The Wednesday Poem: 'Men Go To God' – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Men Go To God

Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when He is sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, weak, the dead;
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

It is within this context also of a gospel truth being suffered into that I choose Bonhoeffer’s poem. It has always challenged me. Possibly because my main work has been the handing on of faith within a theological context, I found in the rigour and beauty of theology a confirmation and shelter. I now ask, shelter from what? From who God really is? From what God suffers in the world? And I kept this poem to keep these questions alive.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor. His most influential writings come out of his life in Germany when National Socialism was at its height and decisions were being made that led to the Holocaust. After short teaching spells in London and New York, he finally chose to return to Germany where he felt his people needed him. He became very active in a resistance movement against Hitler. He was captured by the Gestapo, and after some time in a variety of detention centres, he spent the reminder of his prison life in Flossenberg conentration camp where he was executed by hanging at dawn, 9th April 1945, just two weeks before the US Allies liberated the camp.

The writings of this courageous pastor still influence theology. I notice Cardinal Kasper cites him quite a lot in his great book: 'Mercy' (Paulist Press, 2013) Bonhoeffer says, ‘we (Christians) must allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.’ We are always tempted to be comfortable with God in his heaven, to live in the shelter of his mercy within our Christianity, the beautiful religion. But, this, says Bonhoeffer in his well-known phrase can be ‘cheap grace’. Christianity is more than a religion; it is a faith, and as faith it is ‘costly grace'. It is costly because it is the way of divine mercy in the world that cost God the life of his Son. It is costly because incarnation means God suffers in the world. It is costly because as believers we are engaged with the divine suffering in the world – we must ‘stand by God in his hour of grieving'. In Bonhoeffer’s time the choice to ‘stand by God’ was a stark one. It was about resistance to National Socialism and to its programmes which endorsed the genocide of all who were seen as lesser peoples for the sake of the purification of the German race. The change in Bonhoeffer’s life from successful academic to pastor and comforter of prisoners in his final months in the concentration camp came from his sense the ‘the suffering God’. ‘Only a suffering God can help’ he wrote. Only a ‘suffering God can release in us the wave of mercy that is of the essence of God'.

This too is what Pope Francis calls us to in this Holy Year of Mercy. The poem voices the two major teachings of the Holy Year, first, that God is our Father of Mercy on whose mercy we daily depend. And second, that we must be Merciful Like the Father (Motto of the Holy Year), that is, we must keep our eyes and ears open as to how God grieves in the world and ‘stand by God’ where and when we can.

As Francis says, we are ‘missionaries of mercy’, getting our hands dirty. Indeed Francis warns: ‘Sometimes we are the tempted to be the kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arms length. Yet Jesus (the Face of Divine Mercy) wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. . . to enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness.’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 270). From what we know of Francis himself, these insights – now official papal teaching - are deeply held gospel convictions that were ‘suffered into’ in his life in Argentina. In face of his own limitations, he was to learn that it was only God’s mercy that freed him for true service, and that this service would primarily be the service of mercy itself in the world.

Messages to: Jo O'Donovan rsm

Poetry commentary by Sr Jo previously published on mercyworld.org:

* 'Advent' by Patrick Kavanagh
* 'This Above All is Precious and Remarkable' by John Wain
* 'Spring and Fall: To a Young Child' by GM Hopkins sj

Image: "Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1987-074-16, Dietrich Bonhoeffer" by Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-074-16 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Commons

'Men Go to God' published in: Eberhard Bethge ed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers From Prison. SCM Press, 1954, pp.167-8).