# Der Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_Mai 1949_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Page 50 May 1949 Number 5

...work, and yet ought to continue in
prayer and pray without ceasing. If the Holy
Spirit did not teach us to pray and help us to pray,
our prayer life would long since have
grown numb, just as we also cannot retain faith, love, and
hope without his assistance.

To this comes another matter: "We do not know
what we should pray, as it is fitting." We do
not understand how to ask for that which is
necessary for salvation as is fitting. Of the great goods of eternal
glory we have only faint notions,
so that our words of prayer and thoughts
in prayer cannot describe them fittingly and
cannot entreat them worthily enough. Earthly troubles
press down our spirit, and temptations
and doubts torment our soul and make
it despondent. Yes, just try to pray, O Christian,
when your sins really torment you!
Wrestle for your salvation, when the earthly
life's pleasure and joys smile upon you!
Rejoice joyfully with a praying spirit, when
death's terrifying form creeps around your sickbed!
Ah, what can the sinner
pray, when his own spirit is exhausted
and the Holy Spirit has left him, because
he was continually grieved by sins?
There is therefore only one who can rightly pray,
namely the Holy Spirit. And therefore the
Christian, in whose heart he dwells! "For
he can intercede for me with you with sighs
that are altogether unspeakable; he
teaches me to pray rightly in faith, gives
testimony to my spirit that I am your child and a co-heir
of Jesus Christ, so that I cry: Abba, dear Father!"
— How necessary, then, is the spirit of grace and of
prayer for all who wish to pray rightly!

What a comfort it is for us Christians, that
the Holy Spirit is given to us! He puts
himself into our need, kindles our by
nature cold hearts and our weary spirit
to fervent prayer, directs our dim
eyes to the true Christian goal, our
eternal salvation, speaks out of our heart to
God, intercedes with his irresistible
sighing for us before him, is before God's
throne of grace our advocate and represents us
there in the best way with sighing unspeakable
for us humans.

It is certain that he prays better than you,
dear Christian, could ever pray. When the cross
bows you down, when friends forsake you,
when you go to your day's work with trembling
and lie down again to rest full of
care: He remains with you and strengthens you and
sighs in your prayers and even without them
from your heart to God until your blessed
end; only then do your sighing and his
cease and are transformed into pure praise and thanks in
eternal glory. Such
comfort even the worst distress cannot
rob from you.

And "God knows what the mind of the Spirit is." The Holy Spirit
searches all things, even
a Christian's heart. God the Father knows,
knows, hears, and notes the sighing of
his Holy Spirit in my Christian heart,
because between the three persons of the true
Godhead there is nothing hidden. "Then
his Father's heart breaks and surges quite fervently
toward me out of ardent love, so that he cannot
refuse me the request which
I have made according to his
will." He is so well pleased with the holiness
of his sighing, the fervency of
his petitions, the perfectly worthy manner
of his prayers, and the uninterrupted constancy
of his supplication, that he
fulfills his sighing in all Christian hearts according to his good and
gracious will!
Wilde

From the Preaching of the Fathers

On Christ's Ascension
on Mark 16:14–20

"... Recognize from this what a secure
foundation we have in Christ's Ascension for
a joyful faith. If we do not want to believe
that sin, law, and death
lie beneath our feet, then we must
entirely deny Christ's Ascension,
or at least deny that the one who ascended into heaven
is our Savior, our Redeemer, our
Brother, our Head, our Duke, and that
his struggle has won for us so glorious an
outcome. If, therefore, our
sin wants to frighten us, we shall not
let ourselves be brought thereby to despair, but
in faith look upon the Ascension and
say in our heart: Sin, you are
defeated; you shall not conquer me
anew, but as my prisoner shall
serve me, so that I cling all the more
firmly to my Savior. He has ascended
into heaven and I with him; for I grasp him with
the hand of my faith, and I am indeed baptized
into his name. If the Law
wants to condemn us, we shall not
submit to its verdict, but
say in our heart: You are fulfilled, your
demands have been perfectly satisfied;
God's Son has submitted himself to you
in my place; thereby you have lost all your
right over me; for you can accuse him of
nothing; indeed, he has seated himself upon the
highest throne, and is now, Law, your master; not
from you, therefore, but from him do I now
receive my verdict, and that is:
'Grace, mercy, forgiveness!' If
death wants to terrify us and hell
open its jaws against us, we now have no
cause to fear; these have now, through Christ's
Ascension, become empty scarecrows;
comforted, therefore, we can and should now
mock them and say: Death is swallowed
up in victory. Death, where is your sting?
Hell, where is your victory? But thanks be to God,
who has given us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ...."

D. Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther, Professor
of Theology at Concordia College in
St. Louis, Mo., co-founder and first President
of the "German Ev.-Luth. Synod of Missouri,
Ohio and other States" 1811–1887.

An Unheld Funeral Address

"...... Having remembered our departed
friend in love and pain,
I turn now to you, his friends,
neighbors, and colleagues, who
gladly wish to render your comrade his
last honor. In a few minutes we
shall all stand around his grave, and at the close
of the solemn ceremony we shall all sing the
old familiar death-verses of Christendom, which
were also prayed as words of comfort to the departed
on his deathbed:
"If I should one day depart, then depart
not before me," and "Appear to me
as a shield ...."

(The coffin is lowered, the hymn is
struck up and — one hears only some
timid women's voices, while the ten
or twenty men stand mutely by.)

What? You are silent? Have you all caught cold?
Or can you not sing? I know indeed
that some of you sing along in the men's choral
society "Liederperle" or in the choir "Heide-
röschen," and how vigorously your
men's voices sound there! And here, where it is a matter of
striking up, in holy defiance against the ruler
Death, the song of our Savior's
power to help in the hour of death, you fall silent?
I still remember how once at a grave, through
your ill-fitting silence, I was compelled to become an
unwilling solo
singer, and I sang
indeed as loud as I could! I believe also
that a hymn of God sung in faith
signifies a kind of sword-stroke against the evil
enemy. And sword-strokes are indeed manly
matters. Therefore no man should
regard such singing as unbecoming to the manly
nature, nor should he refrain from singing
out of shyness before comrades who perhaps
no longer believe in Christ. As Luther once
says of teachers: "A schoolmaster
must be able to sing, otherwise I do not regard him
at all," so we can say here: A Christian
man must, if he can sing at all,
sing along at the grave and thereby
confess the Lord. —

Therefore, you dear Lutheran men of our
congregations, sing along heartily at
funerals and bear witness thereby that you too
have a Savior who is worthy of being praised
in our life and in our death!

Greve.

The reprint of the two images by Rudolf
Schäfer in this issue takes place with the kind
permission of the publishing house
Gustav Schloeßmann, Leipzig.