you see?"
All overcome with excitement, the man
answered, "I can see men as if they
were trees, but walking!" The healing
power reached into the nerves. They
were revivified, but they did not yet work
properly. So he put his hands
on the eyes once again, and the man saw
things as they were (Mark 8:23-25).
Does not this story give one a sense of
experiencing the mystery, as it
were, from behind the scenes?
Another
time, there was a great crowd
about him. A woman afflicted many years
with a hemorrhage, who had sought
everywhere in vain for a cure and had
spent all her money to find one,
said to herself, "If I can even touch his
cloak, I shall be healed." And
she came up to him from behind, touched
his garment, and noticed in her
body that the distress which had been
plaguing her for so long was at an
end. But he turned around: "Who touched my
garments!'" 'The Apostles were
dumbfounded: "Can you not see the
multitude pressing so close about you,
and yet ask, 'Who touched me?'" But he
knew just what he was saying; immediately
he had been "inwardly aware of the power
that had proceeded from him."
And the woman came up to him trembling,
threw herself at his feet, and
confessed what had happened. But he
forgave her freely and lovingly (Mark
5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48).
What an
effect that had all around!
He seemed charged with healing, as if he
needed no intention. If someone
approached him in an open-hearted,
petitioning state of mind, the power
simply proceeded from him to do its
work.
The open road
back to God
What did the act of healing mean
to Christ? It has been said that he was the
great friend of mankind. Characteristic
of our own time is an extremely alert sense
of social responsibility and
responsiveness to works of mercy. So there
has been a corresponding desire
to see in him the towering helper of men,
who saw human suffering and,
out of his great mercy, hastened to relieve
it.
But this
is an error. Jesus is not
a personification of the big-hearted
charitable nature with a great social
conscience and an elemental power of
helping others, going after human
suffering, feeling its pangs in sympathy,
understanding it, and conquering
it. The social worker and the relief
worker are trying to diminish suffering,
to dispose of it entirely, if possible.
Such a person hopes to have happy,
healthy people, well-balanced in body and
soul, live on this earth. We
have to see this to understand that Jesus
had no such thing in mind. It
does not run counter to his wishes, but he
himself was not concerned with
this. He saw too deeply into suffering.
For the meaning of suffering, along
with sin and estrangement from God, was to
be found at the very roots of
being. In the last analysis, suffering for
him represented the open road,
the access back to God-at least the
instrument which can serve as access.
Suffering is a consequence of guilt, it is
true, but at the same time,
it is the means of purification and
return.
He took our sufferings
upon himself
We are
much closer to the truth
if we say Christ took the sufferings of
mankind upon himself. He did not
recoil from them, as man always does. He
did not overlook suffering. He
did not protect himself from it. He let it
come to him, took it into his
heart. As far as suffering went, he
accepted people as they were, in their
true condition. He cast himself in the
midst of all the distress of mankind,
with its guilt, want, and
wretchedness.
This is
a tremendous thing, a love
of the greatest seriousness, no
enchantments or illusions-and therefore,
a love of overwhelming power because it is
a "deed of truth in love" (Ephesians
4:15; 1 John 3:18), unbinding, shaking
things to their roots.
Once
again we must see the difference:
He did this, not as one carrying on his
shoulders the black tragedy of
the human condition, but rather as one who
was to comprehend it all, from
God's point of view. Therein lies the
characteristic distinction.
His healings reveal
the living God
Christ's
healing derives from God.
It reveals God, and leads to God.... By
healing, Jesus revealed himself
in action. Thus he gives concrete
expression to the reality of the living
God. To make men penetrate to the reality
of the living God-that is why
Christ healed.
[This excerpt is from the
book, The Inner Life of Jesus,
by Romano Guardini, originally published
in German, Jesus Christus,
geistliches Wort, 1957. English
translation
copyright © 1959 by Regnery Publishing,
Inc.]
Who
was Romano Guardini (February
17, 1885 - October 1, 1968), and what were
some of his insights?
Born
in Verona, Italy, Guardini grew up in
Mainz, Germany. At an early age, he
matured into a "man of letters," a
Renaissance thinker, in pursuit of
life's meaning and truth. Working in
theology, philosophy, literary
criticism, and cultural analysis, he
held professorships in Berlin
(1923-1939), Tübingen (1945-1947), and
Munich (1948-1963). With his
approximately 70 books and 100 articles
and countless lectures, he touched the
hearts and minds of thousands of people,
including Hannah Arendt, Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Martin Buber, Dorothy Day,
Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, Olivier
Messiaen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
Flannery O'Connor, and Karl Rahner, S.J.
Moreover, Pope Benedict XVI (formerly,
Josef Ratzinger) still frequently quotes
Guardini.
Romano
Guardini belonged to the generation of
German-speaking religious thinkers who – born
from the mid-1870s to the early
1890s – came
of age during the First World War. These
contemporaries of Adolf Hitler generated
many of the ground-breaking ideas and
approaches that still shape theology and
philosophy. Among Protestants were Karl
Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Rudolf Otto,
Albert Schweitzer, and Paul Tillich. The
Jewish thinkers included Martin Buber,
Jules Isaac, Abraham Heschel, and Edith
Stein (who became a Catholic in 1922 and
died at Auschwitz in 1942). Among the
Catholics were Karl Adam, Odo Casel,
O.S.B., Romano Guardini, Josef Jungmann,
S.J., and Erich Przywara, S.J.
On God's presence
in human life
While
accepting the secularization of Western
society, Guardini sought to show that
the sacred is present and active in the
secular. Guardini directly challenged
secularism and atheism by promoting
worship, prayer, and
contemplation.
Furthermore,
he explained that a church should
delineate a sacred space. That is, it
should disrupt our preoccupations, and
open us to the wholly Other, the living
God.
According
to Guardini, the human conscience is
itself a sacred space in which God meets
a person. Developing this theme in 1928,
Guardini argued:
"God
speaks to us both from within ourselves
through the voice of our conscience and
also from outside ourselves in the
seeming coincidence of people and
events. The divine word from within us
clarifies the divine word from outside
us, and vice versa. A person's ethical
life arises out of the continually new
challenges coming from the interplay of
the inner word and the outer world . . .
The interplay of the word within us and
the word outside us simultaneously
engages the deepest elements of our
human existence and the riches of divine
revelation."
On the Lordship
of Jesus Christ
Guardini
saw that human beings orient their
personal freedom in one of three ways.
We can subordinate ourselves to a human
authority such as a parent, a spouse, a
boss, a pastor, a political figure, or
an organization. In its extreme, this
handling of freedom can bring about the
idolatry that "the Führer" demanded in
Nazi Germany. Secondly, we can assert
ourselves against all authorities. In
its extreme, this is the radical
self-assertion of the rebellious
teenager. Or, finally, we can entrust
ourselves to Jesus Christ who does not
enslave His followers but liberates them
to live for truth and life.
Guardini
acknowledged that Jesus Christ is the
transcendent, living person who can
encounter us in ways not unlike the way
that the Lord spoke to Saul (St. Paul)
on the road to Damascus. Christian
belief's "essence," Guardini taught, is
not a set of teachings but the risen
Lord. Indeed, the living Christ is
truth, reality itself who meets us as we
pursue the meaning and truth of our
lives. Using the phrases "the living
Christ" and "truth" interchangeably,
Guardini sought to bring truth to light.
Writing
his memoirs in the mid-1940s, Guardini
recalled his days in the Third Reich. In
particular, he observed that "truth" had
quietly stood with people during the
Nazi terror. For example, in January
1939, Guardini was summoned before the
Reich's Minister of Education, and told
that he could no longer lecture at
Berlin's Humboldt University. Hitler's
agent declared that the Reich was
stripping Guardini of his professorship
because he taught the Christian
"worldview" when he should be teaching
the Nazi "worldview." As Guardini
listened to the Nazi's hollow
statements, he sensed that Christ, Truth
itself, was silently supporting him in
this absurd situation.
Reflecting
on this moment and others similar to it,
Guardini wrote:
"Truth
is a power especially when we require of
it no immediate effect, but have
patience and figure on a long wait.
Still better, truth is a power when we
do not think in general about its
effects but seek to present it for its
own sake, for its holy, divine greatness
. . . Sometimes, especially in recent
years, I had the sense that truth was
standing as a reality in the room."
Accounting for
Christian hope
According
to 1 Peter 3:15, Christians must be
prepared to explain their faith to
anyone who requests "an accounting for
the hope that is in you." In doing this,
we can proceed in one of three ways. We
can simply repeat the words of the New
Testament and the church's creeds and
catechisms. This approach cherishes
truth, but it risks the eclipse of
meaning. Or, we can radically re-express
these teachings in a discourse that is
primarily reliant on today's
philosophical or psychological
categories. This method seeks relevance
but at the possible cost of faithfulness
to the Gospel. Or, we can fashion a
discourse that tries to integrate the
wisdom of the Bible and the Christian
tradition, on the one hand, and the
ideas and values of our society, on the
other. This theological approach is the
path that Guardini followed.
Throughout
his adult life, Guardini encouraged a
constructive, though critical, dialogue
between Christian faith and secular
culture. For example, in 1961, he wrote
that Christians must discern the
complexities, merits, and errors of
modernity, and address them on the basis
of divine revelation, as expressed in
the Bible and the church's life and
teachings. In this regard, he wrote:
"The
dangers of today's daunting
scientific-technological culture
challenge human beings in ways that are
now evoking fresh elements of the
Christian life, elements that were
previously dormant. How this challenge
will unfold and how Christians will
interact with the anonymous impulses of
the will to power, the drive for wealth,
and the effort to do everything is a
question that Christians have yet to
answer."
John's
Gospel inspired and guided Romano
Guardini's Christian belief and his
efforts to elucidate this belief. In
particular, the Johannine account of
Jesus' final prayer (John 17:15-19)
influenced Guardini, for although he did
not withdraw "out of the world," he did
not "belong to the world." Wanting "to
be sanctified in the truth," he
acknowledged that God's "word is truth."
As a disciple of Christ, Guardini
believed that the Lord had sent His
followers "into the world" to witness to
the truth. Hence, he unceasingly sought
"to be sanctified in the truth."
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