I'm nearly done wading through volume five of The Glory of the Lord. Near the end I came accross one of those gems of Balthasar's thinking that makes worthwhile the effort of reading his work. Following is a quote from a section in the book entitled "The Miracle of Being".
“The fact that I find myself within the realm of a world and in the boundless community of other existent beings is astonishing beyond measure … . From the infinite prodigality of an act of generation … resulting in a ‘chance hit’ … a ‘new’ being is created which … cannot interpret itself in any way as a product of chance … . Nothing … indicates that this had the ‘personal’ intention of producing precisely this unique and as such irreplaceable person through that game of chance; there is nothing to prove that this unique person receives a kind of necessary place through his incorporation [into the world]. I could imagine … that an infinite number of ‘others’ could have occupied this ‘same’ place in the universe instead of me.
Of course, the child does not awaken into consciousness with this question on its mind. … Its ‘I’ awakens in the experience of a ‘Thou’: in its mother’s smile through which it learns that it is contained, affirmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensibly encompassing, already actual, sheltering and nourishing. The body which its snuggles into, a soft, warm and nourishing kiss, is a kiss of love in which it can take shelter because it has been sheltered there a priori.... a light which has been perpetually asleep awakens at some point into an alert and self-knowing light. But it awakens at the love of the Thou, as it has always slept in the womb and on the bosom of the Thou.... therefore it is right that the child should glimpse the Absolute,... first in its mother, its parents, and that only in a second and third stage does it have to learn to distinguish the love of God from the love which it has experienced in this way."
No comments:
Post a Comment