Light for the Blind Monk
Martin Luther
"Mea culpa; mea culpa — my sins, my sins," the young monk cried, as he threw himself on the floor before his superior.
"Give me God's mercy and yours," he begged.
"Poverty, chastity, and obedience must be your dearest companions," the prior intoned.
Young Martin Luther, son of a German peasant, took his solemn vows. Then clad in a woolen under garment, black gown, short cowl, and black belt, he started out to earn God's mercy.
And how hard he tried! He fasted for days at a time. He cast off his blankets at night and almost froze while doing penance. He lay prostrate on the floor and moaned his prayers.
Later he wrote, "If ever a monk could get to heaven by the monkery route I would have gotten there . . . . I should have martyred myself, if I had kept it up longer with watching, praying, reading, and other labors."
Dr. John Staupitz, the vicar-general of the Augustinian order to which Luther belonged, tried to help. "Christ is the forgiveness of sins," he told the young monk. "But you must have a catalogue with real sins written in it if He is to help you."
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Luther tried naming his sins, but this did not bring peace. He pored over a red leather Latin Bible, searching for relief from his burden.
One day in 1508, he was sitting in his tiny tower cell reading the book of Romans. When he came to the seventeenth verse of the first chapter, his first flash of light came. "The just shall live by faith." He rolled the sentence over and over in his mind. Was faith alone enough? He wondered.
Then he received word from his superior that he and another monk had been selected to visit Rome to appeal for a reform among the Augustinian monks. Luther's heart leaped when he heard the news. Surely in the holy city he would find the spiritual peace his heart craved.
When Luther's eyes first gazed upon the city, he fell on his face, crying, "Hail, holy Rome."
He visited every shrine he could find in the city, seeking indulgences for his sins. He came to the famed Sancta Sanctorum, in which was a flight of twenty-eight steps, reputed to be the very steps which Christ climbed in Pilate's judgment hall. Luther knew that Pope Leo IV had promised an indulgence of nine years for each step climbed by a pilgrim on his knees while saying the designated prayers.
As he inched his way up the worn stairs, Luther's voice intoned the prayers. In between prayers he confessed every sin he could bring to mind.
Suddenly he recalled the portion of Scripture he had once read in his tower cell. "The just shall live by faith." The truth shook his inner being. He hesitated for a moment, then abruptly got to his feet and descended the stairs.
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The light was dawning, but spiritual darkness still gripped his soul.
Back in Germany, Luther searched the Scriptures still further. He meditated for hours in Psalms, Romans, and Galatians.
In a solemn ceremony, the University of Wittenberg granted him the degree of doctor of theology. This entitled him to teach theology. But, as he wrote later, "When I was made Doctor, I did not yet know the light."
He lectured on the Psalms, then pushed on into Romans where he wrestled anew with the doctrine of justification by faith. He hated the phrase, "the righteousness of God," because he believed that was the attribute which God used to punish sinners. Still he came back to the sentence, "The just shall live by faith."
Soon the light burst forth and illumined every corner of his dark heart. Later he said, "I saw that the righteousness of God is received from God by faith as a gift. I saw that this was the means by which the merciful God declares the believers righteous."
"I felt myself new-born. All the Scriptures appeared different to me. Instead of hating, now I intensely loved God's righteousness."
And so the new Luther was born — the Luther who set all Europe afire with his preaching of justification by faith.
