Reformátusok Lapja, 1963 (64. évfolyam, 1-9. szám)
1963-08-01 / 7. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 21 tendance at penitential worship services. The apostolic warning: “grow in grace” is a definite call for faithful, loyal, disciplined church attendance. And remember, we come to church to worship God. THE RIGHT ADMINISTRATION OF SACRAMENTS and honoring them are a special Hungarian Reformed heritage. During the age of the Reformation our people were called Sacramen- tarians. But, as I said before, participating in the Lord’s Supper without proper spiritual discipline — Bible reading, prayers at home, attending the penitential worship services — becomes presumptious, shallow and mechanical. Yes, the holy elements are signs of efficient grace. But efficient grace becomes usually operative in the spiritual condition of faith- trust and sincere repentance on our part. The prayer-life of our congregation is understandably cautious, and I do like it that way. I am not overawed by the sectarian fervor, often Pharisaic prayer-life of loud, very loud “Christians”. But cautious, normal growth in prayer- life, away from clergy controlled and coached piety, should definitely be considered growth in grace, growth toward maturity of faith. The practice of faith-trust — praxis pie- tatis — living with the ordinary means of grace, according to the Reformed Tradition and Order, is to be followed by the practice of virtue and good deeds (II Peter 1:5-7) and to this we shall return. WORDS OF EXHORTATION By Rev. Stephen T. Szilagyi We can not know God until we love God. Love is the spirit of life, and makes all things live. Without love, life is not worth living. It is in the first look of intelligence which we discover in the infant’s eye; it is in the last feeble pressure of the hand of the dying. Nothing is so real as this: it alone has solidity, substance and essential being. Selfishness is not enduring. In its very nature it destroys itself. The selfish man is only half alive. He lives alone in a cold isolation of soul. It was love, not selfishness, which prompted your parents and grandparents to work their fingers to the bone in the coal mines, in the factories and in the field, in order to establish the future, based on their labor of love, for you and me and our lives in this great country. In their hard work, they never forgot their church, their Calvinistic heritage or their Hungarian origin in order that they might give you a foundation of love — love for their country, their fellowman and their God. This love is universal, existing not only in Hungary, not only in the United States, but in every heart of every Hungarian in the whole world. It is your duty, it is your responsibility as the youth of our nation, as the youth of our church never to forget your Hungarian parents and grandparents, our beloved Hungarian language or our Reformed faith; be proud of it and make your children also proud of it. Every generous effort to do right, every noble struggle against evil, every warm throb of love for what is good, true, fair, every patriotic and courageous act of devotion to our country and our God and to our Hungarian ancestry comes from that dear land across the ocean which was the home of our forefathers, our beloved Hungary. TO MY COUNTRYMEN IN AMERICA By ENDUE ADY My countrymen, you whom our common curse Has taken from us and has rent afar, Perhaps too often in your thoughts we are. Ah, nathless, Magyar life is overwhelmed, And from the deluge they alone emerge Whom distant shores from present peril urge. You far-off Magyars, how I envy you! At home already all by us is lost; You, happy folk, are far from ruin tossed. l \ ___ .:-v__ THE LORD’S ARRIVAL By ENDRE ADY When they forsook me here And with my soul I stumbling trod, Unlooked for and unspeakingly I was embraced of God. With mute embrace He came, Not with a trumpet-call of fright; He came not in the blaze of noon, But in tumultuous night. Mine eyes that were so vain Are blind. My youth has ceased to be. But Him, the radiant, I behold For all eternity.
