A Marian Weekend

Together with the Points-Coeur/Offenes Herz/Heart's Home family all over the world, on the 17th of September we made a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine in our country of mission with our community and our friends as a way of saying thank you to Our Lady for her guidance and protection and to entrust the coming year to her intercession. 

It was during the rosary that Fr. Thierry received the intuition to begin Heart's Home and thus we have a special devotion to our lady--especially our Patroness Our Lady of Compassion, or Our Lady of Sorrows. 

The Saturday following the Feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows, we made a <modern> pilgrimage to Maria Lanzendorf, the Austrian shrine to the Schmerzhaften Muttergottes. The pilgrimage church is actually a Franciscan cloister (with a tiny community of two friars and one nun running the cloister) with a beautiful church, inside of which is enclosed another chapel (much like how the Francis of Assisi's Portiuncula is enclosed in the church in Assisi) holding the shrine to the Austrian Pieta, an adjoining cloister a huge garden and yard, a sick house (where the sick friars used to be taken and cared for in order not to infect the others), and a Mount Calvary which entails quite a unique story. 

Fr. Jacques, Alina, and I were accompanied by Monika, Roberta, Liz, and Raphael. When I say <modern> pilgrimage, I mean that we took the U-bahn to the bus station, then the bus a half an hour until it was more or less outside of the city grid, where we  got off and then walked a half an hour until we arrived at the Church. 

We first had a tour through the Church during which we learned amazing things about the Church that we had no idea of before, and which made our pilgrimage there even more meaningful...as you will see when I explain more about the church...then we celebrated the mass in the shrine chapel, had an hour of adoration, and then had a picnic in the huge garden behind the cloister. It was a lovely afternoon spent together. 

he shrine is one of the oldest in Austria, most of the early history surrounding which is speculation, some of which is legend, and some of which is supported by evidence. All of which is fascinating and made our pilgrimage there so much more interesting. 

THE LEGEND:

The place where the inner shrine stands was already visited in 70, 71, or 77 AD by St. Luke the Apostle who preached the gospel to the people here. There is supposedly a rock buried beneath the chapel on which it is stated. 

In 174 AD, Marc Aurels build a little chapel on the site after winning a battle in the Roman war against the Marcomanni. 

Then in 508, the legend of the church intersects Arthurian legend, for King Arthur is said to have erected a chapel in honor of St. Luke on the site. 

In 791, Charlemagne defeated the Huns and re-erected the sanctuary saying that Our Lady of Sorrows had always directed his hand and Charlemagne himself is said to have brought the picture of Our Lady of Sorrows that he always had with him to the chapel and left it there to instate a shrine. 

In 1191 it is said that Archduke Leopold V, the Virtuous, came to the shrine after winning a bloody battle, his tunic soaked in blood and he lay his tunic, his sword, and its sheath in from of the picture of Our Lady of Sorrows. His tunic, so bloody from the war, had two red sections, with a white, untainted section in the middle and this tunic, according to legend, is the origin of the Austrian flag. 

THE HISTORY:

The first authentic, historical date was that in 1145, the church that was destroyed by enemies on this site, was reconstructed and from the year 1267 on, there was a small chapel here where the mass was celebrated daily and in 1418, Maria Lanzendorf was instated as a place of pilgrimage. 

In 1529, the chapel was during the Turkish invasion. 

Priests and Pilgrims from Vienna and surrounding area came in the following years to celebrate mass at this place, and it was especially a place of refuge during the time of the plague in 1679. But in 1683, the chapel was once again beseiged by the Turks and since then the gothic holy picture of Our Lady of Sorrows was stolen and not seen again. Directly after driving the Turks out, a sculptor fashioned a pieta of Our Lady of Sorrows which now sits in the pilgrimage chapel. A third order Franciscan was put in charge of keeping the chapel in order, but with the large number of pilgrims visiting the shrine and the large amount of work that would fall on one person, in 1696 Emperor Leopold I and his wife Maria Theresia ordered a cloister to be built on the grounds with a large church that would encapsulate the existing shrine. They then gave the cloister to the Franciscans from Vienna and entrusted to them the upkeep of the shrine. And since then the pilgrimage shrine has had close ties with the royal family up until the present day. 

The Mount Calvary which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of is a unique testament to Baroque piety and has a funny story. It is an artificially created hill with a chapel and grotto built into it, and following the ascent up the hill are the statues depicting the way of the cross with the crucifixion obviously crowning the mountain (quite a site in a quaint little austrian town). There was a Francsican brother named Felix who made a beautiful and deeply impacting trip to the holy land and upon his return in 1699, began to plan the erection of Mount Calvary which was particularly endorsed by Emporess Maria-Theresia who had a deeply spiritual experience while climbing the Holy Stairs on her knees in Rome. 

Here we are after the pilgrimage preparing for our picnic!

Monika, Fr. Jacques, and Liz

Roberta, Me, and Alina

Cleaning up after the picnic

The next day after the pilgrimage, I attended Sunday mass at Stephansdom because the city was celebrating the largest Catholic feast day of Austria, <Maria-Namen-Feier>. It is usually held in the Wiener Stadthalle to hold the thousands of people that come from all over the world to pray the rosary, celebrate the mass with the Cardinal, Bishops, Papal Nuncio, and believing Austrian government officials and then walk in procession through the first district from the Cathedral to the Statue erected in honor of Maria after the defeat of the Turks in 1683. 

The feast day is particularly significant in Austria for two reasons:

1. It is a celebration of the feast day of the Holy Name of Mary which was instated by Pope Innocent XI in thanksgiving for Mary's intercession and aid in the Battle of Vienna (the leader of the European troops had entrusted his men to the Blessed Virgin) in which Christian Europe defeated the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire and therefore saved Europe from the would-be subsequent Turkish invasion. 

2. It is a celebration of thanksgiving for Mary's aid in the miracle of Austria's liberation from Russian occupation through a Rosary Crusade led by a Franciscan priest P. Peter Pavlicek after World War II. Five years after WWII was over, Franciscan friar Peter Pavlicek conceived the idea to arrange a nightly Light of Procession, praying for the intention of the Soviet withdrawal. He was sure that the problem of Austria's liberation from the Soviets might be and had to be entrusted to the Blessed Virgin. He wrote to chancellor Raab that, "We can only switch from 'niet' to 'ja' through Mary's support!" Tens of thousands of people marched along the Ringstrasse holding candles and praying rosaries. The outstanding Austrian politicians of the time took part in the procession--including Chancellor Leopold Figl, and leader of the Austrian People's Party Mr. Juilius Raab. It was Chancellor Figl who said to P. Peter before the organized procession, "Peter, for my fatherland, it is worth it for me that we pray even if only you and I make the circuit and plead. We will not be freed otherwise!" Contrary to what they thought in face of all the ridicule and scorn, 15,000 people took party in the procession  and people have added to this number reaching upwards of 80,000 some years after. On April 13th of that year (the feast of Fatima, which played a huge role in P. Peter's leadership of the procession in Austria) the Soviet's unexpectedly changed their minds and having received generous indemnity, they agreed to leave Austria. A treaty of withdrawal of all the Soviet occupational troops from Austria was signed in May and in October the last Red Army soldier left Austria. The bells in all Austrian churches began to toll. To mark the thanksgiving they were ringing for three days and nights. Chancellor Raab himself lead the thanksgiving prayer on Saptember 12th during the Maria-Namens-Feier that year, which he concluded with <We are free! Thanks to you, Holy Mary!>

I just love the little Missionaries of Charity--they are so easy to spot wherever they go and immediately bring such joy to my heart! 

Anatomy of Compassion

The highlight of last Sunday came in the late afternoon...we went to Aberu's to celebrate the 3rd birthday of Alexander! Normally she celebrates the children's birthdays only with their little, immediate family (birthdays aren't a normal thing to celebrate in Ethiopia, but she doesn't want the kids to feel left out in Austrian society). Yet, Aberu said that Alexander was expecting us and she wanted to include us in the celebration. We had a great time singing, opening presents, eating cake, playing, hearing Nahum preform his new Mozart pieces, and just having time to catch up with Aberu because we haven't seen her since the start of school--over two weeks now! Solomon, her husband, was also there and it was good to see him and Aberu getting along well enough, him taking care of the kids, playing with them, taking pictures, etc. Everyone was in good spirits to celebrate the special day, Alexander most of all! 

As a little treat to us (even though its not our birthday), Aberu prepared traditional Ethiopian coffee for us after celebrating and eating cake. 

this is how she warms the beans to create the coffee aroma. She does't have the correct grinder in order to actually make coffee out of these authentic Ethiopian coffee beans, but she cooks them to get the aroma, and then prepares the coffee from Austrian beans. 

you sit on the floor around this mat. you drink out of these little cups. each time you have coffee together, it involves three rounds-once you finish the coffee (with loads of sugar but never milk) in your little cup, the hostess begins brewing the coffee again and makes another round. The third round is the final, and it is for good luck....so you never pass up the third cup. thankfully they're little, because as Aberu and Soloman explained, you end up having coffee several times throughout the day, either with you as host, or going to someone else and you end up having 20 or so little cups of coffee each day :) 

the birthday boy hiding from the camera!!!

aberu preparing the coffee and explaining as she goes. 

the pictures are blurry because she usually keeps all the windows and shades closed in her house (no idea why), so it is always very dark. 

still hiding.

round three

noise makers make birthdays complete. or you insane. 

lovely aberu

making a wish after be blew out the candles. 

I stand in awe of the way the Lord has worked in our lives in the last 8 months--and I can't believe we have known Aberu and her beautiful boys already for 8 months!! She has really become a dear friend and calls us to get together as much as we call her. 


Sometimes we go to her house to visit, take the kids to the park or just play in the living rooms, and she always prepares traditional Ethiopian dishes when we visit-- her traditional Ethiopian  <bread> which is more like a bubbly crepe filled with hot meat sauce (yes....I haven't broken the news to her that I am a vegetarian so once a month I eat some meat...) 

this is her preparing the food...

and the boys pretending I am a jungle gym 

and heading out to the real jungle gym at the park...

and some good old reading....

which obviously Lukas is not too fond of, but Nahum really enjoys! This happened to be a book of letters written by Mozart to his family when he was young. Nahum is really interested in Mozart. 

Sometimes we pick a time and place to meet and we spend the afternoon in one of Vienna's wonderful parks. On a sunny Sunday afternoon several weeks ago, we spent the afternoon in Stadtpark playing on the huggge jungle gyms and of course, they're favorite, soccer. 

Then sometimes they come to our house. A month or so ago, we met in the afternoon in a park that is close to us (Augarten) and after hours of playing we headed back to our house and had dinner. But it wasn't just Aberu and the boys and us, but the two daughters of Tomoko (the violin player), Reiko and Keiko came over as well because Tomoko had a concert and needed a babysitter at the last minute. All nine of us had a wonderful time eating dinner and then playing at our house. It was so interesting to see the worlds of Aberu and Tomoko intersecting in our living room. What a joy to bring our friends together!  

In the last 8 months of growing and friendship and love with Aberu things have surely changed. Her hugs are different--they are no longer formal and short, but long and tight and conveying true gratitude and love, There is this mask of politeness (which everyone of course has in the beginning) that has been shed and she has let us into her heart and her life with such a trust and gentleness. She asks me to give my parents a "<hello> from her when I talk with them (Oh yeah, mom and dad...forgot that last time!), and shares with me her life, her problems with the kids, her grocery store list, her laundry issues with me like we have been friends for the longest time. 


But I must tell you...something happened this summer and I must share it with you. Because it is touching, and beautiful, and deep, and really...a gift. I learned the difference between sympathy and compassion. 


Back when Renee was here (when she first arrived), I visited Aberu like I had been doing much more especially in the absence of Alina and Fr. Jacques. She called me up and asked me if I had free time one afternoon--and I did, so I went for a visit. The boys were getting ready to go to a birthday party with their dad when I arrived, so it turned out that I spent a quite and peaceful afternoon with Aberu and Alexander at home. I think she arranged it that way because she needed a rest, but she doesn't like to be alone. A little less chaos, but not silence. 
She was going through a really difficult time--she was stressed...not sleeping much...and with four boys at home with nothing to do during the summer but be living whirlwinds of chaos like normal energy-filled young boys...she had little time to relax or catch her breath. We sat on the couch that afternoon in her dark living room with Alexander jumping from her lap to mine and back and forth. At first there was the polite chatting--the weather, the latest news, etc. Alexander fell asleep as we were talking and our conversation kept going in circles, for every time I would really ask her about herself and how she was doing, she would change the subject back to me or to Alina. I could see in her strained and darkly encircled eyes that there was a weight she was carrying, that she didn't want to share because she didn't want to have to think about it, to acknowledge that it was there. Whenever she turned the conversation to anything beside herself, she was running, escaping the revelation of this weight, and instead carrying it alone. As she was ignoring it, I couldn't, and eventually instead of letting the conversation run in superficial circles, we just sat in silence. It was in fact a relief, because the chatting was more or less fake--noise, distraction to keep her from exploding under the weight of everything in her heart. Since the silence kept finding us, we just let it settle. For the first time she looked me in the eyes, completely silent, and just let herself be. The silence was welcomed because in it there was nothing hidden, but nothing needed to be spoken. For her, what was best was not to talk, even about the important things. But to just be. And that being could be peaceful because she was in that silence with another. 
The silence then gave her the strength and courage to face the weight, to take it off of her shoulders, and ask to share it with me. She took a breath and told me how hard it is to be alone. 
To live with her husband and have him there to help sometimes with the kids, but ultimately to be alone. I asked her what it was like before--Were they happy together? What was it like when they were first married? Or was it always so difficult?
In the beginning it was happy. She was his all. When they came to Austria, they didn't have many friends and she was his other half, his single support. Then as he started making friends in his work environment and in german courses, he started staying later and later after work, or doing things on the weekends which took his time away from the family more and more. She wanted him to be happy, so she let him do what he pleased....she just happened to not be included. One New Year's, he was in Rome with friends for two weeks and when he came back, Aberu had news--she was pregnant. WIth Alexander! He started throwing things, yelling, "<Why?, What have you done? Do you want to ruin me, to kill me? Why did you do this? I can't take another one!> 
As she was sharing her outward strong composure remained the same, but when I looked into her eyes I could see her reliving this instant, the instant in which the immense sadness and heartbreak tossed her and turned her in its waves leaving her disoriented and raw. She said that in that moment her heart was broken so completely that she didn't think it would ever heal. She had wept and had fallen to the floor in despair, only to have to get back to her feet again to continue living in this broken relationship, to care for her children, especially the little one now living in her womb. She couldn't give up. She and her husband from this point on didn't talk anymore unless they were communicating about the kids. They have completely separate lives, while still living together because Aberu wants the kids to be with their father and she couldn't work to support herself with the kids until right now because the children weren't all in school. Now Alexander is going to Kindergarten as well and she can search for work. But only now, as she explained to me, had she enough courage to say to Solomon, <I am not your cleaning lady or cook. I am the mother of your children and I am your wife. But most of all I am a human being with worth. But you broke me and I cannot live like this anymore. We must split.> So he is looking for an apartment. 
A little later on in the visit we were talking about her finding work and what it will be like for her to work. She said, <You know, I'm afraid of that too. I am afraid of being with him any longer and I am afraid of splitting completely from him. I am afraid I'll be too tired, not have the time I want for my kids. I am afraid Ill be more alone than I already am and that he won't be there to fall back on sometimes when I need a rest from the boys.> But then she said, <These are just things I have to accept and I know I will make it through. God will help me.>


You know....it was the FIRST time in my experience with Aberu, in our friendship, that I understood COMPASSION. There is a difference between sympathy in seeing the complete misery and ugliness of a situation, and compassion in which you are given the grace to enter in--not only by God, but by the other person. Something changed in this afternoon and I don't exactly know how to describe it, but it is something that was given to me completely unexpected and unable to be earned. And she gave it to me today--the ability to be WITH her. For the first time, my heart broke with hers. 
Reflecting on our time together on my U-bahn ride back to the 2. district I realized it had alot to do with the silence we shared. And in this moment I also understood JUST BEING THERE. She let me suffer with her, for the first time. 


I had to leave to go to adoration and meet Renee after several hours of visiting with her, and she didn't want to let me leave because she said, when she is alone and cannot do housework, etc. because the kids are sleeping or she is too exhausted, all she can do is sit and her mind doesn't stop. She said, <You know, with you here, I don't have to think of all the things I don't want to think about. When I'm alone, I have to, I can't help it. There is no relief from the pain.> 


All of this ruminated in my heart and head in adoration in Stephansdom amid the noise of the renovation work on the Cathedral, the street breakdancers in the square outside the church, the clapping, the singing, and the Colbie Callait playing from someones radio outside and making my adoration hour all "<Bubbly>. I needed this time because for the first time my heart was hanging with hers. She let me carry something with her--something that was too heavy for both of us, and that I needed to give to HIM. The silence (at least my own silence....) of kneeling in adoration and staring at the little white host saying--<I can't do anything>--was profound. I had no words to even explain the pain of Aberu I was carrying as I sat before Him. My silence in adoration was the silence of sitting with Aberu--there were no words to say. just pain. just communion. and HOPE. Before both Aberu and the Eucharist I was helpless. Before both I was silent. Before both I was in awe at the humility and beauty that were before me. Yet it was the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that in the end made sense of it all. All our hopelessness in helping ourselves, healing and fixing one another, had recourse to prayer. All I could do was pray. The greatest and most powerful thing I could do was to pray. 

brilliant

this is brilliant. 

does anyone have Obama's email address? 

or the email addresses of the presidential candidates?? 

this should be required reading or watching. 

watch the video here....the introduction to his speech gives some remarkable information that help you recognize the importance of the Pope getting to speak to the German Bundestag. 

Reichstag Building, Berlin
Thursday, 22 September 2011

The Listening Heart
Reflections on the Foundations of Law

Mr President of the Federal Republic,
Mr President of the Bundestag,
Madam Chancellor,
Madam President of the Bundesrat,
Ladies and Gentlemen Members of the House,

It is an honour and a joy for me to speak before this distinguished house, before the Parliament of my native Germany, that meets here as a democratically elected representation of the people, in order to work for the good of the Federal Republic of Germany. I should like to thank the President of the Bundestag both for his invitation to deliver this address and for the kind words of greeting and appreciation with which he has welcomed me. At this moment I turn to you, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, not least as your fellow-countryman who for all his life has been conscious of close links to his origins, and has followed the affairs of his native Germany with keen interest. But the invitation to give this address was extended to me as Pope, as the Bishop of Rome, who bears the highest responsibility for Catholic Christianity. In issuing this invitation you are acknowledging the role that the Holy See plays as a partner within the community of peoples and states. Setting out from this international responsibility that I hold, I should like to propose to you some thoughts on the foundations of a free state of law.

Allow me to begin my reflections on the foundations of law [Recht] with a brief story from sacred Scripture. In the First Book of the Kings, it is recounted that God invited the young King Solomon, on his accession to the throne, to make a request. What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success – wealth – long life – destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead, he asks for a listening heart so that he may govern God's people, and discern between good and evil (cf. 1 Kg 3:9). Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish the fundamental preconditions for peace. Naturally a politician will seek success, without which he would have no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right. Success can also be seductive and thus can open up the path towards the falsification of what is right, towards the destruction of justice. "Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?", as Saint Augustine once said. We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty spectre. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right – a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss. To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency. Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. He can, so to speak, make human beings and he can deny them their humanity. How do we recognize what is right? How can we discern between good and evil, between what is truly right and what may appear right? Even now, Solomon's request remains the decisive issue facing politicians and politics today.

For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough: everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws. In the third century, the great theologian Origen provided the following explanation for the resistance of Christians to certain legal systems: "Suppose that a man were living among the Scythians, whose laws are contrary to the divine law, and was compelled to live among them ... such a man for the sake of the true law, though illegal among the Scythians, would rightly form associations with like-minded people contrary to the laws of the Scythians."[1]

This conviction was what motivated resistance movements to act against the Nazi regime and other totalitarian regimes, thereby doing a great service to justice and to humanity as a whole. For these people, it was indisputably evident that the law in force was actually unlawful. Yet when it comes to the decisions of a democratic politician, the question of what now corresponds to the law of truth, what is actually right and may be enacted as law, is less obvious. In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.

How do we recognize what is right? In history, systems of law have almost always been based on religion: decisions regarding what was to be lawful among men were taken with reference to the divinity. Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law – and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God. Christian theologians thereby aligned themselves with a philosophical and juridical movement that began to take shape in the second century B.C. In the first half of that century, the social natural law developed by the Stoic philosophers came into contact with leading teachers of Roman Law.[2] Through this encounter, the juridical culture of the West was born, which was and is of key significance for the juridical culture of mankind. This pre-Christian marriage between law and philosophy opened up the path that led via the Christian Middle Ages and the juridical developments of the Age of Enlightenment all the way to the Declaration of Human Rights and to our German Basic Law of 1949, with which our nation committed itself to "inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, and of peace and justice in the world".

For the development of law and for the development of humanity, it was highly significant that Christian theologians aligned themselves against the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of philosophy, and that they acknowledged reason and nature in their interrelation as the universally valid source of law. This step had already been taken by Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans, when he said: "When Gentiles who have not the Law [the Torah of Israel] do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves ... they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness ..." (Rom 2:14f.). Here we see the two fundamental concepts of nature and conscience, where conscience is nothing other than Solomon's listening heart, reason that is open to the language of being. If this seemed to offer a clear explanation of the foundations of legislation up to the time of the Enlightenment, up to the time of the Declaration on Human Rights after the Second World War and the framing of our Basic Law, there has been a dramatic shift in the situation in the last half-century. The idea of natural law is today viewed as a specifically Catholic doctrine, not worth bringing into the discussion in a non-Catholic environment, so that one feels almost ashamed even to mention the term. Let me outline briefly how this situation arose. Fundamentally it is because of the idea that an unbridgeable gulf exists between "is" and "ought". An "ought" can never follow from an "is", because the two are situated on completely different planes. The reason for this is that in the meantime, the positivist understanding of nature has come to be almost universally accepted. If nature – in the words of Hans Kelsen – is viewed as "an aggregate of objective data linked together in terms of cause and effect", then indeed no ethical indication of any kind can be derived from it.[3] A positivist conception of nature as purely functional, as the natural sciences consider it to be, is incapable of producing any bridge to ethics and law, but once again yields only functional answers. The same also applies to reason, according to the positivist understanding that is widely held to be the only genuinely scientific one. Anything that is not verifiable or falsifiable, according to this understanding, does not belong to the realm of reason strictly understood. Hence ethics and religion must be assigned to the subjective field, and they remain extraneous to the realm of reason in the strict sense of the word. Where positivist reason dominates the field to the exclusion of all else – and that is broadly the case in our public mindset – then the classical sources of knowledge for ethics and law are excluded. This is a dramatic situation which affects everyone, and on which a public debate is necessary. Indeed, an essential goal of this address is to issue an urgent invitation to launch one.

The positivist approach to nature and reason, the positivist world view in general, is a most important dimension of human knowledge and capacity that we may in no way dispense with. But in and of itself it is not a sufficient culture corresponding to the full breadth of the human condition. Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity. I say this with Europe specifically in mind, where there are concerted efforts to recognize only positivism as a common culture and a common basis for law-making, reducing all the other insights and values of our culture to the level of subculture, with the result that Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum. In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God's wide world. And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world, we are still covertly drawing upon God's raw materials, which we refashion into our own products. The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this.

But how are we to do this? How do we find our way out into the wide world, into the big picture? How can reason rediscover its true greatness, without being sidetracked into irrationality? How can nature reassert itself in its true depth, with all its demands, with all its directives? I would like to recall one of the developments in recent political history, hoping that I will neither be misunderstood, nor provoke too many one-sided polemics. I would say that the emergence of the ecological movement in German politics since the 1970s, while it has not exactly flung open the windows, nevertheless was and continues to be a cry for fresh air which must not be ignored or pushed aside, just because too much of it is seen to be irrational. Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives. In saying this, I am clearly not promoting any particular political party – nothing could be further from my mind. If something is wrong in our relationship with reality, then we must all reflect seriously on the whole situation and we are all prompted to question the very foundations of our culture. Allow me to dwell a little longer on this point. The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

Let us come back to the fundamental concepts of nature and reason, from which we set out. The great proponent of legal positivism, Kelsen, at the age of 84 – in 1965 – abandoned the dualism of "is" and "ought". (I find it comforting that rational thought is evidently still possible at the age of 84!) Previously he had said that norms can only come from the will. Nature therefore could only contain norms, he adds, if a will had put them there. But this, he says, would presuppose a Creator God, whose will had entered into nature. "Any attempt to discuss the truth of this belief is utterly futile", he observed.[4] Is it really? – I find myself asking. Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?

At this point Europe's cultural heritage ought to come to our assistance. The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people's responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel's monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man's responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.

As he assumed the mantle of office, the young King Solomon was invited to make a request. How would it be if we, the law-makers of today, were invited to make a request? What would we ask for? I think that, even today, there is ultimately nothing else we could wish for but a listening heart – the capacity to discern between good and evil, and thus to establish true law, to serve justice and peace. I thank you for your attention!

leave

"

< Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once. 

I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.">

 -Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

i had a huge breakthrough this month. 

i love what i live here. 

and from the first day up and through today it has involved LEAVING.

yesterday Alina and I spent the afternoon with Ingar in her garden. Ingar is a 76 year-old woman whom we met by chance outside of mass at a church we don't normally go to. (the next blog post will be about her :) We had a little snack, watched her favorite soap opera, cooked, raked leaves, soaked up some sun, and talked. Then we hurried home to shower and change and go to Tomoko's concert in Peterskirche. She put on a  benefit concert for the Missionaries of Charity in Vienna. It was stunning. Ingar met us at the concert, but when she got there she was, in her words, KAPUT and was practically falling asleep throughout the concert, so when she let early to go home, I left with her and accompanied her home to make sure she made it ok (she has previously had accidents falling asleep behind the wheel). So after taking her home, I had the half-hour ride/walk back to thank God for asking me to leave. grow. experience. change. and for being with me in all the beauty and love along the way. 

sorry its a little hard to see, but this is Tomoko in Peterskirche

Ingar and Alina watching "Sturm von Liebe' (storm of love)