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.jpg) On October 31, 1517, a little-known Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 statements on the church door in Wittenberg.
As a monk, Luther practiced extreme asceticism. However, he found even the most agonizing attempt to gain assurance of salvation brought him no inward peace. He prayed and fasted and chastised himself even beyond the strictest monastic rules.
No amount of penance or advice from his superiors could still Luther’s conviction that he was a doomed sinner. He said later of this time, “For however irreproachably I lived as a monk, I felt myself in the presence of God to be a sinner with a most unquiet conscience, nor could I believe that I pleased him with my satisfactions. I did not love, indeed I hated this just God, if not with open blasphemy, at least with huge murmuring, for I was indignant against him, saying ‘as if it were really not enough for God that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin, and oppressed with all kind of calamities through the law of the ten commandments, but God must add sorrow on sorrow, and even by the gospel bring his wrath to bear.’ Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience, and yet I continued to knock away at the Apostle Paul (reference to Luther’s study of Romans 1:17) in this place, thirsting ardently to know what he really meant.”
In 1510, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was shocked by the worldliness of the Roman clergy.
While in Rome, Luther celebrated Mass every day, sometimes several times a day. He found himself regretting his parents were still alive, for...
“I would have loved to deliver them from Purgatory with my Masses and other special works and prayers.”
In an attempt to deliver his grandfather from Purgatory, Luther scaled the steps of the Santa Scala on his knees saying a prayer on each step. When he reached the top he
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looked back and said, “Who knows if it is really true?” Luther was shocked to hear flagrant blasphemies and to see gross immorality for the first time in his life. He heard priests joking about the sacraments without any compunction. Luther was by no means alone in his criticism. Erasmus of Rotterdam, who had journeyed to Rome five years earlier, wrote as unambiguously, “With my own ears I heard the most loathsome blasphemies against Christ and his apostles. Many acquaintances of mine have heard priests of the curia uttering disgusting words so loudly, even during Mass, that all around them could hear it.”
While studying the New Testament in preparation for his lectures, he came to believe Christians are not saved by their own efforts but by the gift of God's grace, accepted by faith.
“I was seized with the conviction that I must understand Paul’s letter to the Romans ... but to that moment one phrase in chapter one stood in my way. I hated the idea, ‘in it the righteousness of God is revealed.’ ... I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners ... At last, meditating day and night and by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. ... Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through gates that had been flung open.”
Luther says he received the revelation when he was ‘in cloaca,’ a Latin phrase meaning literally, ‘in the toilet,’ suggesting he was relieving himself when the breakthrough came. However, the phrase is monastic slang for ‘down in the dumps’ or depressed. He probably meant by the phrase that he was at a spiritual low point.
 Albert, archbishop of Mainz, who was deeply in debt and had to contribute a large sum toward the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, hired Johann Tetzel (1465-1519) in 1510. Tetzel became a very effective salesman using every manipulative technique he knew. He was forbidden to sell his indulgences in Wittenberg by Frederick the Wise, but Luther heard of his activities and attacked him with the 95 Theses. Within weeks, copies of Luther's theses were circulating throughout Germany, reducing the sale of indulgences to almost nothing. The Pope was angered and summoned Luther to stand trial in Rome. Luther appealed to Frederick who arranged for him to be tried in Germany. In 1518, Luther was tried at Augsburg and ordered to recant. Instead he burned the Pope's sentence in a public bonfire—an act of defiance against the Pope that stirred the whole German nation.
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