Karl Rahner - God of the living (Part 2)

A strange thing happens to the man who really loves, for even before his own death his life becomes a life with the dead. Could a true lover ever forget his dead? When one has really loved, his forgetting is only apparent: he only seems to get over his grief. The quiet and composure he gradually regains are not a sign that things are as they were before, but a proof that his grief is ultimate and definitive. It shows that a piece of his own heart has really died and is now with the living dead. This is the real reason he can weep no more.

Thus I am living now with the dead, with those who have gone before me into the dark night of death, where no man can work. But how can I really live with the dead? How can I continue to find life in the one bond left between us, the bond of our mutual love? Deign to answer me, 0 God, for You have called Yourself the God of the living and not of the dead. How can I live with them?

Of what use is it to say, as do the philosophers, that the dead still exist, that they live on? Are they with me? Since I loved them and still love them, I must be with them. But are they also with me?

They have gone away; they are silent. Not a word comes through from them; not a single sign of their gentle love and kindness comes to warm my heart. How awfully still the dead are, how dead! Do they want me to forget them, as one forgets a fleeting acquaintance he made on a train, a stranger with whom he once exchanged a few friendly but meaningless words?

Karl Rahner, S.J.
Encounters with Silence