Holy and easter days in a completely new silence

adminonDecember 29, 2021January 27, 2022Leave a Comment

Holy and easter days in a completely new silence

Easter candles shine this year to a large extent lonely before itself. © Harald Oppitz (KNA)

It’s a sad first: Easter will take place without churchgoers because of Corona. But just clicking on the Internet, it can not be, says Capuchin and psychologist Father Ludger. He recommends to look for a real place outside.

Interviewer: We cannot celebrate the highest feast of Christianity properly, what does that do to us human beings??

Father Ludger agidius Schulte (Capuchin monk, psychologist): That can be very different, it also depends a bit on how you deal with other challenges and what patterns that exposes in you: Basically, it is first of all for the one who believes, not new to connect Easter also with this big challenge.

We celebrate at Christmas that God has accepted the world, and at Easter that he overcomes it, breaks through it, transforms it, can lead it into completely new dimensions. We also sometimes forget that the "insecurity" of the human being is actually part of being human itself. All of this is coming up massively now and will be looked at consciously during Holy Week; not only as a story of guilt, but also as a question of "How do I deal with pain, with boundaries, with loneliness, with judgments" and so on?.

These are all big pictures. I can’t celebrate that concretely in the community right now. But I can definitely understand it in different places. And there is important to find a place.

Interviewer: A place in the heart? In my head?

Father Ludger: Yes, also inwardly, but not only. I ask myself the question: in spite of everything, can I still find places where I can walk the Stations of the Cross outside?? A lot has to do with expression, a lot has to do with "how do I express and connect with my feeling" and how can I connect faith and my feeling??

Interviewer: Only no matter what we do, it’s not a substitute for Easter as we usually celebrate it, with all the great digital offers from church service broadcasting to pastoral care. Isn’t it also important to admit that, that you don’t overplay this loss, this grief, but that you somehow accept it??

Fr. Ludger: That is very important, in the spiritual life anyway. "Would have" and "would be" are omitted because of "is not". So to always face a reality, but needs ways. I can’t do that automatically at the push of a button. I have to allow that first. This year it is different, and now the question is, how do I want to shape this otherness?? How do I also take very specific points?

I can say that there is a huge offer and sometimes also a bustling offer, which does not help me at all, rather confuses me, especially also in the digital area. I suggest one goes along with an offer continuously, brings more peace into it, rather than me constantly zapping around according to the motto "where is now something interesting?"

So I have to decide to translate this other situation into design. And that means that I have to say to myself: I’m going to do something very special on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday or Easter Day in order to find an inner form again.

I can do that in different ways. I can do that through internet offers, by visiting this page and going along, but I can also do that, for example, by looking for a place for myself and lighting my candle there. I can do that in a way so that I don’t endanger myself or others.

Interviewer: So your advice is not to think about what we have to do without, but on the contrary – to think positively. How can I shape that?

Father Ludger: Yes, exactly. It is very important to create a railing and to be aware of it: These days are otherwise also shaped by rites, for example, that one meets for the liturgies on Holy Thursday or Good Friday and now instead consciously knits a substitute program and begins to organize it concretely. There are a lot of offers, and I choose one that suits me.

Interviewer: In my opinion, the most difficult thing for some will be the Easter Vigil, which is the end of Lent. We now deal with the fact that with Easter we are not redeemed from deprivation after all?

Fr. Ludger: Let me give you an example of what we are doing right now in the monastery. We are currently trying to organize something. At the moment the florists cannot sell their flowers. We have talked to florists, they will bring a lot of flowers here. And we will then make a so-called Easter flower island on the large parking lot in front of the monastery. This will be a resurrection picture, and there we will arrange so to speak quite a lot of flowers.

People can come by on their bicycles and put a flower down and just find a place. I have to look a little bit, where can I create a ritual for myself, if I would like to do that?? I can only advise – also the pastors – that at Easter the churches are decorated in a Easter way, that they wear the normal decorations, so that people can go in there, that the Easter candle is clearly displayed, so that people first of all know that the space is there. I can not do it now in the large group. This is not possible at the moment. But I also have haptic tangible places to be. Not only internet-related.

Above all, it is very important when you start something that you really do it with living signs. That means, I can bring a flower to a cross and celebrate my Easter there. I can do things that symbolize exactly what they do otherwise, that can not do on a large scale.

The interview was conducted by Renardo Schlegelmilch.

Queen Silvia of Sweden opened a Malteser Hilfsdienst meeting place for dementia patients in Bottrop on Friday. The Bottrop facility is the first Malteser has built for people in the early stages of dementia.

She gets her own chair, of course – with velvet upholstery in dark blue and green. On Friday, Sweden’s Queen Silvia of Sweden (68) opened the Malteser Hilfsdienst’s (MHD) first nationwide meeting place for people with incipient dementia. And was allowed to sit quite nobly. All the others, including the Catholic Bishop of Essen, Franz-Josef Overbeck, as well as the local political celebrities took their seats on profane black plastic chairs.

The monarch does not seem aloof because of this – on the contrary. She seeks a bath in the crowd, eagerly shakes many hands, smiles reservedly. In the center of her then following speech she puts then her donation "Silviahemmet", which she had created 1996 after dementia experiences with her own mother. The foundation trains specially trained "Silvia nurses" who focus on the needs of the patients. A concept that seems to meet with approval from Malteser Germany, which has been in contact with the Swedish organization for ten years now. According to the foundation’s guidelines, Malteser has already formed 2 since 2009.2000 employees and volunteers.

Dementia is a disease that poses great challenges for Sweden and Germany, explains German-born Silvia on this sunny spring day. And adds: World-wide by the demographic change already 35 million humans are ill with it. Without medical progress, 100 million people could suffer from dementia in the future. She still speaks her mother tongue fluently – only when it comes to the year her foundation was founded, 1996, does she pause briefly before pronouncing it. Let there be no number crunching. She then also correctly says "1996" and not "1969". This was well received by the audience and the press, and everyone had to smile. "Nice!" whispers a press photographer.

Insights into private life
In addition to these rather superficial impressions, however, the queen also provides insights into her private life when she reports on her mother’s illness. She has learned how stressful such an illness is for the relatives, too – and that specially trained staff have to focus on the needs of the affected persons.

The "MalTa" meeting place now being built in Bottrop is intended to encourage day visitors suffering from early forms of dementia to take part in various participatory activities. The relatives should also be able to exchange information during the visit. For the future Malteser wants to establish such facilities all over Germany – with different offers for ill people and their families.

After her speech, the queen takes her seat again on the dark blue-green armchair. Once again a reserved smile, as if she could not understand the hype around her person. A little later follows the equally unexcited and friendly farewell. And that is then again somehow royal.

After the recent controversies at the Islam conference, parts of the SPD are calling on Muslims to boycott the roundtable. The appeal has met with protest not only from the CDU/CSU – but also from the Greens and the Alevi community. In an interview, SPD politician Lale Akgun, who heads the "International Cooperation" department in the North Rhine-Westphalia Integration Ministry, explains her opposition to the conference.

Interviewer: Calling for a boycott after a heated debate is what the vice chairman of the Alevi community in Germany literally calls "nonsense". How would you describe a boycott of the Islam Conference?–

Lale Akgun: Well, you know that I was very critical of this Islam Conference from the beginning and was of the opinion that it should be abolished. So, one should not call for a boycott of the conference, but quietly bury this Islam conference.

Interviewer: For what reason?–

Lale Akgun: I think that if you look at the meaning of a conference at the federal level, you quickly come to the conclusion that the federal government has little to say about religion. They know: Religion is a state matter and must be dealt with at the state level. There the really important, effective, concrete decisions are made, also for the religious groups. That is the federation makes at this point rather symbol politics. And I think enough symbolic politics have already been done on this ie, and the Islam Conference, in my opinion, did nothing at all. And at the moment it even has the opposite effect, it enrages people, it creates polarization in society. And for this reason, I am of the opinion that enough is enough with the Islam Conference.

Interviewer: Interior Minister Friedrich is being criticized – is he really so unsuitable or does this not rather fit into the stereotypical image that a CSU politician in this office likes to be put into at the next best opportunity??–

Lale Akgun: Well, I think the federal interior minister actually really put his foot in his mouth at this point. It’s not like you’re doing a conference to control or criticize people. That is not the purpose of a conference. So they don’t hold a conference with a target group and then tell this target group that they don’t belong to it. That’s why I believe that the Federal Minister of the Interior has made a very bad start with the Islam Conference. It was much more clumsy than its predecessors and has now also lost a certain amount of trust. It’s hard to go on at this point.

Interviewer: What do you think of Friedrich’s idea of a security partnership between Muslims and the German state??–

Lale Akgun: That is now really nonsense high 3. What kind of security partnership is this supposed to be?. I don’t like to use hackneyed words like general suspicion and so on, but I think to think that you could get people in the mosque to look at who is talking in conformity with democracy here and who is not, that’s not very effective because most people are of course in conformity with democracy. And the others who are not will be careful not to say so in public. The state needs and has other mechanisms to control, to monitor those who do not agree with our democracy. We have security, we have police, these are the right organs to watch people and to ensure our security. But not the mosque community or the imam.

Interviewer: Say simply, abolish Islam Conference, or how could it be continued or better designed?–

Lale Akgun: I say simply, abolish Islam Conference, because the thing has outlived itself. It was a media hype, to use the word for once. There has been enough talk about it in public. One has noticed the controversy. And I think at this point it has been good, and we or those responsible should now turn to the concrete work, if we really want to achieve something, and that is where the work really needs to be done: on the ground in the communities and at the state level. And otherwise, I think it’s enough with the symbol politics.
Interview: Uta Vorbrodt

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