Karl Rahner - God of the living (Part 3)

If it's true that those who have departed in Your love have not really lost their life, but have had it transformed into eternal, limitless, superabundant life, why then do I perceive no sign? Why are they for me as if they were no more? Is the eternal light into which they have entered which is Your light, my God so feeble that its rays can't reach down to me? Must not only their bodies, but also their love depart from me, in order to be with You?

My question thus turns away from them to You, my God, for You want Yourself to be called the God of the living and not of the dead.

But why am I asking this of You? You are as silent to me as my dead. I love You too, as I love my dead, the quiet and distant ones who have entered into night. And yet not even You give me answer, when my loving heart calls upon You for a sign that You and Your Love are present to me. So how can I complain about my dead, when their silence is only the echo of Yours? Or can it be that Your silence is Your answer to my complaint about theirs ?

That must be the way it is, since You are the last answer, even though incomprehensible, to all the questions of my heart. I know why You are silent: Your silence is the framework of my faith, the boundless space where my love finds the strength to believe in Your Love.

If it were all perfectly evident to me here on earth, if Your Love of me were so manifest that I could ask no more anxious questions about it, if You had made absolutely crystal clear the most important thing about me, namely, that I am someone loved by You, how then could I prove the daring courage and fidelity of my love? How could I even have such love? How could I lift myself up in the ecstasy of faith and charity, and transport myself out of this world into Your world, into Your Heart?

Your Love has hidden itself in silence, so that my love can reveal itself in faith. You have left me, so that I can discover You. If You were with me, then in my search for You I should always discover only myself. But I must go out of myself, if I am to find You and find You there, where You can be Yourself.

Since Your Love is infinite, it can abide only in Your Infinity; and since You will to manifest Your infinite Love to me, You have hidden it in my finiteness, where You issue Your call to me. My faith in You is nothing but the dark path in the night between the abandoned shack of my poor, dim earthly life and the brilliance of Your Eternity. And Your silence in this time of my pilgrimage is nothing but the earthly manifestation of the eternal word of Your Love.

That is how my dead imitate Your silence: they remain hidden from me because they have entered into Your Life. The words of their love no longer reach my ears, because they are conjoined with the jubilant song of Your endless Love. My dead live the unhampered and limitless Life that You live; they love with Your Love; and thus their life and their love no longer fit into the frail and narrow frame of my present existence. I live a dying life - prolixitas mortis - is the Church's name for this life so how can I expect to experience their eternal life, which knows no death?

And that is also the way they live for me. Their silence is their loudest call to me, because it is the echo of Your silence. Their voice speaks in unison with Yours, trying to make itself heard above the noisy tumult of our incessant activity, competing with the anxious protestations of mutual love with which we poor humans try to reassure each other. Against all this, their voice and Yours strive to enwrap us and all our words in Your eternal silence.

Thus Your word summons us to enter into Your Life. Thus You command us to abandon ourselves by the daring act of love which is faith, so that we may find our eternal home in Your Life. And thus I am called and commanded by the silence of my dead, who live Your Life and therefore speak Your word to me, the word of the God of Life, so far removed from my dying. They are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me.