Rahner trả lời Robert

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Các bạn thân mến,

Ðây là lá thư cha Rahner trả lời Robert:

Dear Robert,

I hope that you have learned something from the death of your friend and drawn the right conclusions. The right one is not to toy with the thought of suicide. You have nothing to judge in your friend as regards his act because every death in a human being is a mystery that we cannot fathom. Your death in any case is different from that of your friend. Running away from yourself would be an act of cowardice which does not solve any life-problem but merely finalizes it.

Cut out the drinking sprees. Don't experience your relationship with your parents as an affliction calling for self- commiseration but as an enjoined task that you yourself must master. Parents are often limited human beings, quite obviously. Another task for you to learn is to acquire understanding and patience with others.

Perhaps you have already resolved your problem with N. by yourself. Were N.'s parents really so "mean" if your feeling for the girl has again changed and you, at bottom, are happy to be free to take your lifẹ One must have the courage really to learn from one's experiences. Then they can afterward change into "blessed blunders" which one judges mildly but which one does not again commit with exactly the same stupidity as before which unfortunately most do.

You should not give up your "ideals" because it is in them that your true reality inheres, and not in that which persons who are cowardly, short-sighted and smug view as reality. You and I must still learn the faith in the eternal God, in whose infinite breadth and incomprehensibleness all our problems have their definite place and indeed precisely when we ourselves do not know how this will come to pass.

Karl Rahner.

Mai Thư

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