Predigt zum 2. Fastensonntag Lesejahr B 2024 (Gen/Mk, Trost)

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25. Februar 2024 - St. Peter, Sinzig

1. loneliness

• There is a loneliness that I never want to experience. When I pray: "Lead us not into temptation", it resonates for me: Do not lead me into this loneliness in which I have to make a decision that I am all alone with.
  So far, my prayer has been answered. I have never experienced this final loneliness, this final need to make a decision. It was never a matter of life and death, this final responsibility. And where I had to make difficult decisions, I had both a good friend to advise me and the experience of finding the necessary se-curity in prayer - the comfort I needed.
• Abraham must have sorely missed this comfort. The story describes the long journey he has to make. Convinced that this sacrifice was entrusted to him, he had set out . He still has to organise. It is a group with Isaac, his son, and two young servants - perhaps the two who are the same age as Isaac. And Abraham alone with them. Alone with the burden of his mission. Perhaps alone with doubts, but also with the hope that things will somehow turn out differently.
• How can you compare the situation? It occurred to me that two years ago, when Russia expanded its war to the whole of Ukraine, the highest protection in the country was not given to the presi-dent, but to his wife and children. Knowing what Moscow is capable of, they wanted to prevent President Zelensky from being vulnerable to blackmail if he had to make a decision: to save his family or to make the right decision for the country. With all the advisors: How infinitely lonely must a person be in such a situation? - Lord, do not lead us into such a temptation!
  How can you compare the situation? I know of situations in families where the only alternative is to report your father for the violence he uses to bully everyone. Who would want to have to make such a decision alone?

2. Consolation

• The consolation can guide us. Ignatius of Loyola experienced this in his most difficult hours. He has learnt - not the easy way - that it is the quiet voice of consolation that can lead him out of the loneliness of his own despair to see what the meaning of his whole life is. Consolation turned the doubting, desperate hermit into a person who was prepared to help people in community with others.
• Why consolation? Because comforting with consolation is God's answer to loneliness. The word has become central to the prophet Isaiah: "As a man whom his mother comforts, so God comforts his people" (Is 66,13). So it is not the comfort of a child - surely that too! - but the strengthening that the adult needs and receives from his mother, her goodness and wisdom.
• And it is precisely in this comfort that Jesus promises as the parakletos, as it is called in Greek in the Gospel of John, as he bids farewell to his friends, literally: an Advocate, or a Counselor. Christians translated parakletos into Latin as consolator and from there into many languages. But is at the same time the word for the comfort Isaiah spoke about.
• And this is what Ignatius means when he trusts in the comfort or consolation that gives him clues as to which decision in my spiritual, inner life will lead me closer to the goal I am travelling towards. Ignatius is convinced that ultimately everyone can have this experi-ence: If I sincerely and with the necessary inner calm place before God the alternatives that present themselves to me - to do this or that, to choose this path or that - then God will, through his support and consolation, make me realise what is better in each case.
• Sincere means here: When I don't try to instrumentalise God for myself, to gain more prestige, wealth or power through God, as so often happens in the church.
• By the necessary inner peace, we mean that those who are not trained to orientate themselves in silence - as if following a golden ray upwards - will find it difficult to find the inner peace they need to make a decision and pray.
• Ignatius knows that this cannot be done immediately. It needs people to accompany me with their experience. It takes time, attention, practice and repeated silence: but it is the way in which every Christian finds the support that saves us from loneliness in the decision.

3. The way

• Perhaps Jesus himself was the consolation, the Paraclete and Consoler for the disciples. At least there were these moments along the way. Jesus himself had experienced God's encouragement at his baptism in the Jordan: You are my beloved child! Go your way! I am with you! - The three disciples, whom he later takes up the mountain with him, are allowed to share this experience. For them, too, it is orientation on the way: "This is my beloved Son; listen to him."
• But it is also clear from this passage: as much as Peter might wish for it - and we with him - this consolation cannot be held on to. The "building of huts" does not work. The counsellor, who is God's Holy Spirit and consolation for us, is always a counsellor on the way. Just like God himself, God's consolation or comfort is not something that we can not claim and hold on to as a permanent possession. God is not private.
• That is why Ignatius never speaks of what we should seek as the best, but always only of what is better ("more", Latin: "magis"). But along the way, always anew in my life, God is there. More precisely, in Christian terms, the support and comfort of the Holy Spirit.
  I for my part have to be honest, I have to go into silence and prayer. Then it is possible to feel this quiet blowing of the spirit. In the silence of prayer, there is a difference between consolation and desolation, closeness to God and distance from God, which can be like a sign-post.