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5 The Ambiguous Case of One Who Prays to Jesus The Twilight and the Encounter Am I ready to do that? Am I ready to live “between the times,” between the particular experience of Mary Magdalene and the universal faith of the Apocalypse—on the one hand entering into communion with the crucified and risen Lord, while on the other hand standing ready to lay down my own life at any time, in the name of the same Lord, in this apocalyptic era, as I await the coming consummation of the world? Am I ready to be both a personal disciple and a public advocate of the way of Jesus Christ in this twilight world, wherever I can? I eagerly want to answer such questions in the affirmative. I surely do not seek martyrdom, in any historic sense. Nor did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as a matter of fact. But I would like to think that, by the grace of God, should such extraordinary circumstances arise, I would be ready.1 The Twilight of a Single Soul: A Spirituality of Ordinary Places I know myself too well, however, to jump to any such conclusion. The twilight of our times, indeed, is not just around us, it is within us. It is within me. If this book is really to be of any lasting help to my readers, therefore, I must do my own public self-assessment: to be frank with you about my own sinful shortcomings, insofar as I am aware of them, especially as they pertain to nature. I must tell the truth about myself, as best as I can. This is the ambiguous case of one who has no other spiritual recourse than to call to Jesus and ask for mercy, wherever I may find myself, because I so urgently need that mercy. 71 However, I do not want to tell you just about my sinful shortcomings. Rather, I want to affirm the whole truth about myself. Yes, I live in the twilight of this world and that twilight does indeed dwell within me. Nevertheless, I believe that I have been touched by the risen Christ also, reminiscent in some ways of Mary Magdalene’s experience when she was staring into the empty tomb. By the grace of God, it has been given to me to know the one who is the light of the world (John 6:12). That very Jesus to whom I cry out for mercy has been merciful to me. How? I have already spoken of hearing the voice of Christ himself addressing me in the story of the Magdalene when the Easter Vigil Gospel was being read. I have known in faith, too, that he is the one who presides at the table in that liturgy and offers himself to me in the bread and the wine. Now, after I venture to describe the twilight within me, I want to tell you, as well, how the same Christ has touched me not only in the life of his gathered community but also in various other ordinary places. THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL? I chose the expression “the twilight of a single soul” deliberately. As I have reflected about my life, I have realized that, to date, I have never really encountered that “dark night of the soul” that masters of the spiritual life talk about. Luther, for example, when he was a young monk, went through a wrenching time of Anfechtung, a German word that is not easily translated. The English expression “trials and tribulations” only begins to convey its meaning. Luther’s whole, deeply felt world of faith, his very identity as a profoundly devout Christian, collapsed, and he felt himself in spiritual free fall. To this point in my life, I have never been swept down into such depths of despair. Nor have I ever been overwhelmed by the chaos of a society that was falling apart. When Jürgen Moltmann, the great twentieth-century theologian of hope, was seventeen, for example, he experienced firsthand the mass annihilation wrought by the Allied fire bombing of Hamburg, Germany. This was an incomprehensibly dark night of the soul for him, as he remembers that evening. Some forty thousand men, women, and children in Hamburg were burned to death; he himself barely escaped that inferno, for no apparent reason.2 Myself? I have only read about such experiences. Nor, again, have I sought out spiritual trials in deserts or mountains or elsewhere that might have...

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