There is a kind of power, which is probably the one we know best, that sets itself in opposition to God and is convinced it has no further need of him, can even dispense with him. The essence of such power consists in reducing every existing person and thing to the status of mere object, of pure function, and bending them to the service of its own will.
Other persons and things are not considered as being in themselves created realities with rights of their own, to whose uniqueness I must bow; they are treated as mere functions, that is, as one would treat a machine, as something dead. Such power is ultimately the power of death that never fails to draw even those who use it into the realm of death and the dead. The law that it forces on others becomes its own law.
Hence we may apply here God’s word to Adam: In the day you eat of this fruit, you shall die (Gen 2:17). It cannot be otherwise when power is understood as the opposite of obedience, for man is not lord of all he surveys even if he can dismantle it into large pieces, as one might a machine, and reassemble it.
Nevertheless, he cannot live at odds with being, and when he persuades himself that he can, he falls into the power of lie, that is, of non-being that has only the appearance of being, and so into the power of death. Admittedly, this power can seem very tempting and can make a favorable impression. Its successes are succeses only for the time being, but this time can be of long duration and can blind the individual whose span of life is but a moment.
Nonetheless, this power is neither true nor real. The power that lives in being is stronger. Whoever is on its side has all means at his disposal. But the power of being is not man’s own power; it is the power of the Creator. And faith teaches us this about the Creator: that he is not only Truth, but also Love, and that the two are inseparable. God has as much power in the world as truth and love have. This would be a melancholy thought if all we knew of the world was what we ourselves have been able to observe and experience in the course of our lifetime. But from the perspective of the new experience that God has bestowed on us in Jesus Christ, together with himself and the world, it is a sentence full of triumphant hope.
For now we can read this sentence in reverse: truth and love are identical with the power of God becacuse he not only possesses truth and love, he is Truth and Love. Truth and love are, therefore, the real, the definitive power in the world. On this certainty rests the hope of the Church and the hope of Christians. Or better: that is why Christian existence is one of hope. The Church can be robbed of many things in this world; she can suffer great and painful defeats. Moreover, there are still many elements in the Church that cause her to distance herself from what she really is. That is always being taken from her. But she does not give way; on the contrary, what is inherent in her seems only to be renewed thereby and to acquire new strength. The bark of the Church is the ship of hope. We can board it without anxiety. The Lord of the universe guides and protects it himself.
From: Dresdner Katholikentreffen, July 10, 1987, Deutsche Tagespost, Sept. 15, 1987
