Magyar Egyház, 1967 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1967-04-01 / 4-5. szám
1« MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH ffentwoat \m "The Holy Spirit Works TodayT' Message from the Presidents of the World Council of Churches Again, at this season of Pentecost, we Presidents of the World Council of Churches want to address you, the people of God. We have tried to find words to express what we believe the Holy Spirit is saying to us all as we meet this Whitsunday. When the first disciples met in the Upper Room at Jerusalem after Christ was seen by them no more, they discovered that as they had come to know Him and who He was by what He had done, so they knew Him still. He was gloriously at work in His world, suffering still but, wherever men believed in Him, still victorious. We have simply our confirming word to say to you. This continuous Bible theme, renewed at Pentecost, has been sounded for us afresh in these very days. God the Holy Spirit is at work; we cannot but speak that which we have ourselves seen and heard. We have recognized, in every secular development which has emphasized afresh the unity of the whole inhabited world, His call to His churches to rediscover that deeper unity with each other which He wills. We have hear Him speaking directly of this in the Councils of the Churches and have been moved by their response. Even where the frailties of men have led to the breakdown of talks, we have heard Him clearly in the sense of disappointment, even of shame which has followed. And as so many discussions about unity of faith and of obedience are now proceeding in the churches, we feel encouraged to say to you: The Lord, the Holy Spirit, is at work. In these days of political hostility to the Church and of sophisticated indifference to the Gospel, we rejoice to be able to declare to you that men and women are being upheld in brave obedience, often to their worldly loss, sometimes unto death. God the Holy Spirit is still visiting and redeeming His people as they come to meet Him at the altar, through the Word, in the Liturgy, out of the silence. This is no little thing to be able to say. In many places indeed, the integrity in daily life of men and women who have been faithful in worship is the living evidence that the Holy Spirit is invincibly at work. Finally, we are very sure that we can discern the prompting and power of the Holy Spirit in the present searching of mind and conscience among His people. We are aware of it in all the churches; we heard it loudly in the Church and Society Conference in Geneva last summer. More churches are asking themselves more of the hard questions. More are alert to the times; more are uncomfortable with the facts about rich and poor nations; more are learning to distinguish between national interests and ideals and God’s will for the whole world. In all this we call you to rejoice. We are convinced that any church which holds deeply this Pentecost faith that God the Holy Spirit is at His loving work and which reaches out to the need of His world will discover the age-old miracle of His power happening to them. We pray this for you all. This living Spirit working through dedicated wills and open, disciplined minds, will bring liberation and new life to men. where we each are called to worship and work, there is the place where men must see and hear again the wonderful works of God, and where we are to learn afresh for ourselves the meaning of Pentecost. The Presidents of the World Council of Churches: Honorary President: J. H. OLDHAM —St. Leonards-on- Sea, U.K. THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY—London DR. MARTIN NIEMOELLER— Wiesbaden, Germany ARCHBISHOP IAKOVOS—New York SIR FRANCIS IBIAM—Enugu, Nigeria CHARLES PARLIN—New York PRINCIPAL DAVID G. MOSES—Nagpur, India Bishop Louis Nagy: A Song In A Foreign Land To the Reformed Church in Hungary on the 400th anniversary (Psalm 137:4) By the waters of Babylon, having lost his country, the temple and his freedom, the captive Jew — being asked to sing — cried into history these words: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” They returned on the wings of memory from their captivity to the land of their forefathers, they walked the streets of Jerusalem in thought, they visited the holy Zion where one ought to pray, their hearts were filled with deep sorrow and their trembling lips could not sing the Lord’s song. The weeping willows of their sorrow bent over the waters of Babylon, they whispered their sorrows to them, and the strings of their lyres were not touched by their fisted hands, only by playful winds. They felt that to sing the song of Zion in a foreign land would be blasphemy, and they thought God would hear their prayers only in Jerusalem. This was bleak sorrow, life without a future, and its only fruits the silent lyres hung up on the willows by the waters of fate. These were mute lyres, silent people, passive sorrow that only wanted to reminisce and to weep. They banished from their hearts the sweet songs of Zion which could have made life in a foreign land bearable, and which could have reminded them of the fact that Jerusalem belonged to the Lord as well as Babylon, for “the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” Since the 80’s of the last century, for varied and many reasons, almost one million Hungarians were carried to the waters of a new Babylon by fate, or as we might say, by the predestinating will of God. They loved
