Words and Words That Make Things Worse

What can we build? What are we building? Towers of Babel, everywhere, and words and words that make no sense except as rage by which we tear one another apart and spread wreckage everywhere… “words and dialectics only make it worse.”

Without God, the dignity of the human person has no  foundation. The human face becomes opaque, obscure, stirring up mistrust, hatred, distancing, and isolation. The “physical and mental comfort” that is the obsession of the Western world has made us forget God. Do we still think we can bring forth works of enduring beauty?

Here is our hope: we may have forgotten God, but He hasn’t forgotten us. His mercy anticipates us and draws us even in the darkest places in the depths of our hearts — places deeper than we know, where our hearts still cry out to Him.

Christoph Probst was led to meditate on these themes 84 years ago, as he gazed at the ancient churches in Bavaria:

"There stands the cathedral, again and again it appears so beautiful, so great, uplifting and ingenious! The feeling of joy and admiration that I have when I look at it, is always mixed with that of a profound admonition: people were once able to build this – what can you still do today? How poor you feel then, with all the physical and mental comfort of modern times! There would be a lot to say, but words and dialectics only make it worse."

~ Christoph Probst, Strasbourg 1941