My Latest Readings of Balthasar

From “The Glory of the Lord: Vol. 5. pp. 270-271

Balthasar discusses the aspects of eros made manifest through the beauty of creation and especially the human form and the passions it arouses. Yet, such eroticism fails to meet the demands of the human spirit for union with the creator and proves to be only a spiraling circle of longing and heartache followed by disappointment and an increasingly persistent pursuit of that which fails to satisfy. He uses Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a poetic expression of the failings of mortal love to satisfy.


129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action: and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

…

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.



142

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,

Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:

….



146

My love is as a fever longing still,

For that which longer nurseth the disease;

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

…

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.



Balthasar goes on to say “If we had the versed confessions of Botticelli, Tintoretto and so many others, who created the inconceivably beautiful, who knows whether they would not sound the same, and with what melancholy the glories were purchased that should bear witness to the powers of bodies to utter the eternal and to shelter the divine!”