Gentiles Who Saved Lives in WWII

The Righteous Gentiles of World War II

carl Lutz

“Lord of the Exodus, who delivers your people with a strong hand and a mighty arm: Strengthen your Church with the examples of the righteous Gentiles of World War II to defy oppression for the rescue of the innocent through Jesus Christ.”—Collect of the day: The Righteous Gentiles, July 16, in A Great Cloud of Witnesses (Church Publishing, 2016).

Holy Women, Holy Men was a trial expanded calendar of commemorations of saints authorized by the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which included many modern people of faith and apostolic action. It was revised to become A Great Cloud of Witnesses (2016).

The people remembered on July 16 are the thousands of Christians and people of faith who saved Jews from the Holocaust. One of them was Carl Lutz, an Evangelical Christian Swiss Vice-Counsel in Budapest. Lutz negotiated with the Nazis for the deportation of over 60,000 Hungarian Jews to Palestine, probably saving more lives than any other person.

Lutz had gained permission to issue emigration papers for 8,000 Jews to Palestine. He interpreted it as applicable for 8,000 families, saving thousands more. A 2014 American film, Walking with the Enemy, tells of Lutz’s work with Pinchas Rosenbaum in Budapest during the German occupation of Hungary. Lutz also established seventy-six safe houses to hide Jews in Budapest, including the now famous Glass House, all of which the diplomat declared as Swiss territory.

There is another documentary about Lutz called The Forgotten Hero. I honestly believe each of us is given many moments to make a difference in the lives of others. The challenges may not be as dangerous or risky as Lutz’s on the international scene, but in our own environment, they may still demand courage.

It is essential to see how creative people who came before us made changes and found loopholes in systems that were beyond awful, when there seemed to be no way out. I can only believe this was the work of the Holy Spirit in the worst of times. May we pray that the same Holy Spirit will work in us today.

[See Carl Lutz, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, www.raoulwallenberg.net.]

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

How is Your Heart?

“How is your heart?”

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask others how they’re doing, you ask in Arabic, ‘How is your haal?’ In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ Tell me you’re more than just a machine checking off items from your to-do list. Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart.”—Omid Safi in On Being with Krista Tippett (9/16/2017).

Omid Safi, Director of Duke University Islamic Studies Center, once wrote a Thursday column for On Being. He is teaching us to be more intentional about relationships, rather than simply making lists and completing tasks and assignments.

For example, my usual greeting when starting a conversation is, “How are you doing?” The word doing implies that I am interested in what you are doing, while I actually want to know how you are being—how we can stay connected in this relationship and learn to live together as humans being rather than humans doing.

Now, I try to say, “How is your heart?” That introduction always draws us more quickly into the relationship we are seeking. Being implies that we live in the present moment, and it is in the present moment where we connect to each other and God. Our experience of keeping eye contact also grounds us in the present. If I visit someone who is ill, I also ask permission to hold their hand. Making physical contact can also bring us to the present moment.

We can also transfer this understanding of our relationship with each other to our connection to God. Instead of starting our prayers with our to-do list for God and expecting God to give us a to-do list, can we open prayers with “God, how is your heart? Show me your heart and open up my heart to you.”

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Transfiguration

Transfiguration August 6

“Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him…Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master,.. let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” ..While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; ..Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”— Luke 9:28-36

Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration, where we listened to the story of Jesus being revealed on a high mountain to three of his disciples as the incarnation of God. Anyone in 12-step recovery can identify immediately with transfiguration, seeing the light, a moment of clarity, and encountering the God who has been there all along within us and others. Still, we never saw this before because we were too busy making “dwellings” for other idols, alcohol, food, drugs, work, etc.

Moments of transfiguration occur when we are transported from a deep unconscious sleep to a moment of conscious bright light when we see, feel, taste, and touch God’s presence. Transfiguration is about experiencing our true nature, the part of God inside ourselves and others. It is the moment when the veil of all else starts to fall away, and we connect to the presence of God within us, and eventually desire to turn our life and our will over to the care of God. That is the moment when we let go and let God.

Richard Rohr believes we cannot see God in others until we first see God within ourselves. That moment of clarity speaks from within us that we are better than the life we are leading. So, recovery is seeing that spark of God first within ourselves, which leads us to see God in others. We encounter the person who once annoyed us and caused us to harbor resentment, and we begin to notice a tiny glimpse of the face of God in our neighbor, and we can possibly respond in love./

“If we want to find God, then connect to God within ourselves, and we will always then see God beyond us. For it is only God in us who knows where and how to look for God.” 1

Frederick Buechner reminds us that as we see God within ourselves, we then begin to see God in situations we never saw before: “the face of a man walking his child in the park,  a woman picking peas in the garden,  sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just sitting with friends at a Saturday football game in September. Every once in a while, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures another human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.” 2

If you are having difficulty seeing the face of God, stop for a moment and look at our young children. God’s presence seems to burst forth from them. I have been overwhelmed by a heavy dose of God’s presence this week in the 90 children at our Vacation Bible School at Saint Mark’s.

Transfiguration is the message and the promise of recovery, seeing the face of God first in ourselves and then in others. Each day, we celebrate the transfiguration that recovery continually brings to our lives and the face of every person we encounter. Transfiguration is a daily living reality.

1 Richard Rohr Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 159-161.

2Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 1988), p. 120.