Spiritual Gift

The Rev. Hanns Lilje, Lutheran pastor, was awakened from an afternoon nap in his house in Berlin by the violent ringing of the doorbell. He guessed at once that the two men at the door were secret police. Inside him a voice seemed to whisper, "Now, it's begun!"

He was right. What began in 1944 for Dr. Lilje--solitary confinement, bullying and long interrogations at the hands of the Gestapo--was ended at last by U.S. troops. For Pastor Lilje, as for many another persecuted Christian, the experience deepened his religious faith. Now bishop of Hanover and one of Germany's Protestant leaders, Bishop Lilje shows the spiritual fruits of his imprisonment in a short, simply written book published in the U.S. last week--The Valley of the Shadow (Muhlenberg Press; $1.25).

The Power. Among the political prisoners in the Gestapo jail, says Lilje, the Christian faith flourished as never before. "The longer our imprisonment lasted, the more evident it became that there was another power amongst us. It was much stronger than that of the common political-resistance: that power was the Christian Faith. It was significant to see how one after another realized this fact; once it was admitted, our sense of its power increased."

Somehow the spiritual needs of the prisoners were filled. A Jesuit priest managed to grant absolutions and perform clandestine Mass each day for Roman Catholic prisoners. Lilje and other Protestant pastors wrote meditations and commentaries to be passed around. Among the most heroic were the Jehovah's Wit nesses. Owing to their "absolute love of truth, the Gestapo were glad to use these men in various prisons as informers, for in their love of truth they always went so far that they disregarded all ties of comradeship ... In spite of this, we owe them that respect which we would give to the fanatics at the period of the Reformation. Like them, with exemplary patience, they suffered unto death; no other Christian community had as many martyrs."

The Depths. Transferred to another prison where his execution seemed imminent, Lilje reached new depths of spiritual and physical suffering. But at this stage of utter helplessness he found his sense of God most sure. "At this extreme limit of human life," he writes, "it becomes clear why God is with those who are despised, outcast, tortured, imprisoned, disinherited and solitary . . .

"At this period in my life I began to understand that God can only reveal [His mercy] to a man who is in the depths of suffering and desolation. Hence one whom God has led into this school of knowledge can only praise Him for this experience, as the most wonderful spiritual gift that he has ever received."

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