In this chapter the prisoners will help us to answer the call to every Christian...to become as Christ was, permeated with the love of God. As recorded in the Book of John, Jesus asked Peter twice, ‘Do you love Me with the love of God?’ Peter, having recently denied even knowing Christ, believing he was not capable of such complete devotion, could only answer, ‘Lord, I love you with brotherly love.’ Soon, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter did grow into this love and we find him preaching boldly in the streets of Jerusalem. Later, in his two letters to the churches, he used nine times the word ‘agapeo’, the Greek word for the love of God.
Many times in the last ten years I have returned in my mind to that three hours, early one morning in 1973, in the Ton’s kitchen, and tried to envision Elizabeth going from sleeplessness, near hysterics, to being at any moment ready to die...from being a hindrance to God’s call on her husband’s life, to becoming his most powerful ally. How deeply I have desired to have injected into my soul the strong spiritual medicine Elizabeth received, inspired teaching on the Finished Work of the Cross, and have read about and studied and gone often in my mind to Calvary...to that day, the sounds...the frenzied crowd as He was driven out through the Jaffa Gate, the hammer hitting, metal tearing flesh, the screams, the smells...of blood, of fear...the flies He could not remove from His back like raw meat...from His eyes. The world turning dark and all the untold unseen agony in the heart of God.
Paul knew the strength of this medicine. To the church at Corinth, the church with the greatest problems, he preached one thing only, ‘Christ and Him crucified’. Often, for me, corporate worship is a powerful tool for returning to those hours when the world got dark, but making up my own words, and with melody and rhythm and voice in the atmosphere of the focused concentration of worship, I have been brought to the place where I’m only repeating, ‘O my God, O my God,’ because really, after the spikes tear the flesh, we can hardly go there in our minds. It is too painful.
Recently Mel Gibson’s movie, ‘The Passion’, played in our city. Teams from our church handed out tracts and attempted to speak with those leaving the theatre, many still wiping tears from their eyes. One tract we used, ‘What You Didn’t See’, I had the privilege to write. ‘Yes’, the tract agreed, ‘the suffering you have just seen is beyond imagination’, then listed what they hadn’t seen...the spiritual suffering not dealt with in the film...Him being made to become sin. (1 Cor. 5:21) Being crushed by the Father. (Isa. 53:10, Psalm 88) Tasting death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:10)...and raised questions Elizabeth had heard that morning, ‘What, then, happened in the Father’s heart...and the darkness and the earthquake...what suffering to the Trinity do they reveal?’
But we become so easily familiar. It’s been twenty years since Peggy and I lived in that village at the end of fifty miles of sand road, cut off, under intense pressure, driven in desperation to lie flat on my face hour after hour meditating on a scripture...and life becomes more complicated as responsibilities increase and there are staff members to oversee and sermons to preach, and, and...we all have excuses. But I know, I have seen, a simple sermon about Martha in the kitchen and Mary before Jesus on her knees, become rivers of living water from meditating on that evening in Bethany.
To begin seeing, after one hour’s meditation, the colors in that room. To feel the overpowering gratitude, realizing their brother, Lazarus, was there, having been raised from the dead, which they also knew Jesus soon would be. To feel the urgency in that room, understanding a death warrant for Jesus had been issued...then to receive a prompting to find on a map Bethany’s location, not having realized it is on the outskirts of Jerusalem, that Jesus had traveled from Galilee, out of harms way, to the doorstep of his powerful enemies...and at any moment the door could be stove in, and they’re looking to kill Lazarus, too...and I am in that room, and feel the love like electricity...and every breath precious...and when I preach, those listening enter that room with me as rivers of living water are released. I know something of the value of meditation on the Word of God.
My portion was to be in contemplation of the Lord of glory in the secret place.
The prisoners have driven this lesson home, particularly Geoffrey Bull, the only Christian in a Chinese prison...three years of brainwashing, ‘struggle meetings’...they are experts at it. The measure of his victory, he knew, was the measure to which a consciousness of Jesus was a part of his every moment, was the determining factor of his every reaction. His experience, that of all the prisoners, has re-inspired me...should inspire all of us...to meditate on God’s Word. Bull’s fate...to go from the open expanses of Tibet to a tiny cell. “The horizons had drastically shortened now. The discipline of stillness was upon me in an unimagined way...My portion was to be in contemplation of the Lord of glory in the secret place; to gain a real experience in the contemplative content of the Christian faith, which the centuries have stolen from our western lives...Moving backwards through the centuries, I would come to that furnished room over the house in Jerusalem...the Master took the cup and held it in His hand. For a moment I could see it, lifted up in the flickering light. ‘I will drink no more’, He said...Then in the garden, I am vaguely conscious of his form in the more distant darkness...All I feel is that He is very low to the ground...‘O my Father’, he prays...I wait and wait, dumbfounded in the atmosphere of suffering...What sounds under the star-filled sky? Dropping of blood, flutter of angels’ wings; the very pain of God felt on earth and registered in heaven...suddenly I hear the metallic clink of steel...He leaves the garden, is tried. In my cell I could only see Him stumbling along there, up the steepening slopes of the skull-cliff...beyond the blood and the hurt of His enduring, I see a Man ascending there, up and into the hill of the Lord. He has come in the cleanness of His hands and innocence of His heart, spotless to the altar...my heart goes with Him...the minutes linger and then there comes the low swing of a hammer and it is very dreadful and I can hardly think any more. I have tasted of the meat of His table today and, as I lie down, the night creeps on and the darkness deepens till I can see no longer the tiny spiders in the corner of the walls...”1
That was his entire day...sixteen hours alone with the Lord.
He saw...the cup, Him stumbling, the flickering light
He heard...blood dropping, words spoken, the flutter of angles’ wings.
He felt...Him, low to the ground, was dumbfounded in the atmosphere of suffering.
He sensed...the very pain of God.
He would spend other entire days meditating on a single parable...applying, digesting, listening to Holy Spirit’s responses to his queries. But we are not in a single cell and so easily we become familiar, particularly with the Cross...it shrinks, becoming small enough even, for some, to become mere jewelry. We must fight a shrinking Cross, fight familiarity. Having no television in our home has helped tremendously in our fight...as does our log cabin, up a river, a half hour walk beyond the nearest house, no electricity. How did Bull put it? ‘To gain a real experience in the contemplative content of the Christian faith’. Wurmbrand tells us: “(In prison) the discipline of solitude and silence was learned by many of us for the first time…I knew why Jesus so often went to a solitary place to pray, went alone in the desert for forty days…I learned that silence brings forth the good, that it is the ladder to heaven in which one cares only for the first things and speaks only with Jesus Christ. He who keeps silent is the one who sings, ‘My heart is ready to praise Thee, O Lord’”2
God’s Love...Defined
God, the Bible tells us, is love. Since the only thing we take to heaven is our character, being conformed to the character of God, growing in His love is the most important thing that happens to us on earth. All spiritual growth is growth in this love. To obey Jesus’ command to, ‘Love your enemy’, the command absolutely unique to Christianity, setting it apart from every other religion, can only be accomplished with the Love of God...the kind Jesus asked Peter if he had for Him. Of course, we are to love our Christian brothers and sisters, but if we could somehow learn to love our enemies, then certainly we’d have no difficulty in loving them also.
Human love, or brotherly love, is the feeling of preference for one person or thing over another because of their worth or beauty. I love my child, my friends, my country...but God’s love is quite different. For one thing, it doesn’t depend on feelings. ‘God so loved the world He sent His Son...’ but The Father knew what unimaginable suffering that decision would entail. His essence, total selfless love, knowing it would promote the highest good of all mankind, compelled that decision, in spite of whatever feelings there must have been. God can’t command us to have good feelings about our enemies, but he can command us to do what He did...be motivated in every action toward them to promote their highest good. Sabina Wurmbrand’s definition of the love of God is excellent: “Living and dying to bring others to a higher life.”3
One of the most important teachers God has provided for Peggy and me about this most crucial subject has been Mihaela. Mihaela was one of the first clients in The House of Grace, our home for unwed mothers here in Romania. I picked her up at the station. Everything she owned was in a paper bag. Like many pregnant single women, she had been abandoned by the baby’s father, evicted by her parents and fired from her job. In Romania there is no job protection, almost no welfare for single mothers. Mihaela, discipled by Peggy and loved by our church family, grew so fast in the Lord that shortly after giving birth she joined our staff. For four years, until she was courted and wed by an American missionary, she was our emissary and ambassador in all of the tax, visa, child protection, and police offices, staffed often by disgruntled ex-communist bureaucrats. In the hundreds of dealings that we observed and heard about, Mihaela, regardless of treatment received, always left the other person a little higher on their path towards the kingdom of God...more encouraged, edified or comforted...whatever was called for. She was motivated in her every action toward, even the quite rude, regardless of her feelings towards them, to promote their highest good. And, invariably, over time, many hardened exteriors were melted by that love.
God’s Love...Learned
It seems impossible that Elizabeth, from just three hours of teaching, regardless of how inspired, could have been so transformed...from sleepless fear to such a burning love for God that she was ready to lay down her life for Him. The fact is, it was impossible. It required supernatural power from God. “This was a work and a power of God. It was a Divine power which came to my help. It wasn’t a human force. Before, I was nothing but a clod, full of nerves, emotion and fright...” We asked her, “But didn’t you ever have thoughts like this: ‘Is it really worth it to sacrifice for those Christians living mediocre lives, who are not close to God and those many pastors who compromised and cooperated with the communist regime? You had a family...you had a baby daughter. Perhaps you had been thinking of her future. You’re a mother like other women. How did you manage to ignore that fact and give more importance to your relationship with God?” “There was a moment when, while praying, I gave my daughter to God. I told Him: ‘God, if you want my life, I’ll give you my daughter! Please be a mother and a father to her!’ From then on I was a calmer person. Dora, my daughter, was in her cot, she was sleeping, she was fifteen months old. I left her room. I felt so happy. I found my husband in the kitchen; I went to him and I looked at the sky. It was so close. I felt the other world, the true, real world, was there so close to me. I was thinking that if I walked one step forward, I’d walk into eternity. I felt the divine eternity being so close to me. The material world around me just disappeared and I felt only the spiritual world. I was so happy! I was so close to God, I had forgotten about Dora, about her existence. I was about to give my life to God.”
It was a divine power which came to my help. There was a moment when I gave my daughter to God. I was so happy! I was about to give my life to God.
Oswald Chambers writes in ‘My Utmost for His Highest’...my favorite idea from all of his writings...that “to brood and dwell and meditate on the tragedy of the Cross releases the power of God into our lives...it conveys the energy of God to man.”4 Chambers has given us the principle and Elizabeth the proof. It’s up to each of us to decide if we’ll put it into practice. Chambers also writes that “the bedrock of the Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit.”5 Three hours of inspired teaching, dwelling on the tragedy of the Cross, opened Elizabeth’s eyes to just that...how fathomless was God’s love for her. Her love then, even for her precious daughter, from then on, when compared to the passion in her heart for God, according to the scripture, would appear as hate. “I gave my daughter to God. I told Him, ‘If You want my life, I’ll give You my daughter.’”
It was seeing that fathomless love that had cast out her fear, ‘Perfect love casts out fear’. It led to her complete and total surrender to God’s will for her life, ‘offering herself as a living sacrifice.’ “We didn’t feel the terror because we lived in God and through Him. We said, ‘If God asks our lives, we’ll give our lives to Him, because we know who we give them to. We are His, and therefore we give our lives to God.’” Joseph agreed:
The One Who died in our place has the right of property over us.
“If Jesus is God and He loved us and gave Himself for us, all our life has to be His. This is the fundamental decision we took, that the One Who died in our place has the right of property over us, that we are not our own and that we go where He wants us to and do what He wants.” Jesus is God and He did die for us. That’s the unbelievable drama of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The death of God...the death of God in our place. It stretches our brains just to say those words, ‘The death of God in our place.’ Those prisoners, whose acts of unconditional love were the most startling, invariably were the ones who saw the deepest into this unfathomable reality.
God suffered in the Lord Jesus, but He didn’t enter into death.
Nicolae Moldovanu loves...he loves God’s Word, he’s written many commentaries on the Bible; he loves to worship God with music, he’s composed hundreds of songs; is in love with his wife of sixty years...he writes and performs for her a new love song almost every day, and he loves his enemies. About those who caused him such suffering, to us he spoke only forgiveness. When we were guests in his home, though he was in his mid eighties, we felt he had the spirit of a twenty-year-old. Childlikeness, not taking oneself too seriously, is always the sign of a lover of God. One root of the depth of his love is his understanding that Christ suffered even beyond what the Father and Holy Spirit did...that He endured, alone, the summit of pain. “Whatever the Son suffered, the Father experienced in the same degree. The Father felt the suffering when Jesus cried out in pain: ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ But to be forsaken means that the Father didn’t enter death like His Son. So, God suffered in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Son, but He didn’t enter into death. That was the summit of pain when the Lord tasted death for us.”
Infinite Love
Infinite Love
It’s about what God did on the Cross of Golgotha. Here we see God’s infinite love for us.
Tudose, the man who equated the gift of salvation to a thousand shouts and a thousand hats thrown in the air, told us: “When we read Scriptures we see in what glorious way the Lord loved us and how much he loved us...it’s not about what we do but about what the Father did, for he gave His only Son for our sins. It’s about what God did on the Cross of Golgotha, which is God’s altar, where He brought His only Son, Who was the joy and delight of His soul. Here we see God’s infinite love for us.” ‘Infinite’ is the only adjective that doesn’t detract from God’s love. Even Chambers’ ‘fathomless’ diminishes the reality, limits the truth.
All other words, most rational thought
After ‘the dreadful slow swing of the hammer’
Are meager utterances in the shadow of the Cross
Which towers above
Stretching to the heavens
With waves of pain radiating out that shake the earth
Break the heart of the Father
Drive light from the world
Can I continue to think? Hardly
But, ‘Oh my God’ fits
I am reduced
I am seeing love, encountering a love the universe had never known
The Father’s Heart
Joni Earikson was never in a communist prison, but she is no less a prisoner than any of the others...she’s a prisoner of her own body. Since a swimming accident in 1967 she’s been confined to a wheelchair, almost completely paralyzed. She spends her life bringing hope and inspiration to other ‘prisoners of their own bodies’. In her presence you are stunned by the love and beauty emanating from her.
All other words, most rational thought
After ‘the dreadful slow swing of the hammer’
Are meager utterances in the shadow of the Cross
Which towers above
Stretching to the heavens
With waves of pain radiating out that shake the earth
Break the heart of the Father
Drive light from the world
Can I continue to think? Hardly
But, ‘Oh my God’ fits
I am reduced
I am seeing love, encountering a love the universe had never known
The Father’s Heart
Joni Earikson was never in a communist prison, but she is no less a prisoner than any of the others...she’s a prisoner of her own body. Since a swimming accident in 1967 she’s been confined to a wheelchair, almost completely paralyzed. She spends her life bringing hope and inspiration to other ‘prisoners of their own bodies’. In her presence you are stunned by the love and beauty emanating from her.
When Jesus suffered it is as if the Father said, ‘I’m punishing You for molesting that child!’
In a sermon preached in Bucuresti in 1994 she revealed a source of that love...she opened my eyes to a part of the Trinity’s payment I had never considered. “When Jesus suffered it is as if the Father said, ‘How could you have gossiped and lied? How could you have stolen, battered your wife, abused your child? How could You have taken drugs? I’m punishing You for molesting that child. That’s unbelievable, isn’t it? But you better believe it, for every one of our sins was put to His account...and He never did any of them.” We want to pretend we didn’t hear this...denial is easier...we mustn’t...without it the payment is not complete. We must force ourselves to grasp that in the Father’s heart and mind of unspeakable love for the Son was the pain of awareness that ‘Jesus, You raped, You molested that child, You murdered’. To grasp just a part of this truth is to begin to touch the unfathomable...no, the infinite depths of the love of God.
Richard Wurmbrand shared a two man cell with the chief architect of the Pitesti re-education program in which close friends had been tortured and died. For two weeks he shared with him the Gospel and led him to the Lord. In another cell he came face to face with the murderer of Sabina’s entire family. She was the sole survivor. He forgave the man, ministered to him, invited him, upon their release from prison, to be a guest in their home. In a sermon preached in Romania he called the execution of Ceausescu Romania’s first post revolution mistake. He considered him to be a victim, “I could see his beauty. I would have forgiven him.” In another sermon he revealed one of main sources of this truly phenomenal love: “No one can describe all that He took upon Himself. Not only that Christ died on Golgotha for us...what did He do after Golgotha? He went to hell! He went to hell! Now I have not been to hell, but my wife and I have been to the antechambers of hell...we’ve been in a communist prison.
Richard Wurmbrand shared a two man cell with the chief architect of the Pitesti re-education program in which close friends had been tortured and died. For two weeks he shared with him the Gospel and led him to the Lord. In another cell he came face to face with the murderer of Sabina’s entire family. She was the sole survivor. He forgave the man, ministered to him, invited him, upon their release from prison, to be a guest in their home. In a sermon preached in Romania he called the execution of Ceausescu Romania’s first post revolution mistake. He considered him to be a victim, “I could see his beauty. I would have forgiven him.” In another sermon he revealed one of main sources of this truly phenomenal love: “No one can describe all that He took upon Himself. Not only that Christ died on Golgotha for us...what did He do after Golgotha? He went to hell! He went to hell! Now I have not been to hell, but my wife and I have been to the antechambers of hell...we’ve been in a communist prison.
We were in Hell. We were there, but we did not choose to go there. Jesus chose to go there. He went to Hell! He went to Hell!
We were in hell. I can’t describe to you the stench and the dirt and the tears and the suffering and the cries and the howling which were there. We were there, but we did not choose to go there. But Jesus chose to go there.”6 Those were his words...but to fully appreciate the depth of his identification with Christ’s Finished
Work, you would have to see how he delivered them...with trembling, his hands trembling, his voice quaking, seeming to dare to go in his mind with Christ to hell. That’s what his spiritual life was founded on...a, as nearly as possible, complete revelation of the full extent of the payment of the Cross.
And he never stopped learning. One day, from the responses of a Russian soldier, who was hearing the Gospel for the first time, he was challenged that his digging into Christ’s Finished Work had not gone deep enough. “The Russian officer had never heard the great news that Jesus made his sins whiter than snow...But then I told this Russian soldier how this had been provided for us...the crucifixion...the Cross. It was as if the spikes were being driven into his hands. He suffered, too. This is how the Bible should be received. He was crushed. He began to weep. This is how the Bible should be treated...and he continued to weep. He had believed in the forgiveness of sin for ¼ of an hour, and now his Savior was lost, crucified. He hadn’t known about the resurrection. When I told him he danced round and round the room. But me, a pastor, a missionary, I did not dance and shout and sing when I heard the incredible good news. Did you?”7 Have we, like the Russian soldier, ever wept...wept over the suffering of Jesus? Have we ever rejoiced, really rejoiced, over the resurrection? The closer we come to experiencing, identifying, with the reality of all that was required to pay for all...all...the sins of the world, for all the sin nature of man, the higher the Cross will tower over even the wounds of an enemy.
No Distinction Between Friend and Enemy
Work, you would have to see how he delivered them...with trembling, his hands trembling, his voice quaking, seeming to dare to go in his mind with Christ to hell. That’s what his spiritual life was founded on...a, as nearly as possible, complete revelation of the full extent of the payment of the Cross.
And he never stopped learning. One day, from the responses of a Russian soldier, who was hearing the Gospel for the first time, he was challenged that his digging into Christ’s Finished Work had not gone deep enough. “The Russian officer had never heard the great news that Jesus made his sins whiter than snow...But then I told this Russian soldier how this had been provided for us...the crucifixion...the Cross. It was as if the spikes were being driven into his hands. He suffered, too. This is how the Bible should be received. He was crushed. He began to weep. This is how the Bible should be treated...and he continued to weep. He had believed in the forgiveness of sin for ¼ of an hour, and now his Savior was lost, crucified. He hadn’t known about the resurrection. When I told him he danced round and round the room. But me, a pastor, a missionary, I did not dance and shout and sing when I heard the incredible good news. Did you?”7 Have we, like the Russian soldier, ever wept...wept over the suffering of Jesus? Have we ever rejoiced, really rejoiced, over the resurrection? The closer we come to experiencing, identifying, with the reality of all that was required to pay for all...all...the sins of the world, for all the sin nature of man, the higher the Cross will tower over even the wounds of an enemy.
No Distinction Between Friend and Enemy
‘Father, how could you forgive?’
Every time Father Cosmovici’s son, Emmanuel, who conducted part of the interview with his father...every time he looks into his face and sees his father’s one glass eye, he’s reminded that in prison, in order to save his life, he was forced to remove, without anesthesia, his diseased eye. Emmanuel speaks for many of us when he says: “My father didn’t speak against God. He risked his life...he was tortured and he almost died. I don’t understand how those people, so cruelly treated, could forgive, because I couldn’t. How could they forgive such a massacre? ‘So, Father, how can you forgive?’” Father Cosmovici is not surprised that his son, and himself, would respond initially to cruelty with the natural reaction of anger, then draws a picture of a superior force...a rational love which is the will of man instructed by the Word of God. “You might say forgiveness is very difficult. How come it is difficult? I don’t agree. When I advise you to love your enemies I’m not talking about emotional love. Your first reaction well may be, ‘I feel like hitting him,’ but your love should remain a rational one. I’m speaking about the love through your own will, that love which is defined by God. To love God means to obey His commands. Jesus said that. You ask me, ‘How can you forgive?’ You can’t forgive emotionally.”
Father Cosmovici tells us that that love is defined by God. When did God do this? When, as an act of His will, He decided to send His Son to die...a decision not based on emotion. For eighteen years that’s what Father Cosmovici did. He decided, day after day, to be motivated to have actions towards all he met that day, including his tormentors, which promoted their highest good…‘living and dying to bring others to a higher life.’ That’s the kind of person Satan hates the most because he couldn’t make him live in his natural man, couldn’t make him give in to hate.
Father Cosmovici tells us that that love is defined by God. When did God do this? When, as an act of His will, He decided to send His Son to die...a decision not based on emotion. For eighteen years that’s what Father Cosmovici did. He decided, day after day, to be motivated to have actions towards all he met that day, including his tormentors, which promoted their highest good…‘living and dying to bring others to a higher life.’ That’s the kind of person Satan hates the most because he couldn’t make him live in his natural man, couldn’t make him give in to hate.
I don’t make any distinction between friend and enemy.
Not only would he forgive his tormentors, he refused to even call them ‘enemies’. “I might disappoint you, but I’ve experienced certain things, then I put them into practice and I can say I don’t have too many followers concerning my ideas. Why? Because I don’t make any distinction between friend and enemy. I don’t make that distinction and that’s why some people feel embarrassed, but after 2000 years since Jesus came to earth, the following command has never been practiced effectively: ‘Love your enemy.’ That’s why we witness a lot of misfortune in this world.”
To love my enemy! That’s it…he has a soul, too!
At this point in the interview Father Cosmovici stopped speaking. He told us later he was searching for what really was the source of what he knew to be that unique attitude, making no distinction between friend and enemy. Then he blurted out: “To love my enemy. That’s it! He has a soul, too. His soul was created by the Almighty like my soul. He must reach eternity as well. Jesus died for him, too…and I want to strike him? What for?” He had reflected on a guard beating him and remembered what had been on his mind: ‘His soul must reach eternity...it hangs in the balance between heaven and hell and I hold the key to shifting the balance in God’s favor.’ “In order to inform you, I stayed in prison for my friends, but especially for what you call enemies. I arrived at this simple philosophy...when someone does a wrong to me, something unique happens within me, which is I can see that person drowning himself and crying for help, ‘Please save me, look what I’m able to do!’ And I must help him. And what do I have on hand to help him? I offer my tribute of suffering for his soul’s salvation and I pray for him. This isn’t too complicated.” He is being made to suffer and what does he do? Instead of taking the wrongs done to him personally, he sees in them evidence of how close his tormentor’s soul is to being damned. This is more important to him than his own pain. The one thing he has, his own suffering, he doesn’t waste...but offers it as a tribute, as a prayer for the man’s soul. The suffering of the innocent for Christ is the most powerful prayer possible. Certainly God heard and accepted his prayer of suffering. This astounds us and leaves us in awe...we can’t comprehend it. God does.
Saint Augustine wrote that ‘if all mankind had been righteous and only one man a sinner, Christ so loves and values every individual, He would have come to endure the same Cross for this one man.’ Augustine understood God’s estimate of the value of a soul. Every other single thing...this world and every thing in it...will pass away, but the human soul is eternal, it lives forever. It may approach blasphemy to say it, but Father Cosmovici seems to have arrived at a level of Christian maturity in which he valued the human soul nearly as much as God does. By ‘seeing’ the man drowning and ‘hearing’ his cry for help, he receives God’s burden for that lost sheep and was able to transcend even torture.
Father Galeriu told us of the cell full of former government officials and professors who were in despair, only waiting to die, because life in prison for them was void of any meaning or purpose. Father Cosmovici falls far to the other end of the scale. By participating with God in what He wanted done in those prisons, reaching those who otherwise would never be reached, he spent passionate years full of great purpose and remembers those eighteen years as ‘the most profitable, most valuable years of my life.’ He was tremendously creative. He learned Morse code and turned the cells into seminars, tapping out twenty hours of Bible teaching on the bars. We left his house knowing we had encountered a great treasure in God’s kingdom, one whose character had been stretched to its outer limits, becoming all that God wanted him to be...a totally integrated personality, childlike and spontaneous and transparent...whatever was on the inside was on the outside. For much of the time we spent with him, he kept us laughing. His response, when we asked him how he felt about the cruelty of being forced to remove one of his own eyes, was: “Do I care? I know of a world that cannot be seen.” How he enriches heaven!
Love for the Unborn
‘…a crime against the perpetuation of the human race.’
Saint Augustine wrote that ‘if all mankind had been righteous and only one man a sinner, Christ so loves and values every individual, He would have come to endure the same Cross for this one man.’ Augustine understood God’s estimate of the value of a soul. Every other single thing...this world and every thing in it...will pass away, but the human soul is eternal, it lives forever. It may approach blasphemy to say it, but Father Cosmovici seems to have arrived at a level of Christian maturity in which he valued the human soul nearly as much as God does. By ‘seeing’ the man drowning and ‘hearing’ his cry for help, he receives God’s burden for that lost sheep and was able to transcend even torture.
Father Galeriu told us of the cell full of former government officials and professors who were in despair, only waiting to die, because life in prison for them was void of any meaning or purpose. Father Cosmovici falls far to the other end of the scale. By participating with God in what He wanted done in those prisons, reaching those who otherwise would never be reached, he spent passionate years full of great purpose and remembers those eighteen years as ‘the most profitable, most valuable years of my life.’ He was tremendously creative. He learned Morse code and turned the cells into seminars, tapping out twenty hours of Bible teaching on the bars. We left his house knowing we had encountered a great treasure in God’s kingdom, one whose character had been stretched to its outer limits, becoming all that God wanted him to be...a totally integrated personality, childlike and spontaneous and transparent...whatever was on the inside was on the outside. For much of the time we spent with him, he kept us laughing. His response, when we asked him how he felt about the cruelty of being forced to remove one of his own eyes, was: “Do I care? I know of a world that cannot be seen.” How he enriches heaven!
Love for the Unborn
‘…a crime against the perpetuation of the human race.’The immense value Father Cosmovici placed on the human soul, the root source of his truly phenomenal love, was also the source of his anguish at the killing of the unborn. “Abortion means to kill your own child in the womb. And they can’t even protest with a scream. It is the most horrid murder possible. Legally and biologically abortion is the crime of murder against the perpetuation of the human race. No animal kills its offspring…only man. A crime against the perpetuation of the human race! How could we have possibly arrived at this point?” The ‘point’ he is referring to is not only abortion, itself, but the country’s astronomical abortion rate. Father Galeriu provides us with one of the main reasons Romania arrived at this point. “Over our poor people was exerted a materialistic-atheistic pressure which taught them that the unborn is just a blob of tissues…just a lifeless, soulless blob of tissues towards which they had no responsibility. This blasphemy, which was inoculated into the human consciousness, was one of the basic elements that perverted the soul of the Romanian people.”
Father Galeriu sees the Romanian people as victims of the lies of atheism which they were force fed, but still, even though they may be victims, like Father Cosmovici, he defines abortion, which the lies lead to, as murder. “We confess that a soul of a human being is a Divine creation, and that starting at conception the soul is present, so from that moment an unborn child is considered a human being. So our responsibility towards the unborn is equal to our responsibility towards adults.
Father Galeriu sees the Romanian people as victims of the lies of atheism which they were force fed, but still, even though they may be victims, like Father Cosmovici, he defines abortion, which the lies lead to, as murder. “We confess that a soul of a human being is a Divine creation, and that starting at conception the soul is present, so from that moment an unborn child is considered a human being. So our responsibility towards the unborn is equal to our responsibility towards adults.
‘Starting at conceptionthe soul is present.’
To take the life of an unborn child is no different than taking the life of an adult.” Mother Teresa agrees. “Abortion is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.” Can murder be forgiven? Of course. Nearly two thirds of the Bible was written by Moses, David and Paul, men who had committed murder but who had repented and received forgiveness. If you have been carrying the guilt from having had an abortion, or have encouraged or insisted someone have one, then certainly what you have learned in this and the previous chapter about the infinite price of the Finished Work of the Cross convinces you that your sin, even if it is the sin of murder, has been paid for.
‘Give the baby to
that man to kill!’For three years Peggy, and the counselors she trained, spoke with women in the waiting and recovery rooms of the abortion hospitals in Bucuresti and Brasov. Most of the women, many of whom had had multiple abortions, repeated what they had been taught…‘It’s just a blob of tissue.’ They had been robbed of the knowledge of what human life is. In them there is such a sadness. It wasn’t only their children whom they were killing. The most powerful human love…the maternal, nurturing love present in the heart of every mother…was being destroyed. In Father Galeriu’s words, ‘They were perverting their souls’. Father Cosmovici understood this and when he spoke about Romanian women it was with great compassion. He sees them not only as victims of materialism’s lies, but as victims of men who would force abortion upon them. For them, and for women everywhere who see no alternative to abortion, he offers this story as a possible solution.
“A woman answered her friend who told her:
‘The man I’m living with promised to marry me if I’d abort the baby I’m carrying’.
‘Tell him, my dear, to have a little patience, and after the baby is born give it to him for him to kill the baby.’
That answer was amazingly beautiful. Give the baby to that man to kill! Why should the mother have to take that sin upon herself? Women have an extraordinary role. Mankind’s future is in their hands. You women have this extraordinary ‘weapon’. Use it!”
To Love Until It Hurts
‘Give the baby to
that man to kill!’For three years Peggy, and the counselors she trained, spoke with women in the waiting and recovery rooms of the abortion hospitals in Bucuresti and Brasov. Most of the women, many of whom had had multiple abortions, repeated what they had been taught…‘It’s just a blob of tissue.’ They had been robbed of the knowledge of what human life is. In them there is such a sadness. It wasn’t only their children whom they were killing. The most powerful human love…the maternal, nurturing love present in the heart of every mother…was being destroyed. In Father Galeriu’s words, ‘They were perverting their souls’. Father Cosmovici understood this and when he spoke about Romanian women it was with great compassion. He sees them not only as victims of materialism’s lies, but as victims of men who would force abortion upon them. For them, and for women everywhere who see no alternative to abortion, he offers this story as a possible solution.
“A woman answered her friend who told her:
‘The man I’m living with promised to marry me if I’d abort the baby I’m carrying’.
‘Tell him, my dear, to have a little patience, and after the baby is born give it to him for him to kill the baby.’
That answer was amazingly beautiful. Give the baby to that man to kill! Why should the mother have to take that sin upon herself? Women have an extraordinary role. Mankind’s future is in their hands. You women have this extraordinary ‘weapon’. Use it!”
To Love Until It Hurts
‘The woman thinking
of abortion should be
helped to love.’
of abortion should be
helped to love.’
Mother Teresa offers the best solution. “How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always we persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave His life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must give until it hurts.”8 Many times I have watched Peggy and the other crisis pregnancy counselors demonstrate this love. To those who see no alternative to abortion they give their time and prayers and resources…they give until it hurts. Knowing this kind of love is infectious, they try to introduce them to those in our community who are laying down their lives for street children or orphans or the terminally ill…and to have them meet women who, in difficult circumstances, have made the hard choice to keep their babies, who, as Mother Teresa said, have learned ‘to love until it hurts’.
What the prisoners have taught us thus far can help anyone to become part of the solution to the sin of abortion. The deepened understanding they have provided for us of the extent of the payment of the Cross and of the value God places on a human soul, stirs in us a new awareness of His infinite love for us, making it easier to for us to love with the love of God and to inspire this love in others. The many testimonies of the source of the strong faith by which they survived, Bible doctrines hidden in their hearts, teaches us how to build our faith so that we can say with complete confidence to those who see their situation as impossible, as the angel said to Mary, when she was about to enter an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, that “With God nothing is impossible”. (Lk 1:37)
What the prisoners have taught us thus far can help anyone to become part of the solution to the sin of abortion. The deepened understanding they have provided for us of the extent of the payment of the Cross and of the value God places on a human soul, stirs in us a new awareness of His infinite love for us, making it easier to for us to love with the love of God and to inspire this love in others. The many testimonies of the source of the strong faith by which they survived, Bible doctrines hidden in their hearts, teaches us how to build our faith so that we can say with complete confidence to those who see their situation as impossible, as the angel said to Mary, when she was about to enter an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, that “With God nothing is impossible”. (Lk 1:37)
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu