Anthroposophy: the sacrifice of modern intellectuality to the religious deepening of the human heart [Anthroposophia as Iphigenia]

 

Rudolf Steiner: "Not only have many hands been needed to make this festival possible, but it has needed souls who have already permeated themselves with what can be the finest fruit of a life of spiritual effort: spiritual warmth. This spiritual warmth is never without effect and always brings a gradually developing skill in its appropriate sphere. Thus, each time we set to work — first the small group of those here in Munich who are the forerunners of the larger community which then gathers here — we find ourselves filled with spiritual warmth, and, even when to begin with everything seems to go very badly, we have faith that our work must succeed. And it does succeed to the full extent of our capacities. This undertaking proves to us that spiritual forces hold sway in the world, that they help us, that we may entrust ourselves to them. And if sometimes it seems as if things are not going well, then we say to ourselves that if we are not successful it is because the powers behind our activity do not intend us to succeed, and not to succeed would then be the right thing. Thus we do what we have to do without giving a thought to the sort of performance which will finally emerge. We think of the spiritual forces, to which we too in the sense of our own time are making our puny sacrifice — the sacrifice of modern intellectuality to the religious deepening of the human heart. It is beautiful to see what spiritual warmth there is in that small group, wonderful to see how each individual in undertaking his or her by no means easy sacrificial task actually experiences something spiritual. It is a fraternal offering which those who participate in it carry out . . .

Source: https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2020/11/wonders-of-world-ordeals-of-soul.html