Fraternity-Testvériség, 1962 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1962-07-01 / 7. szám
FRATERNITY 5 old — even soldiers in uniform who dared to go. All received me with love, the kind of love that prompted an old man to press an apple into my hand after service — precious gift for him! The kind of love that yearned for communication and understanding across the world’s dread barricades, knowing that Christ alone can calm the storm and redeem the time. Nor did our brothers behind the Iron Curtain allow their American visitors to think of them as pitiable remnants of some little engulfed coterie. Rather they presented themselves as a little band of disciples on the march, not defending, but attacking — out to conquer, by the Holy Spirit, the whole man-centered crass ideology of the Marxist masters, just as centuries ago the Twelve pitted themselves against the Empire of Rome. Stripped of all fat, shorn of the comfortable irrelevance of the past, these men and women are seeking to come to terms in their lives with whatever is good in the economic revolution with which, for better or worse, they have to live; but at the same time to wrestle with the terrible emptiness, the soul-killing futility of the Communist doctrine. When I prayed with them, when together we said the Litany from our own prayer book, I thought of that story of Joshua which was read this morning: how Moses sent him forth to spy out the land of Canaan which God had promised; how he came back to report that it was a goodly land, but that it was peopled with a race of giants, who looked upon Joshua and Caleb as no more than grasshoppers. “The land we have explored is a land that eateth up its inhabitants.” Such is a Communist country today. “Nevertheless”, said Joshua, “the Lord has given us this good land!” And such is the spirit of Christians behind the Iron Curtain at this moment! No, Lidice is not the sign of all that is behind the Iron Curtain, for there is love beside the hatred, in the courage of our Christian brothers who brave the storm in the strength of Christ. It is good, surely, that we can be in touch with them — and with them pray that somehow, perhaps beyond comprehension, the Son of Man shall bring calm to the tossing tempest of our life. There is one thing more. I would not leave the impression with you that such a prayer is the final culmination of Christian communion. If all we can finally do together is only to echo the disciples in their plea, “Save, Lord, we perish”, then surely Christ must turn to us with the same words of old, “Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith?” Nor did the recent colloquy of Christians from East and West in fact end there. Whereas we began by discussing our differences — exploring the divergent contexts of our situations, trying to see in each other’s reflection the delicate line that separates all of our compromises from our principle — we came gradually to realize that despite the divergent setting on either side of the Iron Curtain, we are all confronted by basically the same challenge. And that is the challenge of a brand new age: an age of exploding knowledge and immense technical possibility; an age industrialized and secularized, which on both sides of the Curtain is absorbed with Man and his infinite
