The Cost of Discipleship
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1937)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant theologian from the German upper class who could have lived a safe and long life, but chose to put his life on the line to be true to the faith he wrote about. Against the advice of friends, he returned to Germany from the US when the Nazis captured power, and was involved in the resistance to Hitler and the Nazi ideology. He was hanged in prison at the age of thirty-nine.
The Cost of Discipleship is his best-known work. Scholars and other readers take it seriously, since the author himself paid a heavy price for his discipleship. The key question that Bonhoeffer raises is the role of the true Christian in the modern secularized world which acknowledges Christ but refuses to pay the cost of discipleship. Bonhoeffer distinguishes between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Cheap grace “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal conversion.” It is “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.” “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” “Besides Jesus nothing has any significance,” he writes. “He alone matters.” Discipleship demands self-denial, which implies awareness of Christ only and no more of self, “to see only him who goes before.” When people are called to discipleship, “they find that they have already broken with all the natural ties of life.” Looking at the history of the Church, Bonhoeffer observes how, when the world became Christianized, such a realization of the costliness of discipleship receded and grace became “common property,” resulting in the secularization of Christianity and the “cheapening of Grace.” The church tried to stem this drift through monasticism, which also developed drawbacks. Bonhoeffer displays a keen awareness of the historical crises that the church had faced in the past and also at the time he was living when Hitler appeared as the new false god and idol. Witnesses in prison were moved to see the way he knelt and prayed before his execution.
The Song of Bernadette
By Franz Werfel (1941)
Franz Werfel was a Jewish German writer living in Austria when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. Being Jewish and a critic of Nazism, he was hunted by the Nazis and he fled his country along with his wife Alma to France. But soon France also fell to the Nazis. Suffering fear, destitution and hunger, the Werfels were told about Lourdes where they found a hiding place among the hospitable villagers there. They heard about the miraculous shrine that made the village famous. Werfel vowed to write a book about the Lourdes if they could escape safe. Though written in the fictional mode, most of it events are based on the life of St Bernadette’s encounter Virgin Mary who revealed to the girl as “The Immaculate Conception.” The novel became a best seller and was later adapted into a successful Hollywood movie.
The story focuses on the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous experiencing a series of eighteen visions in a remote part of Lourdes between February and July 1858. Bernadette is initially ignorant of what she was seeing. She calls her “Lady of Massabielle” whose vision provides her ecstatic experiences during the visitations. But she has to face disbelief and ostracism from the skeptical community and has to face trial on account of her claims. The lady once leads her to discover a small stream springing from beneath the grotto which becomes a source of miraculous healings for many. Its fame spreads and crowds gather. In one vision the lady asks Bernadette to build a chapel on the spot. She conveys the matter to the authorities. Bernadette’s spiritual radiance and behavior makes converts from among the skeptics. But she faces severe opposition, both from the Church and from atheistic and agnostic authorities Her persecutors slowly become protectors. Bernadette refuses to seek cure from the lady for her own tuberculosis. She enters a convent and performs humble duties there. Not long after death Bernadette is canonized.
Dr Gigy Joseph
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