Lichtstrahl 75 - His words were hidden from them, they did not understand

GOSPEL:  Luke 18 (18-34)            
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Dear friends!

It is now only two more Sundays, and then we will already be entering Passion Time on the 20th of March.  The colours at the altar will change to black and there will be a great heaviness about the Act of Consecration for four weeks. And this year we are going to have a priest ordination at a black altar…. Are we prepared for that?  And do we realize, why that needs to be?  Why that heaviness needs to be?  Every year? And that we are definitely  not asked to passively join in the passion of the Christ Jesus, but to actively engage in it and walk as a companion at His side towards Easter and eternal life?

Nobody would ever think, that when searching for eternal life, one could find it while living on the earth.  It surely is connected to life after death.  When somebody dies and at funerals we frequently do hear about eternal life after death, but we struggle to understand, what that means and how that is going to be.  

In our days words spoken about eternal life are less and less filled with understanding and trust.  Especially if our earthly life is actually one of richness and fullfillment in comparison to many other peoples’ lives.  And so it scares us, if we hear words of the Christ Jesus as in today’s gospel:  “  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God” (where we will find eternal life…) It is not meant to scare us, it is not meant to be a warning to get rid of all our earthly posessions and share them.  It is actually just telling the truth:  that we will have to let go of everything earthly we posess now, if we die.  The more we posess, the more difficult that will be.

We spend a lot of time in our congregation to look at and understand resurrection and eternal life. Death, and losing everything,  is not the end, but a necessary stepping stone to resurrection and development.  Without the cross there would not have been a resurrection.      

Could we enter into Passion time with the consciousness  that it is of extreme importance, it has to be felt and experienced,  sothat we can reach Easter.  Could we say:  “I want to walk consciously through those four weeks out of my own free choice.  The darkness I am passing through is a valley that has been walked by the Christ himself.  He knew beforehand that that would have to be.  He tried desperately to keep his diciples at his side by preparing them for what had to come. Knowing them at his side, loyal, strong, and as true friends would have helped.    

They did however not understand His words, they were hidden from them, they left him alone.  That does not need to go on forever.  We could try out of our own free will to be real companions, to be willing to walk that path through the valley of death with the Christ Jesus. We were given  much time to understand that and thus learn to become true followers of the Christ.  We still have three weeks to go to think about this and to prepare how we personnaly could make our following Him a conscious and selfless reality.

Christine Voigts