Celebrity Fever: Poets and Pope Benedict in Germany

For the last few days (September 22-25), I and various sisters here in Munich have been glued to the TV as Pope Benedict made his third visit to Germany as Pope. My experience of this visit, however, began a week before his arrival. I had a friend from Hungary who was studying in the small but historic town of Jena, in the eastern German state of Thüringen. She would only be there until the end of September, so I was anxious to see her before she left. Now, I knew Jena was famous because the great German poet Friedrich Schiller had lived there. I also knew that the town of Weimar, famous because of the even greater poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was in the same area. (Goethe is pretty much the German Shakespeare, and these two poets are German classicism, just to give you an idea of how famous they are.) What I didn’t know, however, was that just 45 minutes from Jena was the city of Erfurt, where Martin Luther had been an Augustinian monk. Erfurt was one of the stops on Pope Benedict’s packed itinerary, specifically because of its connection to Luther; ecumenism between Lutherans and Germans is a pretty hot topic in the German Church right now, with the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation coming up in 2017.

So, in all my anxiety to visit my friend, I got very confused as to various dates. She had said that she might be able to get me a ticket to the Pope’s Mass at Erfurt. At first I thought the Mass was on Monday, when I had to work. Then my friend thought it was on Sunday, when she had to leave for Hungary. To make matters worse, she had no internet with which to communicate. Anyway, it ended up that I went to Jena exactly a week before the Pope came to Erfurt. I wasn’t so bothered by this until I realized how close the towns were. Saturday night I stood in front of the Cathedral at Erfurt, looking at the massive altar they were setting up for the Pope, exactly a week too early. Then it hit me how narrowly I’d missed him, and I was quite depressed and angry with myself for a few days.

Now, just hours before all this Pope-craziness took hold of me, I was obsessed with poet-craziness. We looked at Schiller’s garden house, Schiller’s town house, Goethe’s garden house, the botanical garden where Goethe studied, the university where Schiller studied and taught, and even Goethe’s girlfriend’s house. I even paid to see the graves of the pair of them, though I thought this both expensive and overly touristy. It was in Schiller’s garden, though, that something caught my eye and made pause and think about all this madness. Near the gate was a concrete bust of Schiller, painted white but chipped in places, with rain dripping down the graven features. This made me think of the multitude of Greek marble statues I’d seen in various museums, and of how the classicists were crazy about the Greeks—almost idolized them, you could say. I could only think of the Bible verse (Ps. 135: 16-18) that talks about how those who build idols will become like them—mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see etc. Now, I’m not saying these poets were really guilty of idolatry, but it did make me think about the fanatical way in which I was retracing their every step. This was also a warning against making an idol of a famous person, reducing them to one concrete, static image without actually getting to know them, so to speak, or entering into a dialogue with them. Crazy as I was about Schiller, I think I’ve read exactly two poems of his, and the first few lines of one of his plays. Strange as it may be, the moment when Goethe and Schiller seemed most alive to me was when I was standing at their graves, when I remembered that they were real people with eternal souls which could possibly benefit from my prayers. I also began to realize, on the train ride home, that the best way to get to know these poets was to interactively read their works and discuss them with others, seeing what relevance they had for our lives today.

This brings me back to my disappointment at not seeing the Pope in person. I realized that in order to get to know him, I should read his writings, discuss them, learn from them and apply them, instead of just blindly cheering along with the 100,000-person crowd, cool as this would have been. I came away from Jena and from the TV screen bound and determined to read Pope Benedict’s homilies, encyclicals and books, and to think about them, discuss them, and write about them. Then I realized I could do this with the Bible to get to know Jesus better…funny what thought processes a little statue can trigger!

My First Week in Munich

It’s been exactly a week since I arrived in Munich at the Jugendwohnheim St. Ermelinda, a kind of dorm for female students and apprentices, run by the Salesian sisters. I did not have many expectations coming into this experience, but I still managed to be caught off guard a bit. I imagined myself being here for the girls, helping the new ones move in, showing them around etc. Somehow it slipped my mind that I would also be one the “new ones”. For the first few days, all the sisters had to show me how everything worked (not that they’re done with that), and the girls that had already lived here for a few years showed me around the town a little. (Thank goodness for this one very outgoing Polish girl who invited me to join her on several outings, and who can keep a conversation alive!) I was kind of frustrated with this situation—I was there to help them. Then I remembered that I couldn’t be there for the girls nearly as well if I didn’t experience the things they experienced. I had to be the small-town stranger in the big city, staring wide-eyed at the metro plan and fumbling with my map, before I could help the other new girls find their way.

So far my jobs have been great amounts of housecleaning and list typing (both very typically German I think), dish washing, manning the reception desk and locking the doors to the dorm at night. Eventually I hope to do some spiritual activities with the girls, but Bavaria still has vacation, so there aren’t that many people here right now.

I think perhaps one of the hardest things about being here will be convincing myself that it’s actually worth it. I’m still struggling with that feeling that I should have gone to a third world country, especially while hearing about the German VIDES volunteers who went to Zambia and (I think) Venezuela. I almost don’t dare call myself a missionary, having visited a famous art museum (the Alte Pinakotek in Munich) my first weekend here, and being kept awake at night by one measly little mosquito. My relatives over here (of which there are many) seemed to not quite comprehend what I was doing here. Missionary work? We don’t need missionaries…And then I’m almost kind of jealous of all the girls who are studying at the university here, thinking that that could be me right now…Anyway, my consolation is the fact that all this craziness—flying all the way across an ocean to wash dishes for ten months—is for God. If the other girls see that I’m doing what I’m doing for God, then that will be a witness to God’s power and love.

In reading the above paragraph, please do not think that I am overwhelmed with negativity. I am enjoying getting to know the sisters and the girls and the city (and I am doing more than just dishes). It does seem as if the sisters could use a hand. Today one of the girls who’s been here for a while said that the sister more-or-less in charge seemed happier since I’d gotten here. Hopefully she was right. One beneficial thing about being here in Europe is that I will have ten whole months to focus on how to be a missionary, a witness to God’s love, in the same contemporary world that awaits me upon my return home.