From the Lord of life, I am asking for the gift of a

living faith for my family

I have thought a great deal about what I should ask from God for my large family as a Christmas present. For you my dear children, whom we welcomed with God’s encouragement, and you my co-workers, who with your service either here at Déva or Szászváros, or with your financial help and prayers, are my partners in building the Kingdom of God. I would like to ask for something that is very important: something for which we have a great, great need during our earthly sojourn. It is hard to choose, since we vary a lot. Our family’s smallest children, little Anna and Amália, are still awkwardly wobbling toward their second year, but there is dear Zsuzsi and the Austrian Laab in Waldei grandmother who are rapidly approaching their one-hundredth year.

Our large family contains those whom we welcomed in with only their underwear as well as those who, by God’s grace, are quite rich. There are those who are sick and those who have never stood on their own feet, like the 9^th grader in Déva, Ferenc. But there are flowering, young, beautiful, healthy companions too. What is it that we all equally need?

Personally, I am asking for all of you the gift of a living faith from the Lord of life.

What does a living faith mean for me? That we might understand better, let us consider the wise men from the east, who see something, and the yearning for the more, the holy, and the truth starts glowing in their hearts. They break away from all of their daily busyness and set out. In the dark, they begin on an unknown path not knowing what they are looking for, but they listen to the longing in their hearts and begin towards the infinite. The angel didn’t appear to them, and they didn’t set out based on a mystical experience. Rather, they instinctively knock on the door of Herod’s court wanting more out of life, looking for help, and searching for nature’s secrets. They ask for and receive directions from Herod’s astrologers and high priests.

It’s shocking! These court priests and scribes know everything: “Judah’s tribes … Bethlehem…” They know the saving truth, but they don’t set out. On the basis of their directions, the pagan wise men are able to embrace God in a cave in Bethlehem. The direction givers don’t set off, and God’s face doesn’t shine on them. How true that it is not enough to only know faith. We can know everything about God and love, but if we don’t set out and walk on the road of love with a heart ruled by a longing for more so that we witness our own child of Bethlehem, we will get lost.

Today, what does it mean to be on the road? Neither me, nor anyone else can know or see the whole road, but the outline of the next step always comes into view.

Since the end of the summer, families with small children have been living on the edge of Szászváros in tents. Last Sunday there was an early December frost outside. I tried to talk about God in the homily, but the gospel became a lump in my throat. I thought of the Vörös family. The father, who grew up in an orphanage, together with his wife and five children, are shivering in a shoddy military tent. I christened the three smallest of the blond, blue-eyed kids in the past few years.

Why were they evicted? How did they slip down so low? Why couldn’t they arrange their lives? Why is it that there have always been losers? And why don’t those who finish last in a race get a prize? I don’t know!

I only know that it is very cold to live in a tent in early December. I also know that one can’t preach the gospel and prepare for Christmas knowing that nearby the cold and grime is ripping apart the insides and lives of innocent children. After mass, I set out. A small, neglected, one-room dwelling was standing empty in our graveyard. I went to our parish council, the mayor, and the Vörös family, and now I can stand in their dwelling too, like the three kings, and next to a crackling fire, take the smallest Vörös child into my lap. In her giggling eyes I can see the One who can be found not only in Bethlehem, but also in so many other places. I am overcome with an unspeakable joy as I watch the peacefully smiling children sprawled out wearing light clothing in a bed next to the warm ceramic stove. After many, many days of shivering, the children slept continually for 20 hours. A small road and such an infinite joy for them and for me too.

I am on the path. With my faith and with these mystical two arms, I am seeking God and embracing God. It is not enough to know love. Knowledge, without a path yields condemnation. The living faith is a path of dialogue with the God who keeps creating the world, a partnership.

The living faith is the blood of the builders of the Kingdom of God and the world to come, which fills all of our cells, dreams, and minutes. The living faith recognizes in even our own, our church’s, or our people’s darkest dead-ends the living God, and holding his hands, we can set out in order to move on to a more brotherly world.

Blood dies if it doesn’t move or flow. Similarly, faith that doesn’t set out to bear the fruits of love clots and brings you down. As blood flows to give oxygen and life, let the living faith of Christ’s mystical heart flow in us and open up wide our large family even more to goodness and love.

I ask God for this living faith for all of us as a gift by which we will all have a very happy holiday, which I wish from my heart.

Love,

Father Csaba