Sermons
I was nine years old when the second world war came to an end. I clearly remember bombs falling, artillery fire, nights in the cellar during air attacks. I also remember the hundreds of displaced people who appeared in our small town because they had lost their homes in the East, now Polish territory, and had to start a new life in an unfamiliar environment. Then we got the wonderful chance to live in peace for a long time, and we thought that peace would be a normal state among civilized nations, something firmly assured and lasting forever. How brittle these thoughts were was brought home to us in the past three weeks. Errors are not helpful.
In the second reading today St. Paul gives us his warning against another type of erroneous thinking of a similar kind when he says: “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” Are we not all much inclined to believe that we are standing secure? Perhaps we lull ourselves into a comfortable attitude of peace and security, without any critical doubts about ourselves. But can I really be content with my situation, with the way I live, with the atmosphere I create around me in the family and my daily relations, in my place of work, and with my neighbours, with my involvement in social matters or my distance from public affairs? Would all this really stand up to the test, and pass as acceptable at the Last Judgment? Can I in full honesty present all this to the Lord without a profound sense of shame, because in fact it is too far removed from what he wanted his followers to be?
Last Sunday we heard the voice of the Father from the cloud “This is my chosen Son, listen to him.” And the more we make the effort to listen to him, the clearer we sense in us a certain insufficiency, an inadequacy, falling short, literally a shortcoming by not going far enough, a heaviness, paralysis, the lack of radical discipleship. Do you know the feeling of being caught between the insight that one needs to improve and the inability to take effective steps that would make a difference? Change for the better proves to be awfully difficult.
We all carry with us our past, our personal history, our acquired habits, our character, our spontaneous responses, our compliance to social pressure and expectation. We are all driven by the need to cultivate our image in front of others, and so forth. Somewhere deep down we are paralysed by the fear what I would look like, if I really became a radical Christian. This fear makes comfortable compromises all the more attractive.
At this point we recognise today's gospel as “good news”, because in the parable the gardener proclaims God's marvellous patience. The owner of the fig tree speaks as a businessman, expecting satisfactory results. Hence his verdict: “Three years no fruit. That's enough. Cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?” The gardener pleads: “Not so fast, please. Give it another chance. Leave it for this year also.” But the gardener too is a hard-boiled realist who knows that time alone would not make any difference. Therefore he adds the promise: “I shall cultivate the ground around it, and add a little manure." I shall take good care of it! "It may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.”
This promise is more than the consoling news that we may hope that God will have patience with us. It also assures us of help and assistance in situations where we by ourselves feel unable to initiate a thorough change in our life. God will do more than allow us time, he will also "add a little manure, cultivate the ground around us." Something is happening around us that may escape our notice, or may be hard to recognize. Just as the fig tree was unaware of what was happening round it; but suddenly there was new fresh sap in its budding branches.
Fr. Dietmar Lenferns M. Ar.
An Altar of Living Stones by Archbishop Dr. Heiner Koch
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
When starting to write this Lenten Letter my mind was loaded with all the worries of the corona pandemic: Concern for so many people dear to us, sorrow for so much suffering. How many had to die! How many fell gravely ill! How we felt burdened by the restrictions of contacts we had to observe! How much discussion and dispute concerning the importance of testing and vaccinations!
Then, day by day, I saw more ground for hope, rising numbers of vaccinations, sinking numbers of hospitalisations, the intensive care units able to cope.
Suddenly the invasion of Russian troops into the Ukraine destroyed these germs of hope: The hard times, the stony road through the desert, are not yet over. On the contrary.
In our thoughts and our prayers we are deeply united with the people of the Ukraine who may feel thrown into a deadly desert, an overwhelming experience. And we are equally united with those courageous men and women in Russia who dare to raise their voice against this kind of injustice. They are risking their freedom and their future. May God help them and all who work for peace.
Bread from Heaven, Water from the rock
The first reading of this first Sunday of Lent tells us how the Chosen People of Israel live their faith. They have to cross the desert, forty years in uninhabitable lands. We hear of cries to the LORD God, of unbearable labour, deprivation of rights, of subjection and suppression. And the LORD is moved to lead the people out of Egypt, into a land flowing with milk and honey. But much is to happen before the goal is reached. We are told of two miraculous events, which, as we will see, throw light not only on today's gospel, but also on the renewal of our Saint-Hedwig-Cathedral, its new lectern and altar that I would like to present to you in a few words.
While in the desert, the Israelites suffer hunger and thirst, lack of vital things, basic needs not cared for. Hence, in spite of their new cherished freedom, there grows the desire to return to the flesh pots of Egypt. They begin to grumble, a frequent reaction in days of hardship, just as we ourselves are easily prone to criticisms and accusations, undermining the unity of the society. Yet a society must firmly hold together, if it is to survive in these hard conditions of the desert. Then God sends bread from heaven. It rains manna to still their hunger. Soon after, God makes water rush out of a rock. Stones yield water to quench their thirst. So Israel's journey can continue, although the end of their pilgrimage still lies far ahead.
Stones to Bread?
Luke's narrative refers to and surpasses what is told of Israel's stay in the desert when it speaks of Jesus spending forty days in the desert at the beginning of his public mission. The devil wants Jesus to combine both miracles of the Exodus, not simply bread from heaven, but stones changed into bread. "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." (Lk 4:4) Jesus at once perceives the insidious evil of this suggestion. As Son of the Father he will neither outdo the Father nor deviate from his Father's aims. God's intent is not focused on the satisfaction of basic needs; instead he wants us to have life to the full. The goal of the Israelites was never the desert, but all the time they looked forward to the land flowing with milk and honey. Accordingly, in all his preaching, all his activities, his passion and death, Jesus did not propose a new political system, another utopian society; he announced the Kingdom of God, coming and already among us.
An altar of stone
Speaking of stones, I would like to take this opportunity to say a word about the actual reshaping of our Cathedral St. Hedwig. The Cathedral is the central church building of the archdiocese of Berlin, and as the required repair work is proceeding well the final steps towards completion can now be envisaged. This is the plan: I invite you all to become actively involved in the following way. On the coming feast of Corpus Christi, Thursday the 16th of June, we want to collect stones, with the participation of all the faithful of the Archdiocese everywhere, from all parishes and communities, in Vorpommern, Sachsen-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Berlin. Stones from everywhere, of course not big lumps, small ones, not longer or broader than 4 centimetres, natural stones (neither glass nor ceramics). The new altar is to be erected with these stones. Thus the altar is to become a symbol how all the faithful are bound together in Christ standing in our midst. When at the beginning of the Eucharist the priest kisses the altar, or when it is honoured with incense, we are reminded that Christ is the centre and foundation of our faith.
By contributing a little stone, we declare that we bring ourselves to Christ, with all our deficiencies and limitations, our needs and hopes, our hunger and thirst for justice, our personal fates and histories, our journeys through the desert of life, in order that Christ may integrate us as living stones into the temple that he himself is, God's presence among us. The altar is the visible place of his love and surrender to the Father. The Law of Moses ordered that an altar should not be built of hewn stones, but of unhewn stones, of stones as they are. Likewise is the altar of our Cathedral to be built of ourselves as we are, that it may keep us together faithful to the Lord. The altar becomes a symbol of our community, it shows us bound to one another and to God. We form the altar upon which the wonder of the Eucharist takes place, the change of the bread and wine that we bring into the body and blood of Jesus Christ that we receive. Hence we offer the stones for the altar and the lectern in view of sharing in Christ's sacrifice and with the desire to listen to God's word and never to lack courage in passing the message of Jesus to the world around us.
Dear Sisters and Brothers, let us make good use of this Lenten period to become more free of superfluous things and more aware of our drawbacks and shortcomings. We must always remain open for God who infinitely exceeds our feebleness and poverty. The People of God, of so many faces, is the Body of Christ, of so many members, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, built of so many living stones.
Today I invite you. Please, bring yourselves and your stones to St. Hedwig's on the Bebelplatz on 16th June. I am looking forward to our common celebration of Corpus Christi.
Your Archbishop
Dr. Heiner Koch
transl. Fr. Dr Dietmar Lenfers MAfr
A 38-year old man writes to his mother for her birthday:
‘Dear Mama, .. I have just one desire, to give you joy in these times which are so dark for you. I want you to know that I think of you and Dad many times every day, and I thank God that you are there for me and for the whole family. I know that you have only lived for us, and that you haven’t had a life for yourself. .. That my Maria is with you, is a great comfort. I thank you for all the love that has come from you to me here in my cell, over the past year, and that has made things easier for me. I believe that these tough years have only served to draw us ever closer together. I wish you and Dad and Maria, and all of us, that the New Year will bring us, at least here and there, a glimmer of light, and that sooner or later we will be able to rejoice together. May God keep you all healthy! .. Your ever-thankful Dietrich’
How we flourish, precisely when times are tough, is what the prophet Jeremiah and the psalmist are telling us in our readings today. They use the picture of the fine tree, branches with buds and then leaves. Even in times of drought and extreme heat, it flourishes, provided the roots hidden underground are deep. These reach the water, down below. Jeremiah and the psalmist were writing for people who needed encouragement. The people they were speaking to were experiencing political collapse, the loss of all that kept them together as a people, for they faced exile in a foreign land. ‘Trust in the Lord’, Jeremiah tells the people. ‘Blessed are they who hope in the Lord’, says the psalmist. When the big heat comes, when apparently there is no nourishment from the rains, they go deeper, like the roots into the earth, and there they find the water that keeps them going. Deep down, inside themselves, there the Lord is waiting for them.
Dietrich, the chap who wrote the birthday letter to his mum, can give us hope and guidance, too. He was writing in the final days of December 1944. He was here in Berlin, in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, the Gestapo prison. He was living with the prospect of a death sentence. A few months later, within a fortnight of war’s end, he was in fact executed. A bleak scenario indeed. Dietrich was a man of deep faith, and of prayer. Faced with the Nazi regime, his faith gave him courage to work with others to keep alive a community of hope. He dug deep from the well of faith and companionship with Jesus. He rooted himself in the Lord, letting himself be nourished by the story of how God accompanied the people in all their wanderings, as related in the Bible. Through small group work, through talks and letters he shared that nourishment with others. He let the Lord show him the way, whatever the cost to himself, his fiancée Maria, and his family. He trusted that the Lord would provide him, and them, with what was needed. In the darkness of his prison cell, he could find the words to offer hope and love to those sorely tried. Because of his deep rootedness and focus on the Lord, he could keep others and their needs at the centre of his attention. Dietrich is one of those who point us to how calamity, collapse, the cruelty of systems, the indifference of others, may not have the last word.
Our situations may not be as intense or as dramatic as that of Dietrich. But we all face times when our plans don’t work out as anticipated. We live with disappointment, with failure in various forms. Others cannot be relied on to meet our expectations. Some people must live with great insecurity in their lives. However we all face the uncertainty that illness brings. Can we let Jesus draw us ever deeper to Himself? Where is our heart set? On what, and on whom do we centre ourselves? Can we ask the Lord to change whatever in us needs changing? We are God’s work of art, and the potter is always at work on us the clay, moulding and remoulding, shaping and reshaping. Are we open to the Lord’s continual attention and hints to us as to how we are to grow? Like Dietrich, do we want give life to others, even when we feel our own situation may not be easy or comfortable?
Jesus speaks to us of those who are poor, those who weep, those who are hungry. They are blessed. They are blessed because they know they cannot manage alone. They are not proud and self-sufficient. The Lord walks with them in their loss and hunger. He does not ditch them. This is good news. Once more Jesus is inviting us to align our hearts with his. May the Spirit guide us to the living streams that do not disappoint, and remove what blocks us from digging deeper.
Brian Mac Cuarta SJ