Listen to the Lament of the Dead
“Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem” by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.
Do not throw yourself against what has become, enraged or bent on destruction. What will you put in its place? Do you not know that if you are successful in destroying what has become, you will then turn the will of destruction against yourself? But anyone who makes destruction their goal will perish through self-destruction. Much rather respect what has become, since reverence is a blessing.
Then turn to the dead listen to their lament and accept them with love. Be not their blind spokesman there are prophets who in the end have stoned themselves. But we seek salvation and hence we need to revere what has become and to accept the dead, who have fluttered through the air and lived like bats under our roofs since time immemorial. The new will be built on the old and the meaning of what has become will become manifold. Your poverty in what has become you will thus deliver into the wealth of the future.
What seeks to distance you from Christianity and its holy rule of love are the dead, who could find no peace in the Lord since their uncompleted work has followed them. A new salvation is always a restoring of the previously lost. Did not Christ himself restore bloody human sacrifice, which better customs had expelled from sacred practice since days of old? Did he not himself reinstate the sacred practice of the eating of human. sacrifice? In your sacred practice that which earlier laws condemned will once again be included.
However, just as Christ brought back human sacrifice and the eating of the sacrificed, all this happened to him and not to his brother, since Christ placed above it the highest law of love, so that no brother would come to harm as a result, but so that all could rejoice in the restoration. The same thing happened as in ancient times, but now under the law of love. So if you have no reverence for what has become, you will destroy the law of love. And what will become of you then? You will be forced to restore what was before, namely violent deeds, murder, wrongdoing, and contempt of your brother. And one will be alien to the other, and confusion will rule.
