Author of more than 4000 books and articles, of unique profundity and originality, described by Pope John Paul II as a "treasured" theologian, consulted and honoured by the leading German Cardinals and the great American moral theologian, Fr. Richard McCormick, S.J. who wrote: "Karl Rahner became the most prolific and greatest theologian of the century and arguably of several centuries." Also, recipient of fifteen honorary doctorates.

Because of Rahner's profundity, his works are not easily understood but fortunately one of Rahner's greatest scholars, Fr. Harvey Egan, S.J., has labored hard to "popularise" Rahner in two books, "Content of Faith" (with two other theologians) and more especially in "Karl Rahner, Mystic of Everyday Life." This latter book is a classic of precision and clarity and I shall quote copiously from this source, with permission of the publishers, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York.

Lover of Jesus Christ. Passionate love of the person of Jesus Christ must stamp every Christian's life. To Rahner, Jesus is no abstract religious ideal but a real flesh and blood person. The God-Man is not just another charismatic human being but God's humanity in the world. God became flesh primarily to share his life with us. Because of our sin, God's self-giving must also forgive, heal and redeem us.

Christ is so close to us. The everydayness of Jesus' life impresses Rahner deeply. Jesus' life remains completely within the framework of everyday living - we could even say that in him concrete human existence is found in its most basic and radical form. In Christ, God has assumed, as it were, the everyday routine of human existence.

Love for Jesus Christ and love for neighbour can never be in competition, according to Rahner. We must love our neighbour whom we can see- if we are to love Jesus whom we CANNOT see. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus plays a very important part in Rahner's spiritual and theological life. Only a year before his death he wrote an article in which he lamented the demise of this devotion in the Western world.
We must eventually, in the luminous and in the very darkest hours of life, try to pray: "Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us"…and try to realise that God, the incomprehensible, truly loves us and that in the heart of Jesus this love has become irrevocable.

Karl Rahner: Teacher of Prayer

Explicit prayer and deep theological reflection on prayer - these themes punctuated Rahner's entire life. When challenged by an interviewer because of his great faith despite the horrors of Nazism, Rahner replied: "I believe because I pray." And he added: "One can rightly answer that at least some of these unfortunate human beings went to the gas chambers praying and believing in God."

The most important aspect of human dignity, according to Rahner, is that "man can at all events speak to God, address him and in address come to him…in grace as the place of prayer, which is everywhere. The creature is a genuine, true reality who does not evaporate into nothingness when he faces God." Saying yes to God with one's entire being, with the help of God's grace, actuates a person's "highest possibility." And this must be noted - one seriously misunderstands Raher's view of God as mystery if one does not understand God as the loving, personal, incomprehensibility.

Rahner stresses the prayer of petition and insists it is always heard. Because of the I-Thou relationship between the human person and God, the person must always surrender lovingly his or her actual everyday self to God. For that reason Rahner urges people to pray "in the everyday"… around the circumstances of our often routine lives. He says "Everything depends on how we bear this everyday. It can make us humdrum - but it can also make us free from ourselves as nothing else can. "Even if one simply says, 'Dear God, help me!" that is already splendid." And again this simple message: "By praying, one learns to pray."

Rahner once said to his close colleague, Harvey Egan, SJ: "Beware of the person of no devotions and the person who does not pray." Rahner took a dim view of the decline in such eucharistic devotions as silent adoration before the tabernacle and a period of thanksgiving after receiving Communion.

And he does not hesitate to remind us: "the sanctuary lamp of our Catholic churches continues to invite us to a silent lingering before the mystery of our redemption." And the role of love in prayer: "Only persons who love others and include them lovingly in their lives can truly achieve … immediacy to God."

Rahner's Optimism in Faith and Prayer: His constant stress on God's irrevocable love for us through the merits of Christ must surely be a strong incentive to pray and persevere in prayer - in spite of difficulties and darkness of soul. Rahner believes that one of the great achievements of the Second Vatican Council is its optimism about salvation. "It is one of the ironies of history," writes Fr Harvey Egan, "that from the beginning of Christianity right down to our century, a key question was: who will be saved? Since the Second Vatican Council the question is: will anyone be damned?"

Preacher of the Good News: Rahner stressed that he did not enter the Jesuits to become a scholar or a professor but to "minister to people." He preached almost daily for much of his fifty-two years of priestly life. The priest, to him is not primarily a theologian but one ordained to preach. Rahner takes seriously Christ's claim that his message is truly "good news", addressed to the poor person (Matt 11.5). In this context the poor person is essentially one who sees himself as a sinner. To such a person Jesus says that the gracious reign of God is now present and has been liberated by Christ. Deep down, Christianity preaches an absolute joy, an absolute, an unlimited reality - truly "good news". Rahner writes: "God's grace and his irrevocable self-communication to us has appeared bodily, definitively and irrevocably to us in Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified and risen one. This good news must be proclaimed." And again: "We have experienced the everlasting and irrevocable love of God in Jesus Christ which has blown away all our limitations."

He insists on good preaching and regrets the priest who knows only how to repeat boring, catechism-like homilies but forever aim at how the Gospel was be preached in a way that awakens and claims the allegiance of faith." The priest must preach the ancient truths in a new, living way.

He must say the old in a new way. There must be an attempt to proclaim the gospel's good news to the contemporary person in a way that touches this person's heart.

Preaching the human mystery - Christian Pessimism and Optimism: How are we to understand ourselves? The Church must preach Christian pessimism and optimism because it understands the human person as a redeemed sinner. Adam's sin AND God's victorious offer of himself to us in Christ as irrevocable love - both permeate our being.

The preaching of Christian pessimism must alert Christians to an undeniable fact - they have been born into a world partially made by the free sinful decisions of those preceeding them …. A world steeped in guilt. But this pessimism cannot be an excuse for doing nothing to improve the world. St Paul preached a Christian pessimism and optimism when he said: "We are perplexed but not driven to despair." (2Cor.4:8) Rahner sees in these words not only Paul's situation as an apostle but also "a feature of Christian life always and everywhere."

Preaching Christian pessimism, according to Rahner, "is quite legitimate because the Christian message is convinced that, in the final analysis, to admit sin is the same as to admit suffering." Rahner stresses this point.

Christian Optimism: Because Rahner never takes his eye off God's victorious and irrevocable victory in Christ over sin and death, he stresses the preaching of Christian optimism. Jesus's two prayers on the cross express to Rahner what he means by Christian pessimism and Christian optimism. Jesus prayed not only "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" but also: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." The incomprehensible God of healing, forgiving love, is our past, present and future. "I believe that God will triumph over the stupidity of malice in humanity. God will not abandon us."

Fr. Emmet Costello SJ