Just a quote for today

Karl Rahner, a great favourite of mine, first delivered the sermon from which this excerpt is taken in Munich, 1946. The 'run on' quality and use of the 2nd person, familiar form, is in the original. I thought I'd share it as a brief 'retreat' for those who are weary. It moved me all the more to think that Karl wrote this in the rubble of the Third Reich's collapse.

"When you stand firm and don't flee despair, nor in
despairing of your former gods - the vital or the
intellectual, the beautiful and the respectable, oh
yes, that they are - which you called God, if you
don't despair in the true God, if you stand firm - oh,
that is already a miracle of grace... you suddenly
will become aware that, in truth, you are not at all
rubbled-over, that your jail is closed only to empty
finiteness, that its deadly emptiness is only the
false appearance of God, that his silence, the eerie
stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by him
who is above all names, who is everything in
everything. And his silence tells you that he is
there.

..In your despair, notice that he is there.. Become
aware that he has been expecting you for quite some
time in the deepest dungeon of your rubbled-over
heart. Become aware that he has been quietly listening
for a long time, whether you, after all the busy noise
of your life, and all the idle talk that you called
your illusion-free philosophy of life, or perhaps even
your prayer during which you only talked to yourself,
after all the despaired weeping and mute groaning
about the need of your life, whether you finally could
be silent before him and let him speak the word, the
word that seemed only to be like a deadly silence to
the earlier man who was you. ... He actually does not
have to enter your rubbled over heart, rather that you
have to comprehend that you should not try to escape
from this heart because he indeed is there, and so
there can be no reason to flee from this blessed
despair to a consolation which would be none and which
does not exist. "