Prayer and Reflection
April 2023
Fix your eyes on the Light
Fix your eyes on the light that comes from the resurrection of Christ For the Union monthly message "Apostles Today" I was asked to focus on the light that comes from the Resurrection of Christ. I thank you for the trust and I would like to share with you my thoughts on this topic.
Lumen Christi - the light of the Resurrection. What can we imagine by this, and is there something like this also for me, in my little life?
"Lumen Christi" we call out in the Easter Vigil. Light of the Risen Lord. A light that is not turned on and illuminates the room, but one that shines in us, especially in dark hours, and that becomes visible to others in our deeds. Thus, it is independent of lamps, lighters, and candles. It is not a light that you can forget at home and then not have when you urgently need it. Rather, this light is always with you once you have it.
Light must hit something, otherwise it can neither shine nor work. The light of Christ illuminates us human beings, and we need it. We may thereby assume this unfinishedness of us humans as part of the divine plan of creation. When God created the world, he obviously had something completely different in mind than a finished, perfect museum piece. It did not concern him an earth without natural disasters and human total failure. He was hardly concerned with a faultlessly functioning "crown of creation". No, the earth consists of divine variety and intentional diversity. With humans as actors in it, who are to make this complex planet "subject" to themselves.
This is less a free ride or an invitation to arbitrariness, but rather a task and responsibility. However, God places both possibilities of interpretation without restriction in the freedom of decision of man. I sometimes like to read this directive formulated in Genesis (Genesis 1,26-31) this way: "I hereby lend you perhaps my best work, to which I am very attached. I really had a lot of work with your planet and the design of all millions of living beings. Above all, I have been occupied with you humans. I have put great hope in you, and you have become terribly complicated about it, of course, but I wanted to have you just like that: In their decision free living beings - just also, what concerns the distinction of right and wrong. And because only you can do that, I love you more than anything else in the world. Infinitely much more, than you can already understand now! Honestly: if I had really wanted you differently, I would have had to make you only differently. Now listen, make the best of it. I wish that you use your huge chance for a fulfilled life in love and responsibility, by switching on your heart and your mind (what else would you have both for?). Because there is also something which I do not want at all: to I get sometime back from you a dying scrap heap called earth. Which has fallen victim to the obstinacy and the greed of people who always care more about themselves than about others! But I have infinite confidence in you. Maybe I will contact you occasionally, but you know how to find me. Let us stay in contact!".
But does the light of Christ show up in his first apostles as we know them from the New Testament? Were they a good mirror for the light that Jesus brought into the world not by means of prophets, but personally and as a human being? After all, these apostles sat "directly at the source", were allowed to get to know Jesus personally more exclusively than anyone else and even lived with him for a few years. They were eyewitnesses - in the immediate vicinity of the source of light. Could anything go wrong at all? At first glance, yes. Unlike Zacchaeus (Luke 19,1-10), for example, who met Jesus for only a few hours and then immediately turned his whole questionable life around, the apostles show very different sides of their personalities.
Let us look at Peter. The rock on which Jesus wants to build his church- and makes him understand this quite clearly. When Peter wanted to walk on the water and when he looked at his feet instead of the Lord, he began to sink. But when Jesus is arrested after Judas' betrayal, the same highly determined apostle Peter cuts off Malchus' ear (John 18,10-11). He shows his willingness to defend Jesus and his loyalty in public, which was certainly not without danger for him. But soon after, this combative Peter is gone again when he despairs and three times denies even knowing Jesus. How does this fit together? And Thomas also leaves a strange impression. He belonged, as it were, to the inner circle of the disciples, had followed Jesus for a long time (John 15,15), but to the message of the resurrection of Jesus, who after all was his friend, he responded with doubt, demanded tangible proof (John 20,19-29). And the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: they were deeply disappointed and could not believe the "rumours" that He was alive; for what we do not understand cannot be true (Luke 24,32). Well, and then there is Judas, epitome of the traitor, for 2000 years without any forgiveness of mankind for his deed.
Personally, I have sympathy for the minor slip-ups and some understanding for the major human failure of the first apostles. After all, in the face of their own inadequacy, it is also a relief to see how even Jesus' closest friends fail because of themselves, and how they always come to their senses afterwards and grow - with God's assurance of His forgiveness and help. Judas Iscariot, too, and above all, quickly felt the enormity of his deed, which disfigured him as a human being and completely alienated him from himself. The fact that in his despair he no longer wanted to know about his blood money and could not go on living also tests our own morality:
who are we to judge his deeds? None of us can know how we ourselves would act in a comparable situation; what ways out we would see that another, tormented person no longer recognizes. It is even more so with Peter's famous denial and all the doubts of the disciples: for one thing, one must have the same experience and then do it better in order to feel superior to others. The first apostles tell us on this way that also we do not have to be perfect, God knows (!).
It is immensely comforting and perhaps the most valuable thing about our faith that God never loses sight of us or gives up on us with all our doubts, faults and even the very big sins. Never, never does the measure of His goodness seem to be finally full. For the light of the Resurrection always shines on us, and what we do not see and understand while we are alive hopefully becomes clear to us at the latest when we go home. In the Union, as baptized people, we consciously recognize the vocation to the apostolate; and you too, like many others in the world, are reading an issue of "Apostles Today." You are meant to be "apostles." Looking at these first apostles, we may consider how far we want to follow them and the saints and martyrs. Often, of course, we first look at our own doubts and imperfections in this question. But we should never overlook the good developments for which we may even have had enough faith and strength so far. We should be ever grateful for all what we, with God’s help, have achieved and done well, and where the light has already reached us. I was very lucky to be able to visit the Vinzent Pallotti College in Rheinbach, Germany, at the age of ten and to get to know very closely many Pallottine Fathers and Brothers over there. Probably none of them was a saint, but we experienced our teachers and prefects as very close and authentic. And yes, they were apostles. Not infrequently one could see and feel how they dedicated themselves to the weakest, to those who needed the most help. There was a lot of Pallotti in these men who could not have been more different, and yet they made common cause.
In fact, it does not have to be the very difficult testimonies to come to terms with oneself. Not everyone can be like Franz Reinisch, a Pallottine Father, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler and knew that he would be sentenced to death for it. Or a Vincent Pallotti who did as St. Martin did and shared his clothes with a needy person in the great cold - which brought him closer to his own death. Fortunately, most of us these days never get into situations where it is a matter of bare survival right away - just because we want to live our faith. Therefore, please be thankful that we can give so much to others without having to give up or put ourselves in danger. That we may pass on the light, for example, by contacting a lonely, disappointed, or needy person, so that, like an Easter candle, light may begin to glow in that person. The more we pass on this light, the more we ourselves become a light for the people around us, and can infect them with it.
I wish you all the personal blessing of such Easter experiences - for every day of the year.
Stefan H. Heuel UAC
