Lajos Békefi: REFORMING VERBS IN BEAUTIFUL ORDER

Greeting the month of Reformation from Rome

REFORMING VERBS IN BEAUTIFUL ORDER

OUR GOD LOVES HIS COMMUNICATIONS

They sang to Moses, the song of the servant of God and the song of the Lamb:

Great and wonderful are your works, Lord God Almighty, righteous

and righteous are thy ways, O king of nations

Revelations 15.3

Everyone is looking at you expectantly,

and you give them food in time

Psalms 145.15

In the midst of all our troubles, national and individual burdens, God allowed us to once again enter the month of world-shaping faith renewal, the reformation. The 95 articles of church reform implemented by Luther in Wittenberg on October 31, more than 500 years ago, have been shown with the precision of a compass ever since on the gate of the castle church. The Song of Moses and the Lamb turns our attention to the king of the nations (according to some translations, the king of ages, eras or the king of the elect). Or as the psalmist's Word teaches about the paralysis of human action, distressed situations, and historical short-circuit moments: everyone is looking at you expectantly.

According to Gyula Illyés' universally and nationally valid vision of history, which is rich in messages: " Do you think there would be Hungary as it is/if there was no - Kálvin?/I don't think so ." (Compare: Gyula Illyés: In front of the Reformation monument in Geneva, part. ed.) I have also been in front of the Reformation monument in Geneva countless times, and felt the truth of the poetic lines in front of the superhuman figures of Kálvin, Bocskai and the reformers. But now, in the whirlwind of the Vatican, in St. Peter's Square, I perceive this even more acutely. Here, in the capital of the Roman Catholic world and the second capital of world Christianity after Jerusalem, I perceive it with particular sharpness. I gratefully sit down on one of the stone benches on the corner of Szent Péter square, close my eyes before the wavering religious tourism and the pilgrim crowd of pious souls. In my soul, the processes, the spiritual, the spiritual and the tangible, are formed in huge horizons in the beautiful order of the Words given by God.

Majestic Reformation moments of our God's self-disclosure from the Stone Age to the Digital Age

When you experience Rome and the Vatican in such close proximity of body and soul, the Holy Spirit, of whom I have had a blessed experience for many years, invites you to a truly amazing time travel: it can bring past and present, future and eternity into a simultaneity that no one and nothing else can do in the blue-eyed Roman and under the skies of other countries. Suddenly, some Scriptures flashed into my mind, in addition to the above, for example from Corinthians 13:13: May the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  This blessing formula is a pure expression of the Triune God's self-disclosure in the Pauline manner. In my memory, I turn the pages of the bilingual New Testament, and following my study memories, the double-one, indivisible message and reality, which has not been torn apart or contaminated by human sin, flashes on. Namely, that the Greek text says koinonia, community says communication. And we are already at the reality of our days. The true community of God is the source of authentic communication. Because in the Holy Trinity communication, communication and community, communion are not separated. In human media, in the news industry, very much. News producers communicate something, but not to engage in communion with the recipient. They report news, but they have little to do with the reader. At most, increasing the read rate with sensation. I won't go on, I'll just point out: with God, splitting, shifting, and manipulation are unthinkable. In all his communications, he gives from his holiness, purity, and heart, that is, from himself. He gives not only words, but the best of his being and existence: his forgiving, merciful, redeeming, liberating love.

We live and are from the blissful communication of divine self-disclosure, self-participation, adjusting and reforming people, reshaping individuals, communities, churches, houses, and homelands for His good pleasure. Some of the great moments of this continuous series of reformations that transform us into Him and adapt them to His will: the first great historical moment of the positive origin of self-communication in ancient times was the shaping and "ordering" of the extremely chaotically swirling matter by the Spirit: God's Spirit hovered over the waters (Genesis 1 , 2). I will not list the thousands of moments in the life of the chosen people, I will only refer to the majestic event of the "Stone Age" self-disclosure, the struggling event of engraving the Ten Commandments on stone tablets (Exodus 19-20). Then, in Jesus, to the majestic moments of personal, tangible self-communication, living communication, from the wonderful birth to the even more wonderful resurrection and the world-blessing moment of the ascension. The heavenly and earthly gates of eternal reformation opened under and above the blessed hands of Jesus (Luke 24:50-53). What a divine mercy, an experience of self-disclosure, as early Christianity, which had been forced underground and had given millions of martyrs, was able to come to the light of day with the joyous message of truth and light by the decree of Emperor Constantine the Great (313)! And it was not a sign of divine self-disclosure, historical work leading back to his will, when, after centuries of slow, thorough, aesthetic and spiritual pleasure, monastic codex and Bible copying, the Gutenberg era began, with the technology of book printing, so that the Bible in the national language became a public treasure for all peoples divorce? And in the Reformation, wasn't Luther's 95 candlelit messages lit on the wall of the Wittenberg castle church to cleanse the church polluted by spiritual and material corruption? And didn't the thousands of diligent spiritual workers of the large foreign Bible societies get the impetus to translate the Speech of Life, the Words of Truth, into more than 3,800 languages ​​by experiencing divine self-disclosure and mercy? And to get to the present day: don't the online net-bibles of the digital age, the online services, prayer communities, the digital communication and communication of religious knowledge on modern social media tools help to fill the Internet and virtual world space with Spirit and community? What is the amazing richness of God's goodness, that in such a way he allows human access to his unbroken grace, sola gratia self-disclosure: to the life-guiding, salvation-liberating, truth-revealing reality of the entire Bible?

Turning to October, here I am sitting on the stone bench in the Vatican. I am not looking at human abundance, but I am immersing myself in the life-giving water of God's overflowing self-disclosure. As it flows and flows unceasingly, in space-times and here and beyond, in soul spaces, in human hearts, unrepentantly and endlessly, from the first moment of creation, through the mountain of the Annunciation, to the height of Calvary, and to the heavenly Jerusalem. Be blessed, Lord, for Wittenberg, and for Luther, Geneva, and Calvin, and for those Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other religious brothers, or for those of other religions who respect You, who have recognized and accepted this renewing, reforming grace, strength, and will in You, and are trying their lives with a willing heart, to adjust their thoughts and prayers to You - and they do this with the humility of complete dependence on You!

Where people are no longer, God appears - Mihály Tompa

Here, in the whirlwind of Rome, the verses of the reformed priest of Hanva in the highlands rise, especially today, when the literature-loving circles of Rimaszombat Tompa Mihály, born in Rimaszombat, give thanks for the start of his earthly journey 205 years ago in his native land and in the circles of the Hungarian homeland. In my memories, the priestly silence, the rows of the parishioners coming up. I click on my mobile phone, and they appear: "Who loses a lot, everything that is precious here:/ His faith, if he keeps it, faith keeps him;/ The curse dies, the prayer still lasts,/ While the earth is foggy, - it became clear sky;/In the valley of mourning, wild desolate,/ Where man is no longer, God appears (1862, The mourner). Isn't this fragment of a poem a capture of the comforting moment of divine self-disclosure? Oh, it is not the ex officio religious preacher, but the person clinging to God with personal faith, struggling, hoping and struggling who is speaking here. Because this poem about the Lord who gives reformations has become a confession of faith relying on the God who speaks to us, communicates with us, accepts a shared destiny forever and saves us. And this too: " The word for your fabric, with heavenly flame /It will become day by the power of the night./The fog and the scary figure will disperse, fly away.../Only burn with zeal and heat with reverence;/Before you it will reveal obscurity, doubt.../And on the earthly path you can run for sure!” . May God's blessed, self-evident, renewing love, giving us a secure earthly career, be our happy companion and guide even in the month of reformation.

Romans 10

Source: Dr. Lajos Békefi's writing/2022Plusz

Images: Selection by Dr. Lajos Békefi/Wikipedia