“I no longer worry about poverty and sin in the world.”
(First interview, 6)
Every day we are confronted by the media with the evil that exists somewhere in the world, with humans harming one another. Even the “entertainment industry” largely bases its program on violence and anger. The business of evil, of which humanity is capable, and indeed all the misery and hardship of this world, is on the rise. Visions of future horror are painted on the wall: that unknown viruses cause diseases, that incorrigible people produce devastating material of immense destructive power, that... And the experience of life is characterized by fear. Concerns about employment, rising rent and living costs, and other worries affect you...
Here we read in one record of a conversation about Brother Lorenz: “He said he continually hears about poverty and sin and that he is not surprised by it; that he understands it when he sees the evil of which sinners are capable. He prays for them, but because he knows that God can remedy evil whenever He wishes, he no longer worries about it.”
“He does not worry about it” – doesn’t it sound, at least to today’s ears, like an escape or looking elsewhere?
Brother Lorenz in no way closes his eyes to “poverty and sin.” On the contrary: he marvels that “there is not more” of it! His calm comes from the fact that on the one hand, he knows from his own self-awareness “the evil of which sinners are capable” and on the other hand, he can believe that God’s mercy and His “yes” to this world is greater than all evil and misery combined. He does not have to despair over it all because he has a divine merciful perspective. His faith in God’s unconditional forgiveness allows him an untroubled connection to the abysses of the human heart and the resulting evil. But is that all I can do – regarding the suffering that people inflict upon one another in such a terrifying magnitude? Isn’t it really most reasonable to leave all “poverty and sin” to God and no longer worry about it? Is it better to rack my brain and heart with oppressive questions? What more can one do that is good when one’s thoughts and feelings are filled only with darkness, fear, and worry, lamentation, and accusation?
Brother Lorenz was able to maintain this patience to see that alongside evil, there is also goodness; that the reality of this world is more than what alarming news repeatedly conveys. Isn’t it a crime that reports on the beautiful and good aspects of life are so criminally neglected? For the sake of our own hearts, we must not deny the good!
With this attitude, trusting in God’s mercy and also looking at the bright sides of the world, Brother Lorenz found the strength to do the good he could. Like him, I too cannot change the entire world and in many respects, not even myself. However, small “great miracles” are possible for those who allow trust in God and the light that is in His world to enter into them.
An Arab fable, which Brother Lorenz would surely agree with, tells of a little freezing girl who walks down the road without food and without hope. A man who observes this reproaches God: “How can you allow this?! Why don’t you do something about it?” For some time, the story goes, God said nothing; but at night He replied: “I did do something about it: I created you.”
P. Thomas Röhr OCD
“A person only dies once!”
(Letter 1)
To remind someone that they will die one day either shows naivety – after all, that is a hackneyed truth – or bad taste! For who would like to be reminded of dying? Don’t we do everything we can to keep dying and the thought of it at arm’s length? Even our descriptions of dying are deceitful: “If something bad happens to me…”, “The worst has happened…” etc. Or our reaction to the news of a relative's death: we act as if it should not happen that someone dies. Brother Lorenz would not wish to perpetuate either hackneyed truths or bad taste. When he writes to a woman he spiritually guides: “Let us keep in mind: a person only dies once!”, he wants to motivate her to a realistic view of life.
If it is already a fact that a person will die one day, it is not about suppressing this indisputable fact that will happen at any rate or behaving as if it were not there. Those who push death aside and do not allow it to enter their lives are not realistic or sober! Realists are rather those who accept death and can integrate it into their life project; for whom it is normal that their life ends with death; who take it into account without stubbornness but strive to live consciously according to that.
Whoever keeps death in mind becomes realistic in every respect. He will see things in their transience: everything that surrounds him, himself, all of life. Therefore, he cannot be bound by what is limited, finite, frail. He will consciously ask what survives...
Such realism can become a new beginning in a person’s life. The thought of death uncovers our limitations and gives us the opportunity to perceive the true greatness of God. To this, Brother Lorenz wants to invite us in every case. He wants to lead us to a true life in which death does not have to be suppressed but becomes the starting point of a living faith, a life in the presence of God, and thus a practice for the final and eternal meeting with Him and with our neighbors that begins with death. And Brother Lorenz knows from experience: “When God finds a soul permeated with living faith, He will fill it abundantly with His grace. It is like a flood that a person was holding back and which then, when given free rein, gushes forth with strength and abundance” (ibid.).
Realism towards death and transience pays off for life! Therefore: “Let us no longer hold back this flood… let us enter into ourselves, break this dam, help grace to burst forth, let us catch up on the lost time; perhaps we have little time left to live, death is at our heels, watch out: a person only dies once!”
P. Ulrich Dobhan OCD
“My life is a constant joy.”
(Fourth interview, 47)
When the letters and records of Brother Lorenz appeared in print in 1692, a few months after his death, the publisher noted in the introduction: “Although death took many brothers from the Order of Discalced Carmelites in the last year, who showed the wealth of their lives through holy dying, God wanted to turn the gaze of people especially to one, to Brother Lorenz. At his death, the brilliance of his inner self shone with bright light, even though Brother Lorenz carefully tried throughout his life not to draw attention to himself.”
What shone with bright light and drew the attention of others to this simple religious brother can best be described as “contentment”, “joyfulness”, and “joy.” Brother Lorenz lived joy that was so attractive that others felt a desire for it too. His partner in the conversation says that Brother himself told him that he “spends his life in constant joy.” Which person, which Christian can say that of themselves?
If we ask for the reason for his joyful life stance, we again encounter the fundamental mystery of his life: life in the presence of God. Because for him, God was not merely a “subject of faith,” but rather a real, albeit hidden life partner; thus, God’s love and mercy were real for him. So he knew that God wants him and accepts him, and he could view his shortcomings and clumsiness with humor. When he had to fulfill tasks that did not suit him, he did not lose joyful courage because he could perform them in any case with love – and that matters to God. Because he had trust in infinite divine mercy, even failures and sins could not take from him the deep joy of his heart. And the Daily troubles and all suffering of himself and the world became light to him in this joy with God.
One eyewitness recounts after Lorenz's death: “Joy was not only evident in his face but also in the way he spoke – which really prompted the monks who visited him to ask him whether he was suffering at all. “Forgive me,” he told them, “I suffer. I have pains, but my spirit is at peace.” (Life, 25)
“You should sing me happier songs so that I can believe in your Savior,” wrote Nietzsche once to Christians in his genealogy. Brother Lorenz would have found what he lacked.
S. Waltraud Herbstrith OCD
How Brother Lorenz wrote his observations
He wrote such noble and beautiful things about both the greatness of God and His incomprehensible sharing of His love with souls that those who saw individual sheets of his writings (he lent them on the condition that they be returned as soon as possible) were so excited and encouraged by them that they spoke of them with admiration. But no matter how carefully he hid them, some passages were still managed to be preserved, by which we regret not having more. For if the little that remains of his letters and instructions may be inferred about everything else, we are justified in the assumption that – as he himself stated to one of his friends – his little works always spoke of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the action of His love. Sometimes he penned them on paper, but when he compared what he had written with what he had experienced, he considered it to be so inferior and so far removed from his noble feelings that gave him to experience God's greatness and goodness, that he often felt compelled to tear it up immediately. He tore up his works all the more willingly when he wrote them only to ease himself, to give his spirit lift, and to expand his heart and chest, which were too tight for the divine fire that consumed him and left him infinitely suffering, much like a bowl that cannot contain all those waters while still trying to let them overflow.
(Joseph de Beaufort, friend of Brother Lorenz, in 1692
in: Eloge auf Bruder Lorenz von der Auferstehung, 41.)
Translated from the original Karmel-Impulse 5, IV, 5–9, 1995 by Dr. Vojtěch Pola.
