Reformátusok Lapja, 1970 (70. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1970-03-01 / 3. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 11 meaning of life. The Church itself seems uncertain as to what the proper gospel should be. Is it still to preach the loving-kindness of God alone? Or should the voice of the pulpit speak more about causes and issues —social and political in nature? Concerned Christians receive not only contradictory but contra- versial answers from their spiritual leaders. There seems to be something wrong with the sense of direction whence direction is expected. Unless it is readjusted, the average man will increasingly lull himself in the gloomy spirit of living in a doomed world. It is foolish, “Why should we die before our time?” (Eccl. 7:17). “Now” — is the time to re-examine our attitude and emotions, the most harmful and destructive of which is fear. We let fear overwhelm us, instead of placing it under the microscopic lens of faith. In doing so, we could see how the burden and cross of what we fear becomes bearable in the presence of God. Since fear is seldom subjected to such wonderous experiment, it freely grows in the heart and gives the fearful the impression of being left to himself and helplessly exposed to all kinds of dangers that eventually will engulf his life. “Fear not, I am come to seek and save which is lost” (Luke 19:10). Many ignore these words of Christ. They are only concerned about their losses. Lost is their courage and hope. Some have even lost their aim and joy of life. Can what seems lost be brought back to life? That is the miracle our generation wants to see and to experience. We take Job’s question and rephrase it: if and when something dies in man’s life, can it be brought back to life again? Can we see it resurrected? Yes! Christ, the risen Lord Himself gives this affirmative answer. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me” will see a series of resurrection in his life. Christ is well aware of man’s inability to cope with painful circumstances, awesome problems and forceful fears. They often leave us wounded and robbed of our hope on the roadside. Christ would never pass by our helpless state, saying: you deserve your misery, because I called, “come unto me” and you did not come. I invited you “to follow me” but you pretended not to hear Me. Instead, Christ stops and offers His help to bind up our wounds. He offers to replace our weakness with His strength, our doubts with His faith, our worries and fears with His courage and hope. Where His offer is accepted, there the modern miracle of resurrection takes place. It explains why Jesus Christ still must have a place in our secular society and a place in our crowded hearts and lives. He gives us what we cannot get from any other source: a new beginning of life when it seems to be heading for a dead end. Here is the good news, the gospel of Easter. One does not necessarily have to die in order to experience the miracle of resurrection. There is resurrection available for us — here and now! Joseph Marsalko The Second Helvetic Confession The Power of Ministers Is One and the Same, and Equal. Now the one and an equal power or function is given to all ministers in the Church. Certainly, in the beginning, the bishops or presbyters governed the Church in common; no man lifted himself above another, none usurped greater power or authority over his fellow-bishops. For remembering the words of the Lord: “Let the leader among you become as one who serves” (Luke 22:26), they kept themselves in humility, and by mutual services they helped one another in the governing and preserving of the Church. Order to Be Preserved. Nevertheless, for the sake of preserving order some one of the ministers called the assembly together, proposed matters to be laid before it, gathered the opinions of the others, in short, to the best of man’s ability took precaution lest any confusion should arise. Thus did St. Peter, as we read in The Acts of the Apostles, who nevertheless was not on that account preferred to the others, nor endowed with greater authority than the rest. Rightly then does Cyprian the Martyr say, in his De Simplicitate Clericorum: “The other apostles were assuredly what Peter was, endowed with a like fellowship of honor and power: but (his) primacy proceeds from unity in order that the Church may be shown to be one.” When and How One Was Placed Before the Others. St. Jerome also in his commentary upon The Epistle of Paul to Titus, says something not unlike this: “Before attachment to persons in religion was begun at the instigation of the devil, the churches were governed by the common consultation of the elders; but after every one thought that those whom he had baptized were his own, and not Christ’s, it was decreed that one of the elders should be chosen, and set over the rest, upon whom should fall the care of the whole Church, and all schismatic seeds should be removed.” Yet St. Jerome does not recommend this decree as divine: for he immediately adds: “As the elders knew from the custom of the Church that they were subject to him who was set over them, so the bishops knew that they were above the elders, more from custom than from the truth of an arrangement by the Lord, and that they ought to rule the Church in common with them.” Thus far St. Jerome. Hence no one can rightly forbid a return to the ancient constitution of the Church of God, and to have recourse to it before human custom. The Duties of Ministers. The duties of ministers are various: yet for the most part they are restricted to two, in which all the rest are comprehended: to the teaching of the Gospel of Christ, and to the proper administration of the sacraments. For it is the duty of the ministers to gather together an assembly for worship in which to expound God’s Word and to apply the whole doctrine to the care and use of the Church, so that what is taught may benefit the hearers and edify the faithful. It falls to ministers, I say, to teach the ignorant, and to exhort; and to urge the idlers and lingerers to make progress in the way of the Lord. Moreover, they are to comfort and to strengthen the fainthearted, and to arm them against the manifold temptations of Satan; to rebuke offenders; to recall the erring into the way; to raise the fallen; to convince the gainsayers to drive the wolf away from the sheepfold of the Lord; to rebuke wickedness and wicked men wisely and severely; not to wink at nor to pass over great wickedness. And, besides, they are to administer the sacraments, and to commend the right use of them,
