Yet another campaign has recently been started, this time to plant more crosses, design new war cemeteries and clean up existing ones – fifty years after the end of WW II. Many places, regions, countries lend their names to the battlefields that became the stages for multiple death and dying, for victory and loss of life. Each single death means the end of a whole world, of a micro-‘cosmos’. Yet the next generation erects monuments for the countless victims. The New Testament quotes a statement by Jesus, i.e. from the early days of the present era: “You approve of the deeds your fathers did: they committed the murders and you provide the tombs!” (Luke 11:48).
Each single monument emits the same message: Consider it! Remember! That is the message. But do we receive it? Countless monuments have been erected since Jesus died on the cross: chapels, churches, cathedrals; paintings were created and statues chiselled, masses and requiems, anthems and oratorios composed and performed with a high degree of artistic mastery – but the invitation to identify with foreign sufferings, to look with empathy at the passion of fellow human beings will soon become a burden for the living.
The strange, the miraculous, the extraordinary may still raise our interest. But to share and truly sympathize with the victims call for more: we need to appropriate the burden of history, it be told or read or written. To accept it means to share the memory of mankind. –
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are met with more or less inner participation, and then comes Easter Sunday. We smile: Happy Easter! And with it come coloured eggs and Easter rabbits and good food – a solid veil to cover up a history that refers to more people than just Jesus. It could be said of many what one of the two murderers who were crucified with Jesus told his companion: “This man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41) There are many more who longed for justice and fought for it and were likewise executed. How much vitality and zest for life has been destroyed since then – to this day!
Unfortunately the daily routine of modern life creates conditions which hinder us to let such stories, old and new ones, touch our heart and receives them with the attention they deserve. On the contrary: the suffering victims and the deadly wounded as well as those who are sensitive enough to become aware of the full amount of human misery are kindly requested not to cry to loudly, it could affect the functioning of normal life. Genuine sympathy and/or the contemplation of our past history represent a threat to the fabric of our social network. Why do certain holidays lose meaning and importance? Because they indicate serious issues! Yet one day each of us will have to face death as Jesus did according to scriptures “in anguish of spirit” (Luke 22:44) in the night while the full moon sparkled over Jerusalem. It proved too much for his disciples – they fell asleep in sadness. Their master’s question still applies: “What! Could none of you stay awake with me one hour?” (Matth. 26:40) They couldn’t. They watched their salvation perish. His life was theirs, there it vanished.
Yet we have the witness of one of his followers who confessed later on: “All I care for is to know Christ, to experience the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings, in growing conformity with his death, if only I may arrive at the resurrection from the dead” (Phil.3:10). To live in growing conformity with such conviction hoping to finally achieve it demands much empathy under the conditions of normal life with its own troubles and problems. To say “I am not a believer” is to say “I lack the energy to risk it”. It is however possible to discover in moments of grace that hidden within our physical body a spiritual body can grow – an experience to be made in rare moments of illumination brought about through a word or a story to touch the soul which will respond in deep emotion.
What Jesus asked from his disciples on his last evening in this world was actually quite simple yet difficult to achieve when he told them: “In the world, kings lord over their subjects; and those in authority are called their country’s *benefactors*. Not so with you: on the contrary, the highest among you must bear himself like the youngest, the chief of you like a servant”. (Luke 22:25-26. In other words: help one another, protect the light of life.
Remarkably enough not a single of his recommendations has ever been elevated to the rank of a dogma.
At last there was this lonely soldier standing by the cross, one of those who believe – like many – only in what he could see with his own eyes – and he had seen a lot in his life. But he saw Jesus die, which made him believe and say: “Truly this man was a son of God!” (Matth. 27:54).
