Images of Hope
Page 9
Why in fact is that so? There may be many reasons. The actual reason is no doubt that death concerns us today just as it did then. And if much from that time has become strange to us, death has remained the same. In the often rough inscriptions that parents have dedicated to their children, that spouses have dedicated to each other, in the pain and confidence they express, we recognize again ourselves. Furthermore, faced with the dark question of death, we all seek some clue that allows us to hope, some direction, some consolation. Whoever walks the streets of the catacombs is not only drawn into the solidarity of all human mourning that is expressed there. He cannot at all take in the melancholy of the past by itself, so completely is that melancholy saturated with the certainty of salvation. This street of death is in reality a way of hope. Whoever walks it shares inevitably something of the hope that speaks here from all the images and all the words.
To be sure, we have not yet said much about our attitude toward death. Why in fact do we fear death? Why has mankind never been able to believe simply that nothing more comes after it? There are many reasons. First, we fear death simply because we are afraid of the void, afraid to step out into the completely unknown. We rebel against death because we simply cannot believe that so many great and meaningful things that occur in a life should suddenly fall into oblivion. We resist death because love demands eternity and because we cannot accept the destruction of love that death brings with it. We fear death because none of us can quite shake off the feeling that there will be a judgment in which the memory of all our failures emerges unvarnished that we otherwise are so busy finding a way to suppress. The question of judgment has left its mark on the funeral culture of every epoch. Love that surrounds the deceased should protect him. That so much gratitude accompanies him cannot be without effect at this judgment—so men thought and think.
We are rational today, at least we think we are. We want what is definite, not what is approximate. Hence we want to answer the question of death, not by means of faith, but with verifiable empirical data. A short time ago, reports of the clinically dead became nice and eerie popular reading, which is again in the process of fading away. The calming effect they produce does not go far. It may be quite amusing to float over oneself for a few hours somewhere in the room and to look down, cheerful and touched, at one’s own corpse and those left behind grieving. But one can certainly not occupy oneself in this way for an eternity. In the meantime, some pursue the empirical by reverting to the wholly archaic, seeking in spiritism, masquerading in more or less scientific forms, direct contact with the world beyond death. But even here the prospects are bleak. What one finds are but duplicates of life here. But what meaning would there actually be in having to exist again a second time without place or time? That is in reality the exact description of hell. A second, no longer temporary, duplicate of our life until then would in fact be damnation forever. Our earthly life has its temporal framework, and so we can get through it. We could not bear it for eternity. But what then? We do not want death, and life as we know it we do not want forever. Is man a contradiction himself, a mistake of nature?
Let us keep these questions in our hearts as we walk along the paths of the catacombs. Only the one who can see hope in death can also lead a life of hope. What gave the possibility of such cheerful confidence to the men who have left behind here the symbols of their faith, which still speak to us today in the darkness of the subterranean passages? First, they were thoroughly clear on the fact that man taken for himself alone, completely limited to the empirically comprehensible, makes no sense. They were also certain that a mere prolongation of our present existence into the unlimited would be absurd. If isolation is deadly even in this earthly life and if only being-in-relation, love, sustains us, then eternal life only make sense in a quite new totality of love that surpasses all temporality.
Since the Christians of that time knew this, they also realized that man is then understandable only if there is a God. If God exists—for them this “if” was no longer “if”, and therein lies the answer. God had stepped out of his unknown distance and had entered their life in that he said: “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25). And still other words illuminated the darkness of death: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Jesus’ words from his own Cross to the criminal crucified beside him: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43) cast light into the fear of judgment. Above all: he had risen, and he had said: “In my father’s house there are many rooms. . . . I go and prepare a place for you” (Jn 14:2). God was no longer a distant If. He really was. He had shown himself, and he was accessible.
Then everything else fell into place by itself. For if there is a God and if this God has wanted and wants man, then it is clear that his love can do what ours wants in vain, namely, to keep the loved one alive beyond death. Our cemeteries with their symbols of devotedness and fidelity are actually such attempts of love to hold tight somehow to the other, to give him yet another piece of life. And, indeed, he does continue still to live a little in us—not he himself, but something of him. God can hold on to more—not only thoughts, memories, aftereffects, but rather each as himself. In like manner the approaches of the old philosophy have their meaning for the Christian. This philosophy had said that, if you want to survive beyond death, you must acquire in yourself as much as possible of what is eternal: truth, justice, goodness. The more you have of these in yourself, the more of you remains, the more you remain. Or better: you must attach yourself to the eternal so that you belong to it, partake of its eternity. Hold fast to truth, and thereby belong to the One who is indestructible—that disposition now becomes very real and very close: Hold fast to Christ; he carries you through the night of death that he himself has overcome. In this way immortality comes to make sense. It is no longer an endless duplication of the present but rather something entirely new and yet still our eternity: to be in the hands of God and thereby one with all the brothers and sisters he has created for us, to be one with creation—that is finally the true life, which we now can see only through the mist. Where there is no answer to the question of God, death remains a cruel puzzle, and every other answer leads into contradictions. If God exists, however, the God who has shown himself in Jesus Christ, then there is eternal life, and death is then also a way of hope.
It is this new experience that gives the catacombs their special character. So many of the images have crumbled or faded through the disadvantage of time. But they have lost nothing of the radiance over the centuries and, above all, nothing of the truth of hope that gave birth to them. There are the youths in the fiery furnace; Jonah, who is thrown back into the light from the belly of the whale; Daniel in the lions’ den, and many others. The most beautiful is the Good Shepherd, whose direction we can trust without fear because he knows the way through the dark valley of death. “The Lord is my shepherd. Nothing shall I lack. . . . If I must walk in middle of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are near me” (Ps 22:1, 4; LXX).
Sources of Texts
“Ochs und Esel an der Krippe” (Ox and Ass at the Crib): In J. Ratzinger, Licht, das uns leuchtet (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder, 1978), pp. 25-37; here in an expanded version.
“Die Weihnachtsbotschaft in der Basilika Santa Maria Maggiore zu Rom” (The Message of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome): In M. Schneider and W. Berschin, eds., Ab oriente ed occidente: Kirche aus Ost und West: Gedenkschrift für W. Nyssen (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1996), pp. 361-66.
“ ‘Vorsitz in der Liebe': Der Cathedra-Altar vom St. Peter zu Rom” (“Primacy in Love”: The Chair Altar of Saint Peter’s in Rome): In E. Kleindienst and G. Schmuttermayr, eds., Kirche im Kommen: Festschrift fur Bischof J. Stimpfle (Berlin: Propylaeen, 1991), pp. 423-29.
“ ‘Die Botschaft hor ich wohl. . .’ ” (“I Do Indeed Hear the Message”): Until now printed only in journals.
“Das Lachen Saras” (Sarah’s Laughter): Under the title “Das Lamm erlöste die Schafe: Betrachtungen zur
österlichen Symbolik”, in J. Ratzinger, Schauen auf den Durchbohrten: Versuch einer spirituellen Christologie, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes-Verlag, 1990), pp. 93-101 (English trans.: Behold the Pierced One, trans. Graham Harrison [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986], pp. 111-21).
“Der Heilige Geist und die Kirche” (The Holy Spirit and the Church): In A. Coreth and I. Fux, Servitium pietatis: Festschrift für Kardinal Groer zum 70. Geburtstag (Salterrae Maria Roggendor 1989), pp. 91-97.
All others: Not until now published in printed form.