Aid to the Church in Need: Sermon to mark the 90th birthday of Father Werenfried van Straaten

Sermon to mark the 90th birthday of Father Werenfried van Straaten

Posted by Information Report on 31/1/2003, 11:22 am
Board Administrator

Address by Bishop Kamphaus
The adventure that is God, the adventure that is man
Sermon to mark the 90th birthday of Father Werenfried van Straaten
17 January 2003, Limburg Cathedral
"Before religion got boring...". So runs the title of a book on the history of the Desert Fathers, and especially on St Anthony, the Father of Monasticism, whose memorial we celebrate today. "Before religion got boring...". That must surely have been a long time ago, many people will think. Religion exciting? Who would believe it? Not a few "servants of religion" are currently engaged in trying to spice it up, to "stage" religious events. This is fatal. It is not a matter of enlivening religion but of living it. Then the spell of boredom is indeed broken, then things do become exciting. Then the adventure that is God, the adventure that is man, can truly begin.
I
St Anthony, the Father of Monasticism entered into the adventure of God. With the conversion of Constantine the period of persecution of the Early Church was over, and many thrust themselves forward into the various major and minor sinecures of the new state Church - the fair-weather Christians! St Anthony opted for the desert. Thousands followed his example. They bore witness by their whole lives to the fact that Christianity is the opposite of power and pomp, of corruptibility and career.
The desert, the Arabs say, is the garden where God goes walking. It is the place of ultimate questions. If we are to find out the truth about our own lives, then the outside voices must be silenced. And our life is laid bare before God. For forty years the people of God wandered through the desert. And before Jesus began his public ministry he spent forty days in the desert. The adventure of God.
Father Werenfried took a different path, the adventure of trust in God in the midst of this world. He trusted not merely in his own creative capacities, his wealth of ideas and inspirations; he placed his faith in the capacities of God. For him they were the reality. What God asks, I will venture.
Many people still remember the time after the Second World War. Germany was on her knees, Holland and Belgium were only slowly recovering. How can enemies become friends again? "With bacon you can catch mice", runs an old German saying. With bacon I can reconcile enemies, thought Father Werenfried. He collected bacon in Holland and Belgium for the suffering enemies of the Second World War. It did not happen without some tensions, indeed conflicts. Many asked, Why is he helping our old enemy? Father Werenfried asked, Well, why not? What God asks, I will venture. God - not some object inside our churches, but the one "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17: 28). And now is the time to run through all the things that became possible because God had become the reality of life:
- Aid to the Church in Need
- the Chapel Trucks,
- the Building Order with its thousands of Building Companions,
- the extension of ACN's aid to Latin America, Africa and Asia.
What God asks, I will venture. When one really entrusts oneself to Him, when one really begins to work with God, then the great adventure begins. No trace of boredom is left. Now things get exciting.
At this point the problem we face in the Church today becomes clear. We do not deny God, but at the same time we don't really take him seriously. Our God is not someone to be feared, nor to be loved either. Anyone does try to do so is quickly tagged with the label of fundamentalist. And so we talk and explain away every mortal thing, but the message scarcely gets through any longer as to what we truly owe the world. It is the adventure that is God.
II
The adventure that is man. God himself embarked on this adventure. He quite literally got inside our skin. We often say, I wouldn't like to be in your skin. God could have said that too; he had every reason to say so. But he did not. He is inside our skin. "God has united himself in Christ with each human being individually", the last Council states. Where God has set his hope, I will venture. God has set his hope in man. So we cannot let him go to the devil. And that means that we are called to the adventure that is man, and above all to our fellow men in need.
Far too many people say: What can the State do for us, what can the Church do for us? How many ask what they can do for the Church, and through the Church for other people? After all, we are not simply here for our own self-realisation, not even for the self-realisation of the Church. We cannot simply expend the best of our strength and energy and optimism on ourselves alone. We must use this for others. That soon kills the boredom, and makes life exciting. The adventure of man! Our country needs decisive and converted Christians every bit as urgently as it needs investors to revitalize the economy.
*
"Before religion got boring...". The adventure that is God - in the desert. All his life long Father Werenfried got so many things moving. An active and moving life story! And now he is in a wheelchair, trapped there, scarcely able to move any more; he can no longer preach as he so loved to do. So maybe God has drawn him into the desert for a new kind of encounter? But this is no tourist trip. For we ourselves cannot choose the time of our stay in the desert. We are led into it. Only with trust in God's guiding hand can this zone of silence and inner solitude be sustained. This is an entirely individual form of the "Mirror" - the reflection of God's love. "Suffer me to come to Thee", we prayed as children. For suffering is one of the faces of love.
"Before religion got boring..." Was that so long ago then? Things get exciting when people dare to embark upon the adventure that is God - and in God's name upon the adventure that is man.

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