NEUOFFENBARUNG[Gr.01_001,01] You marvel at the fine picture in which the king of the mountains called the Grossglockner raises its head boldly and majestically from among its great brothers, looking, as it were, in every direction towards its children, which branch out from it. But you will find it more wonderful still when I lead you up to it in due order, beginning with its smallest descendants.
[Gr.01_001,02] You may be somewhat surprised when I show you that your Styria has not a single hill on this side of the Drava that is not descended from this father of the mountains. But that is no matter. When we reckon up all the truths at the end, it will become clear how far we have missed the mark in this account.
[Gr.01_001,03] Consider this. If you climb your Schlossberg, or the so-called Rosenberg, or the Plabutsch or the Buchkogel, or go all the way down to the last spurs of the Slovene Hills, I tell you that on all these hills and mountains, including the Alpine peaks you have already climbed, you are still climbing the foot of the Grossglockner.
[Gr.01_001,04] Anyone who finds this hard to believe might take the shortest route along the mountains and begin here on the so-called Buchkogel. From there, let them keep to the ridges. The ridges will vary in height, but will always rise far enough above the valleys to be clearly distinguishable. After a day on this admittedly rather arduous route, the traveller will reach the Alpine mountains that for the most part separate Styria from Carinthia. From there they need only continue the difficult journey across those mountains. If they are sure-footed, they can expect to reach the immediate vicinity of the Grossglockner within ten days at most, without once having had to cross a deep valley.
[Gr.01_001,05] This journey will surely convince them that your Buchkogel, with its spurs extending still further, is indeed connected to this father of the mountains. Anyone unwilling to make such an arduous journey can take a good map instead and follow the same route with a finger, much more comfortably and without losing the way. They will see for themselves that the statement is correct.
[Gr.01_001,06] ‘Yes,’ you will say, ‘that may all be so. After all, even the North Pole is connected to the South Pole, and in the same way the Buchkogel may be connected to the Grossglockner. But what comes of that connection? Where is the gospel in it?’
[Gr.01_001,07] A little patience, my children. Between the Buchkogel and the Grossglockner there is room enough and material enough to sow a good little mustard seed in that ground. It will spring up and spread its branches and roots as far as our great father of the mountains spreads its arms and children.
[Gr.01_001,08] A question arises at once. ‘Does it matter that the Grossglockner raises its head above all the mountains up there, that in another country a different mountain rises higher still, and that in yet another country a third looks out over all the others?’
[Gr.01_001,09] My answer is brief. This is indeed necessary. The great height of such mountains is essential to the proper preservation, in natural terms, of the countries where they stand and of a whole continent. Europe, for example, depends on the three mountains I have more or less named to you, and Asia and America depend on theirs, and so on.
[Gr.01_001,10] This answer immediately raises another question. ‘How so?’ you ask. ‘How is that possible?’
[Gr.01_001,11] I give you another brief answer. It is just as the life of the body depends on the head. If the head is removed from the trunk or otherwise badly injured, the life of the rest of the body soon comes to an end.
[Gr.01_001,12] Let that answer suffice for now, for the relationship of such mountains to the rest of the land is exactly like that of the head to the rest of the body. Although life does not proceed directly from the head, the head is the chief organ that receives natural life. From there life goes out to every part of the body and directs the whole. The human body has many other extremities it can lose without losing its life. Its uppermost extremity, however, cannot be lost without the loss of life.
[Gr.01_001,13] So it is with our highest mountains. You might dig away the whole Buchkogel. You might even set about doing the same to a higher Alpine mountain if you had the inclination and strength. But if anyone could set about levelling the Grossglockner as they might level the Buchkogel or another Alpine mountain, the undertaking would not pass as harmlessly. Levelling lesser heights would have scarcely any perceptible ill effects. Levelling the Grossglockner, on the other hand, would soon plunge a vast, unbounded stretch of country into perpetual winter or at the very least turn it into a great lake.
[Gr.01_001,14] You will ask again, ‘How so? How is that possible?’
[Gr.01_001,15] A small example will make the matter clear to you at once.
[Gr.01_001,16] You know that all the blood takes its course from the body into the head. If the head is severed from the body, what does the blood do? There you have it already, for you yourselves say, ‘The blood will immediately leave the veins and pour out over the body. The veins and the whole body will shrivel, and the body will certainly die.’
[Gr.01_001,17] The same applies to a mountain of this kind. It receives the mightiest sources of water within the earth, holds them down by the great weight of its base and lets only enough escape through its pores to water the whole surrounding country. It carefully draws back into itself, from the air, the excess of these continual exhalations from the waters within. To keep that excess from escaping so easily, it turns it into permanent ice and snow. This is why the mountain is so rarely seen free of mist or cloud.
[Gr.01_001,18] What it does, all its children and little children must do in their own time and as occasion requires, though on a smaller scale.
[Gr.01_001,19] Why do I say ‘children and little children’? For the simple reason that when mountains were formed, the highest mountains of the earth were the first to form. The others then formed from them in connected order, in the manner you already know. You must not imagine, for example, that the Grossglockner was formed today, its children tomorrow and its little children the day after. Long periods separate these stages of formation, often extending over several million years of the earth, so that in any country there are scarcely two mountains of the same age. You can see that our Grossglockner belongs among the oldest mountains on earth, first because I call it a ‘father of the mountains’, second because it stands as the head of several lands, and third because its rock, which differs greatly from that of its children and little children, bears witness to it.
[Gr.01_001,20] The higher the mountains rise towards their father, the older they are, and the more their summits are adorned with lasting snow and ice, the more lofty and significant they become. Remember this well, for what follows will show how important this statement is in many respects. Let us dispense with long digressions and turn to the main matter at once, first in its natural aspect, then in its spiritual aspect and finally in the light of the gospel.
[Gr.01_001,21] Many people say, ‘Give me one gentle hill, alive with fields, meadows, orchards, woods and pasture. I would far rather have it than a hundred Grossglockners!’
[Gr.01_001,22] In one respect they are right. You cannot plant a vineyard on the perpetual snow and ice of the Grossglockner. Not even the humblest plant, such as the tough moss that grows on rock, can thrive there.
[Gr.01_001,23] But I ask you, is a mountain to be judged solely by how well plants grow on it? If fertility were all that mattered, every mountain would be superfluous. It is clearly easier to work on the plain than on any mountain, and experience will already have taught you how well everything grows on the plain. It is foolish, then, to judge a mountain by its fertility, for that is not what its existence depends on. The matter turns on quite a different point. Those who value a fertile hill above a barren high glacier will have to take back what they said and allow me to say that a square fathom of ice on the Grossglockner is in itself worth more than a square mile of the most fertile hills.
[Gr.01_001,24] Here you will ask once more, ‘How so? How is that possible?’
[Gr.01_001,25] I tell you that if the only thing that mattered were the income you could earn, you could not earn a single heller with your eyes alone, though you could do so with your hands and feet. Is the eye any the less valuable for that than the hands and feet, which you could scarcely use without the light of the eye? And yet how small the pupil is compared with the hands and feet. Before taking hold of anything with your hand, must you not first take it in with your eye? And must your eye not always go ahead of your feet?
[Gr.01_001,26] If you consider this, you will see why I value a square fathom of icy ground on the Grossglockner above a whole square mile of the most fertile hill country. Just as your hands and feet would yield little fruit without the eye, the plains and low hills would bear pitifully little fruit without the perpetual snow and ice of the glaciers. In this respect, many a prosperous farmer might well travel to the Grossglockner and kiss its ice in my name, for the whole fertility of his land depends upon a patch of its ice no bigger than a kiss.
[Gr.01_001,27] Are you about to ask again, ‘How so? How is that possible?’ A little patience. The answer is coming.
[Gr.01_001,28] As the old saying goes, like keeps company with like. If there is a damp stone in the wall of your room, it will not readily dry out. It will draw moisture from every side and pass the excess on to the wall around it, making a large damp patch in your room.
[Gr.01_001,29] So it is with our Grossglockner. It too is a very large damp stone in the vast lands of a continent, drawing to itself from far and wide the excess moisture suspended in the air. If that moisture remained in liquid form on its rock faces, it would soon escape from this giant stone in great torrents and devastate much of the surrounding country. To prevent this, the mountain’s height and the particular character of its rock cause the moisture it has drawn in to turn at once into snow, hail and ice.
[Gr.01_001,30] But here you will say, ‘If that really is what happens, then in time the mountain must grow until it towers over all Europe!’
[Gr.01_001,31] Yes, it certainly would if it had no children and little children. But the children relieve their father of its burden in this way. As the load of ice and snow increases from above and outside, the lower and older masses of snow and ice are pressed and squeezed ever more tightly. Under that pressure the particles of water and air ignite in countless small portions, dissolve again into misty vapours and rise from their prison. A glacier of this kind exerts its strongest attraction only in its highest regions. The vapours that have escaped from its lower regions would therefore either flow down in torrents of liquid into the lower plains and destroy everything, or, at least at higher elevations, join the snow and ice. The snow and ice would keep spreading and increasing until in a thousand years whole tracts of country would be buried beneath them.
[Gr.01_001,32] To prevent either outcome, this father of mountains and lands has countless children at its side, all eager to take on their father’s excess burden. Around them in turn sit many little children, eager to take whatever is too much for them. Whatever is still too much for the little children becomes a blessing they bestow on all the broad lowlands beyond.
[Gr.01_001,33] If you grasp this to any extent, you will easily see why vast, interconnected mountain ranges extend in every direction from so high a mountain, almost like rays. It will no longer sound so ridiculous when I tell you that even from your household wells you drink water from the Grossglockner, and that there are very few springs in your country that do not owe their fruitful existence to this father of mountains and lands.
[Gr.01_001,34] ‘Yes,’ you will say, ‘but what, then, is rainwater?’
[Gr.01_001,35] I tell you that in your country a drop of rain seldom falls from the clouds unless it has been sent over the land by the Grossglockner and its far-reaching children. You would hardly be mistaken in saying, ‘The Grossglockner rains over our land!’
[Gr.01_001,36] Why? Because it has three distinct, far-reaching arms, each with great power. The first stretches out in every direction in its children and little children. The second reaches through all the springs, brooks, rivers and streams, often farther than its children and little children. The third and longest arm is the region of clouds. For several lands it has its centre at the Grossglockner itself, and in the many children scattered far and wide it has watchful guardians and lesser resting places, where it gathers again in ever thicker masses of mist. If these masses gather too densely, on the Choralpe for example, that mountain also has little children below it, eager to take a large part of their mother’s burden. The third arm of the Grossglockner then generally pours out as beneficial rain, comes to the aid of the frail plants and animals of the plains and provides them with a welcome meal.
[Gr.01_001,37] Yet this is only one useful function and purpose of this father of mountains and lands in the natural world.
[Gr.01_001,38] Two other, much more important purposes lie behind it. We shall learn about them as this account continues. When you come to know them, you will see inwardly and with increasing clarity how useful such an apparently lifeless mountain giant is. Truly, I tell you, everything in the world is upside down. Where you see much liveliness on earth, there is just as much death. Where you think everything has sunk into eternal death, there generally reign the greatest fullness of life and an incalculable intensity of its activity.
[Gr.01_001,39] This is why most of the prophets and seers were at home in the mountains, and why I myself, when I was on earth as a human being, was particularly fond of spending time there. On a mountain I dismissed the tempter for ever. On a mountain I fed so many hungry people. On a mountain I gave all heaven away in my Word. On a mountain I showed myself transfigured as life from all eternity to the three you know. On a mountain I prayed, and on a mountain I was crucified.
[Gr.01_001,40] Honour the mountains, then. Truly, the higher they raise their summits above the muddy depths of human self-interest, the more holy they are and the greater the blessing they bestow upon the rest of the land.
[Gr.01_001,41] We have already heard something of how this comes about. What follows will bring it all into the clearest light. For today, let us leave it there.