15 P R O G L A S ”Try ... from the bottom of your heart ... to search for God ... encourage everyone to walk on the way of truth ... so that you too will accept the reward in this and in your future life for all souls that will accept Christ ... in that way you will be remembered like the great Caesar Constantine ...“ The word of the Gospels was our spiritual treasure from the beginning. Even if, on our territory, it was used in liturgy only scantily, it survived as a part of church and folk songs, proverbs, sayings and folk stories. Today we ask ourselves how could Constantine write such a truthful and impressive poem as ”Proglas“, or the Foreword to the Gospels? Fra Angelico is believed to have said: ”Who wants to paint Christ must live with Him ...“ Constantine lived what he said in ”Proglas“ – he lived the Gospels and he lived with Jesus Christ. In ”The Life of Constantine“ we read about his fruitful mission in the land of the Khazars: ”When Kaghan said farewell to the Philosopher, he gave him many gifts. But he did not accept them and said: Give me all the Greeks you captured, that will be the most precious gift. They gave him two hundred of them. Satisfied he went on his way.“ Such an act of love was quite unique in those times. This was the novelty that the Gospels brought about. The author of ”Proglas“ lived in their spirit. Not only his words, but his whole life spoke of Christ. A similar act of Christian love testifies to the beauty of his soul and of his personality. This is how ”The life of Constantine“ describes his visit to Kocel, son of the Prince Pribina: ”Kocel liked Slavonic books very much, learned them and chose fifty disciples to be taught them too. He honoured Constantine in many ways and then bade him farewell. And Constantine took no gold, no silver nor anything from Kocel or Rastislav for his teaching, but asked for 900 prisoners and then let them go.“ This is the spirit of ”Proglas“. This is the Christian love and forgiving that the Church through the faithful ones taught both with words and with actions. In our and in every other country the words of ”Proglas“ have lost nothing of their power: ”Christ comes to gather the nations for He is the Light of this world ...“ These words written sometime after 863 found their echo in the words of St Peter’s successor, John Paul II when he said to the youth of Slovakia during his visit in 1995: ”My dear boys and girls ... Christ, son of God and our redeemer fully responds to the purest desires of human heart. He is come so that we“ might have life and that might have it more abundantly.“ (John 10,10) He has ”the words of eternal life“ (John 6,68). He is ”the way , the truth, and the life.“ (John 14,6) Proglas tells us: ”Hear! Listen to the voice of your reason hear you, the whole Slovien nation hear the Word, sent by the Lord Word that feeds hungry human souls ... ... likewise withers the soul. when it lives not the way of God, when it hears not the Word of God. ...Verily I say unto you, Slovienes this gift is indeed a gift from God ... Matthew and Mark, Luke and John teach all the nations ...“
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