"all you who labor and are burdened"

it is indeed eighteen hundred years since Jesus Christ walked here on earth, but this is certainly not an event just like other events, which once they are over pass into history and then, as the distant past, pass into oblivion. no, his presence here on earth never becomes a thing of the past, thus does not become more and more distant-- that is, if faith is at all to be found on earth; if not, well, then in that very instant it is a long time since he lived. but as long as there is a believer, this person, in order to have become that, must have been and as a believer must be just as contemporary with Christ's presence as his contemporaries were. this contemporaneity is the condition of faith, and, more sharply defined, it is faith. Lord Jesus Christ, would that we, too, might become contemporary with you in this way, might see you in your true form and in the surroundings of actuality as you walked here on earth, not in the form in which an empty and meaningless or a thoughtless-romantic or a historical-talkative remembrance has distorted you, since it is not the form of abasement in which the believer see you, and it cannot possibly be the form of glory in which no one as yet has seen you. would that we might see you as you are and were and will be until your second coming in glory, as the sign of offense and the object of faith, the lowly man, yet the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, who out of love came to earth to seek the lost, to suffer and die, and yet, alas, every step you took on earth, every time you called to the straying, every time you reached out your hand to do signs and wonders, and every time you defenselessly suffered the opposition of people without raising a hand-- again and again in concern you had to repeat, "blessed is the one who is not offended at me." would that we might see you in this way and that we then might not be offended at you!

-soren kierkegaard practice in christianity: invocation