Magyar Egyház, 1975 (54. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1975-08-01 / 8-9. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 MAGYAR CHURCH BISHOP LÁSZLÓ RAVASZ IS DEAD A piece of sad news spread through the free world during recent weeks: Dr. László Ravasz, retired bishop of the Reformed Church in Hungary, died in Budapest, on the sixth of August. It was only a few years ago that his translation of the New Testament was published in the United States by the Bethlen Press, in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. Hungarians dispersed all over the world received with gratitude the Holy Writ newly translated into today’s modern, idiomatic, yet beautiful Hungarian, and awaited further publications from the creative retirement of the great bishop, such as a commentary on the Book of Psalms, on which he worked almost until his death. In the ninety-third year of his life, László Ravasz laid down his pen and obeyed his Lord’s home-beckoning word. On September 29 Bishop Ravasz would have been ninety-three years old. In the course of his long career, rich in successes, he served, in round figures, for twenty-five years as Bishop of the Danubian District. He was modern Hungarian Protestantism’s outstanding preacher. Between the two wars his delivered and printed sermons created a veritable school of followers. In trying times he administered his Church with an unerring touch. After the First World War his country was being rebuilt from ruins, and due to his leadership the Church also was rebuilt. Outstanding church leaders in the West also recognized and paid tribute to the wisdom of his ecclesiastical governance. He stayed in his watchman’s post in 1945 when the great postwar transformation started in Hungary. During this transformation, however, the Church’s survival and functioning became harder and harder. László Ravasz perceived clearly that the agreement between Church and State which was being drawn up would not insure freedom for the Church; the Church would lose her carefully guarded schools. Slowly the thought of resigning from his high office matured in him. In 1948, at a special General Assembly of the Danubian District, he presented his twenty-seventh, and last, bishop’s report and also tendered his resignation. He concluded his report with the following words: “Immense gratitude fills my heart for the privilege that I was permitted to serve. I thank every good word, help, warm look, prayer. I thank and bless every wound I received; I apologize to everyone whom I have offended, and with serene heart retire into the tranquility of my faithful and eternal Master.” After the resignation from his high position, and with ever increasing political pressure burdening the Church, so that in a short time unfettered preaching became impossible, László Ravasz resigned also from his ministry at the Calvin Square Church and moved to Leányfalu. At the end of 1956 when it seemed that the revolution would succeed, he returned to Budapest again, on the solicitation of his friends, to take over for a short time the governance of the District; but when the revolution was suppressed with Russian bayonettes, he returned for good into his Leányfalu quietude. He spent his ninetieth birthday in good strength, but after that his health started to weaken. He spent the last two years almost entirely in a hospital. He prepared himself for the last journey with the disposition of a Christian who acquisces in the will of God — and that is how he arrived to his Lord. He was buried next to his wife in the Farkasrét Cemetery in Buda. According to his wish, not the bishops of the imprisoned Reformed Church in Hungary officiated at his grave, but the minister of the small Leányfalu congregation, Sándor Borzsák, proclaimed the gospel of the resurrection at his coffin. More than a thousand mourners sang the words of the psalms and the burial hymns. On one of the wreaths which covered his catafalque the following words were visible: “With love and gratitude — the Reformed Hungarians of America.” Exiled Hungarians lost a great friend in László Ravasz. He regarded ministering to the Hungarians living outside the country’s borders—especially to those, greatest in number and most organized, living in the United States—of such importance that a few years ago in a letter to this writer he wrote the following: “Take care of the Hungarian Americans, because their mission for the life of our nation today is
