Rest a while

Thanks to the book Schindler’s Ark, by Australian author Thomas Keneally and the consequent film Schindler’s List, the name Oskar Schindler became known to millions of people around the world.

Schindler was a German industrialist.

During World War II, he saved over a thousand Polish Jews from concentration camps. As the war ended, the Germans pulled out of Poland, and the people awaited the arrival of the Russians.

Just before the Russians arrived, Schindler too decided to flee westwards.

When his Jewish workers, now free, heard he was leaving, they got together to see how they could express their gratitude to him.

All that was to hand to make a gift was base metal.

Then one of them suggested something better. He opened his mouth to show his gold bridgework and said for his fellow workers to take the bridgework.

At first, they refused the man’s offer, but he insisted.

So, he had his bridgework extracted by a prisoner who had once been a dentist in Cracow.

A jeweller among them melted the gold down and fashioned a ring out of it.

On the inner circle of the ring, they inscribed these words from the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud: “The one who saves a single life, saves the entire world.”

It was a deeply moving gesture of gratitude.

That is one of the marvellous things about gratitude – it makes us want to give something back.

There is a French proverb, “La reconnaissance est la memoire du coeur” – ‘Gratitude is the memory of the heart’. But then someone might say that it was the least they could do since they owed their lives to Schindler.

The ten lepers in the Gospel also owed their lives to Jesus; yet only one of them came back to thank him!

Paul uses a very colourful image when he writes, “fan into a flame the gift that God gave you.”

I was reminded immediately of the old Irish custom which is called grieshog.

Grieshog, is the process of burying warm coals in ashes at night to preserve the fire for the following day. Instead of cleaning out the hearth, people preserved the day’s glowing coals under beds of ash overnight to have a fast-starting new fire the next day.

In the morning, the householder brushed aside the ashes and added new fuel to the still-hot coals to stoke the fire up for the new day’s warmth and cooking

The primary concern, then, was that the fire from yesterday not be permitted to burn out completely at the end of the day.

On the contrary, the coals hidden from sight under heaps of ash through the long, dark night were tended carefully so that the fire could leap to life again at first light.

The old fire did not die, it kept its heat, in order to be prepared to light the new one.

It may well be an image and a custom worth our reflecting on; sit quietly for a time and consider, “what coals, hidden from immediate sight, might, when laid bare to the breath of God, ‘fan into a flame’!

The prophet Isaiah writes, “See it is I who have created the smith, who blows the fire of the coals, and produces an instrument fit for its purpose”. (Isaiah 54: 16)

There is a tendency among some religious people to think that God owes them something. They imagine God as being like a typical employer. If we do the work, then in justice our employer owes us our wages. God owes us a reward in heaven provided we serve faithfully on earth. This is a very understandable attitude. However, it introduces a mercenary attitude into what is supposed to be a love affair between God and us.

The fundamental truth about Christianity is that it is a religion of grace and not of merit. Salvation cannot be earned. We can never put God in our debt. But we don’t have to. God is our Original Parent. We are the Original Parent’s children. Children do not do the will of their parents for the sake of rewards. They do it because they want to try to return their love for them.

It comes as a great relief to discover that we don’t need to prove ourselves to God. We don’t have to earn God’s love. God loved us long before we could have done anything to deserve it. And God loves us even when we are sinners! Our responsibility is to love in return.

We don’t keep the commandments so that God will love us; we keep the commandments because God loves us.

The Good News might be summed up like this: a generous God wants disciples to serve out of love, not out of duty. Hence faith is not enough; we need love too. While faith makes all things possible, love makes all things easy. Salvation is a gift, not a wage.

Nikos Kazantzakis, the great Greek writer, tells a story of an elderly monk he once met on Mount Athos. (Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in north-eastern Greece and an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism).  Kazantzakis, still young and full of curiosity, was questioning this monk and asked him: “Do you still wrestle with the devil?” “No,” replied the old monk, “I used to, when I was younger, but now I’ve grown old and tired and the devil has grown old and tired with me.” “So,” Kazantzakis said, “your life is easy then? No more big struggles.” “Oh, no!” replied the old man, “now it’s worse. Now I wrestle with God!” “You wrestle with God,” replied Kazantzakis, rather surprised, “and you hope to win?” “No,” said the old monk, “I wrestle with God and I hope to lose!”

The illustration is by the artist Umberto Verdirosi, born in the Italian region of Piedmont.  He is self-taught, a free spirit. He defines himself as modern, not modernist. The title of this painting is “The Intruder”.