Calvin Synod Herald, 2006 (107. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2006-01-01 / 1-2. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HÉRÁI D 3 Message from (Bis Hop Ludwig In ancient times people believed that life was a repetitious cycle - that nature simply repeated a pattern over and over, and that life was also like this. It was understandable, since the movement of the stars were very predictable, and the seasons likewise were anticipated. True - there were occasional exceptions to the routine of life, but they were few, and even some of them came to be understood by early scientists and astronomers. While predictability was comforting, it caused people, and whole cultures, to fall into a rut. They lived as if there were no real opportunities for growth or change, and they accepted life as being decided by “fate.” All this changed with the observation of a celestial oddity, one taken note of by several Persian scientists of the time. They wondered at what they had seen, and traveled great distances to learn more. We remember them as the Wise Men, the ones who arrived at Bethlehem on January 6th, the “twelfth day of Christmas.” What they discovered was that never again would history simply “repeat itself,” for God the Creator had entered the lives of mankind in a definitive way to change the direction of the future. Until that time, history progressed in a manner where nothing new was really expected to happen - evidenced by the expectation of “history repeating itself.” But what the Wise Men had discovered broke this cycle. Theologians have a term for this: “radical disjuncture,” meaning that a change came in the history of man which caused all future history to be totally different, never again to “repeat itself.” The events the Wise Men had the opportunity to witness were quite remarkable. It changed their lives. But what followed in the life of that little babe bom in Bethlehem changed the lives of men forever. We will soon be entering the time of Lent, when we prepare to celebrate - and renew - our Lord Jesus’ gift to us. Lent is a time of preparation. We prepare for something so that we are ready when the time comes, to recognize it, to take advantage of it. Preparing during Lent means opening our eyes, our ears and our hearts to the presence of God, hearing what he has to say to us, listening for his voice in a very noisy, busy world. In fact, there is so much to distract us, we are in danger of not hearing His voice, we are in danger of missing what He has to say to us. There is a story of two men in a small park in the center of a busy city. One man stops suddenly and says to the other, “Did you hear the singing of that lark?” The other man replies that he had not, and asks his friend, “How did you hear a bird singing in the middle of all the noise of the traffic?” The first man replied by tossing a coin on the ground, and asked: “Did you hear the coin fall, in spite of all the noise of the traffic in the city?” “Of course,” replied the second man. “Well,” answered the first man, “I was listening for the song of the Lark, while you are listening for the sound of money. We hear what we are listening for.” Our Lord speaks to us every day. During Lent, we are reminded that we need to listen for His voice in our lives in order to be able to hear what He has to say. Rt. Rev. Koloman Karl Ludwig, Bishop Feed Your Enemy My maternal grandfather was bom in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was only twenty when World War I broke out and soon, as a musician with a young wife and a year old baby, he found himself in the uniform of the Austro-Hungarian army on the Galician (Eastern) front, sitting in a fox hole, clutching not his beloved violin but a loaded gun and waiting for the next attack of the gargantuan Russian Imperial Forces. He was captured and kept as a POW for sixteen years in Siberia, unable to send home any sign of life. A decade later, being officially declared dead, his name was carved on the fallen heroes’ memorial of his village. Grandfather’s eventual arrival home was as unceremonious as his departure. Opening the door, grandmother saw a disheveled beggar insisting, “I’m your husband.” She fainted. As a boy I heard many fascinating stories from him. There was a favorite one in which a brave soldier, compelled by conscience, fed his enemy and certainly influenced the outcome of the War. Today, when armed conflicts are raging again, remembering this unknown hero seems appropriate. The brutality of World War I cannot be overemphasized. Modem weapons used with outdated military strategies meant hand-to-hand combat for millions of soldiers with staggering numbers of wounded and dead. The War soon turned into a trench warfare, freezing the lines between huge armies for years to come. It was a miserable experience to live in a dugout. The soldiers could not drain and clean the trench after every shower, which turned it into a putrid sewer of floating garbage and human waste. Standing in filthy water and mud in ordinary leather boots caused painful foot infections. Such an environment was good only for the rat population. If life inside the trench was inhumane it was much worse on the outside. The ditches of the adversarial armies, which ran parallel to each other, were separated only by a few hundred feet. They were the feared no man’s land, the killing field where most of the mutual butchering took place. Sharpshooters, hiding behind sandbags watched the opposite side and an accidentally raised arm or head immediately triggered a rain of bullets. The Russian Imperial Forces were rich in manpower but poor in equipment. Their high command, led by the Tsar himself, gave no value to human lives as they tried to overrun enemy trenches. In the wee hours, suddenly thousands of Russians would climb out from the relative safety of their ditches and with guns in hand would try to race across the divide before being hit. Behind them was the second row of attackers without guns. They had to take their weapons from fallen comrades and run a few steps before death arrived. Then came the third, the fourth, and often a tenth unarmed line of humanity. Such senseless attacks turned into a sheer extermination that lasted for hours. There was no need for aiming on the Austro- Hungarian side; just shoot toward the defenseless approaching Russians. The only time the shooting stopped was when guns got red hot from the constant firing. The bloody strip was covered Continued on page 4
