Motherhood

Having just found out that our tenth grandchild is on the way I am again called to reflect on the unique spiritual relationship between mother and child. The post of November 22nd spoke of it. While going through my notes I came across this passage from a novel, The Prophet, by Jewish author Sholem Asch. The novel is a fictional account of the life of Deutero-Isaiah, or the second Isaiah.

"And was not God indeed the primal source, the father and mother as it were of all existent things? Did he not pour out his unique lovingkindness on all his creation? And was it not from the source of divine love that every created thing obtained the feeling of mother love? This love is the first and primal condition of the existence of every living thing. And do we not see every day the uniqueness of motherhood revealed in every creature? How do the birds know how to refrain from quenching their hunger or thirst in order to bring the berry or the worm they find upon the ground to the nest built for their young? How often, standing on the banks of the Euphrates, had he not seen the eagle bearing a locust for the open beaks of it's young eaglets who trustingly stretch out their necks not yet covered with down in order to take their food?"

What then is my God, what but the Lord God?

For Who is Lord but the Lord, or who is God but our God?

O You, the greatest and the best, mightiest, almighty,

most merciful and most just,

utterly hidden and utterly present,

most beautiful and most strong,

abiding yet mysterious,

suffering no change and changing all things:

never new, never old, making all things new,

bringing age upon the proud and they know it not;

ever in action, ever at rest,

gathering all things to Yourself and needing none;

sustaining and fulfilling and protecting,

creating and nourishing and making perfect;

ever seeking though lacking nothing.

You love without subjection to passion,

You are jealous but not with fear,

You can know repentance but not sorrow,

be angry yet unperturbed by anger.

You can change the works You have made

but Your mind stands changeless.

You find and receive back what You have never lost;

are never in need but rejoice in Your gains,

are not greedy but exact interest manifold.

Men pay You more than is of obligation to win return from You,

yet who has anything that is not already Yours?

You owe nothing yet You pay as if in debt to Your creature,

forget what is owed to You yet do not lose thereby.

And with all this, what have I said,

my God, my Life and my sacred Delight?

from The Confessions, St. Augustine

St. Therese on Being Holy

Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice, it consists in a disposition of the heart that makes us humble and little in God's arms, teaches us our weaknesses and inspires us with an almost presumptuous trust in his fatherly goodness.

God: A Primer

One of my favorite passages from my readings in von Balthasar is one in which a child begins to experience the absolute in its life.

"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."

Again while reading von Balthasar’s study of St.Therese, Two Sisters in the Spirit, he reflects on her prayer life.

Therese cannot pray in a vacuum. She prays with her parents, or her sisters, or the maid, but each time her prayer as a kind of festival, a festival in the communion of saints. Praying brings into communion with her mother, her father and her sisters. For part of her experience in prayer is conditioned by the presence of beloved persons: presence of human love is a sort of token for the presence of God. How otherwise can a child be trained in prayer, in realizing the invisible presence, except by the sacrament of visible, tangible love?

In both passages the parent-child relationship and its importance in the formation of the child’s concept and experience God is realized.

Balthasar goes on to explore Therese’s prayer and its connection to parents. He quotes from The Hidden face: A Study of St. Therese of Lisieux.

‘To be good in Therese's world means only one thing: to do the will of the father, to give joy to her mother. Guilt means only one thing: having hurt her parents. Repentance and pardon blot out misbehavior entirely, instantly and without question.” That is the first and basic ethical experience from when she never departs. Quoting Therese herself, “Even when I was three years old, there was no need to scold me in order to make me better. One kind word was enough, and has been all my life, to show me my faults and cause me to repent.”

Balthasar reflects: And yet one wonders whether Therese was really an exception, or whether similar effects would not be produced in most children (who would love God in a personal way and without fear) if only parents showed children deeper Christian love and humility.

St. Nicephorus the Hesychast

Saint Nicephorus the Hesychast (c.1250-1280)

Nikephoros the Monk, also called Nikephoros the Hesychast, was a 13th-century monk and spiritual writer of the Eastern Orthodox Church. 

Author, poet and professor of English, Scott Cairns has put into verse some of Nikephoros' writings.

Reunion

You know already that the breath

moves in and out in order to infuse

the heart with the air it craves;

as I have said, then, recollect

your mind, and draw it  -- and yes,

I am speaking of your mind –

as if you drew it in

through your very nostrils.

Attend to its descent, as it finds

the path to reach the heart. Drive it then,

and force it downward with the very

air you breathe to enter with a rush into

that famished, pulsing chamber.

When it arrives, you will taste

the joy that follows. You’ll have nothing

to regret. Just as a man who has been far

from home a long time cannot restrain

his delight at seeing his wife and children –

just so, the spirit overflows with joy

and with unspeakable delight when it is

once more united with the soul.

New Knowledge

Thereafter, you must see to it

that so long as your spirit bides

--that is, at home in the heart—

you must not stay silent nor idle,

you must not take this treasure lightly.

Have no other occupation, no other

meditation than the cry

of Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

have mercy on me!

Under no condition acquiesce

to rest, but fix your heart solely

on this elevating work.

This prayer will draw you every day

more deeply into love, more fully

into love with and in desire for your God.

Scott Cairns, Endless Life poems of the mystics

The Glory of God

The material below is take from Spiritual Theology by Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., Chapter 2. If you desire to read the entire chapter or even the entire book you can download it for free here.

These few quotes speak to the concept of God’s glory and the means to attain it.

The Son of God came into this world that we might have life and have it to the full (John 10:10). Indeed, "the ultimate purpose of all things is that, in Christ, all persons made by God,s creative love might freely come to him and share the abundant life of the Blessed Trinity."

This mysterious evolution by which Christ himself is formed in us is the principal purpose of divine revelation and the basis for all growth and development. To this evolution is ordained the divine light of faith, to it the entire gospel, to it the institution  of the Church and even the incarnation of the divine Word. For faith is ordained to charity, which is the bond of perfection; and the dogmas of our faith... are not so much for finding intellectual satisfaction as for motivating us to seek the gift of God, the living water of the Holý Ghost, and the power of his vivifying grace. The Gospel was written that "believing, you may have life in his name" (John 20:31), and the purpose of the Church is the sanctification of souls.

The life received from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit respects our human condition at the same time that it elevates us to the supernatural order and makes us capable of performing actions that are likewise supernatural.

The spiritual life has three distinct goals or, if one prefers, it has one ultimate goal and two relative or proximate goals. The ultimate goal of the spiritual life, as of all things in creation, is the glory of God; the proximate goals are our sanctification and salvation.

"I am the Lord, this is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols" (Isa. 42:8). It follows, therefore, that God created all things for himself; all created things exist in and for God.

The extrinsic glory of God should be understood first of all as a sharing in the beauty, truth, and goodness that constitute God’s intrinsic glory. Thus the statement of St. Paul: "Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made" (Rom. 1:20).

… by a prodigy of love that we can never sufficiently admire, much less worthily acknowledge, he condescended to super-naturalize us from the beginning by elevating us to nothing less than his own status, to make us share in his life, his infinite power, his own operations, and his eternal happiness.

… the glory of God is seen as a striving for greater perfection whereby God is praised and glorified. In fact, in spiritual writing the phrase "glory of God" usually signifies the adoration and praise that are stimulated by the recognition of God’s perfections as reflected in the beauties of the universe or the good deeds of individual persons.

As Christian souls make progress along the road to perfection, they come to an ever clearer realization that their personal sanctification and even their perfect happiness in heaven are not the ultimate goal of the spiritual life; rather, one's sanctification and salvation are the most excellent and efficacious means of giving glory to the Trinity.

Beatitude or perfect happiness, says St. Thomas, constitutes Man's ultimate perfection. It cannot be realized in this life, which is a time of pilgrimage and vigil, because St. John writes: "What we shall later be has not yet come to light. We know that when it comes to light we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is .... Our love is brought to perfection in this, that we should have confidence on the day of judgment" (1 John 3:2; 4:17).

Does this mean that only those souls can enter glory that have reached a high degree of grace and spiritual perfection? To answer this question it is necessary to make a distinction between salvation as being saved, and salvation as the state of glory or the actual enjoyment of perfect happiness in heaven. Salvation is achieved by all those who die in the state of grace, even in a minimal degree, but this does not mean that all the souls of the just enter immediately into the beatitude of glory. It is explicitly defined by the Church that those who die in the state of grace and are in no need of further purification will enter glory immediately after death, but those who still need to be purified will enter heaven only when their purification is completed.

God has begun to do something here that will not come to a stop until Golgotha

Hans Urs von Balthasar in volume six of The Glory of the Lord beautifully describes the Old Covenant, God’s relationship with his chosen people. A section of the volume is devoted to the messages of the prophets. One of the more moving is Balthasar’s exposition on Hosea. In a time when our sexual natures are being perverted and diminished to a merely functional instinct, Balthasar shows us how God uses Hosea to point to the divine in human sexuality and to the the divine compassion of our God.

In Hosea we are confronted with Israel’s infidelities.

1 Hear the word of the LORD, Israelites, for the LORD has a dispute with the inhabitants of the land: There is no fidelity, no loyalty, no knowledge of God in the land. 2 Swearing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. 3 Therefore the land dries up, and everything that dwells in it languishes: The beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and even the fish of the sea perish. (Ch 4)

11 … Aged wine and new wine take away understanding. 12 My people consult their piece of wood, and their wand makes pronouncements for them, for the spirit of prostitution has led them astray; they prostitute themselves, forsaking their God. 13 On the mountaintops they offer sacrifice and on the hills they burn incense, beneath oak and poplar and terebinth, because of their pleasant shade. Therefore your daughters prostitute themselves, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. (Ch 4)

God’s wrath is fired up:

4 I, the LORD, am your God, since the land of Egypt; Gods apart from me you do not know; there is no savior but me. 5 I fed you in the wilderness, in the parched land. 6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when satisfied, they became proud, therefore they forgot me. 7 So, I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard by the road I will keep watch. 8 I will attack them like a bear robbed of its young, and tear their hearts from their breasts; I will devour them on the spot like a lion, as a wild animal would rip them open. 9 I destroy you, Israel! who is there to help you? (Ch 13)

Balthasar, GL Vol VI, p 239

“When the people ‘departs’ from Yahweh to ‘go whoring’ this ends in the drastic situation in which sexuality becomes central, a situation that shows the depth of the abandoned and desecrated covenant in a completely new light. And although the first sin of this kind is to be dated back in the scene in Baal-Peor on the edge of the wilderness, it is only here that the unheard-of consequences are seen, when God takes hold of the sexual dimension of his prophet Hosea in order to portray himself therein in his supra-sexual relationship to Israel. God embraces the sphere of male and female gift of self in the flesh, in order to make use of it as an instrument of revelation on the basis of the total obedience of the prophet, the exact opposite of what the people had done …. “

Hosea Ch 2

2 When the LORD began to speak with Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: Go, get for yourself a woman of prostitution and children of prostitution, for the land prostitutes itself, turning away from the LORD. 3 So he went and took Gomer, daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore him a son. 4 Then the LORD said to him: Give him the name “Jezreel, [God sows] for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezreel and bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel; 5 on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.

6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. The LORD said to him: Give her the name “Not-Pitied (Lo-ruhamah), for I will no longer feel pity for the house of Israel: rather, I will utterly abhor them. 7 Yet for the house of Judah I will feel pity; I will save them by the LORD, their God; but I will not save them by bow or sword, by warfare, by horses or horsemen.

8 After she weaned Not-Pitied, she conceived and bore a son. 9 Then the LORD said: Give him the name “Not-My-People,” for you are not my people, and I am not “I am” for you.

Hosea Ch 3

1 Again the LORD said to me: Go, love a woman who is loved by her spouse but commits adultery; Just as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes. 2 So I acquired her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 Then I said to her: “You will wait for me for many days; you will not prostitute yourself  or belong to any man; I in turn will wait for you (not come to you).”

.. it is thus that God wishes to have his relationship to the people embodied. In both cases, Hosea’s sexual conduct is determined by obedience to God and by renunciation: both in the exercise of his marital rights, which humbles him, and in the non-exercise of the marital relationship. His love and the form which it takes in each case are prescribed for him and his obedience makes it possible for a bridge to be built where this had seemed impossible: the Canaanite emphasis on sexuality is integrated into an entire scheme which utterly supersedes it, and thus God’s relationship to the people is disclosed – for the first time in the history of Israel – as love, burning and tender love, because this love appears in the deepest humiliation. Through this, with disconcerting suddenness, we are given a proleptic view of the final act of the drama: that which is divine in God, his glory, becomes understandable as love, so that everything that God will undertake vis-à-vis his people – including the most terrible measures – is necessarily set under the sign of love.  GL Vol VI, p. 240-241

       

Thanks to the mediating obedience of the prophet in the most intimate sphere of human life, there occurs in Hosea a disclosure of the heart of God which is new and unheard-of when compared with all that has gone before. In pure obedience, Hosea overcomes ab intra the world of the mythical deities which has fallen prey to sexuality, and is able, precisely through this to bring to light the love of God which is supra-sexual. ‘God suffers under Israel’s false love affairs’; he cannot bear them, and we see him as it were wavering between mercy on the guilty wife and the necessity of punishing her ruthlessly. “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?’ (6:4) It is love that wins the day: ‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim! … My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender, I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst’ (11:8-9) Although the word is not used , it is the kabod of Yahweh that reveals itself in a new, incomprehensible depth as the love that lies beyond wrath and has to do with God’s being God, with his absoluteness. But this unattainably transcendent element is at the same time profaned by human beings in the world and humiliated by them, since its love carries it to the point of defencelessness. The adulteress is purchased …so that she can sit still beside the Lord once more. And he ‘allures her seductively’ (2:16) so that he may speak to her heart. Hosea is commanded to ‘love’ this woman: this is the word that expresses the love between a man and a woman (‘hb), with the difference that in him it is selflessly helpful while in her it is lascivious and full of desire. Hosea’s message meets with no greater acceptance than that of the major literary prophets: ‘The prophet is a fool! The man of the spirit is mad!’ (9:7); he is expelled from the land. Even in this fate, he declares something of the ‘foolish’ God’s love (1 Cor 1) as he runs after a faithless harlot. God has begun to do something here that will not come to a stop until Golgotha. GL Vol VI, p.244

The Practice of Drawing Circles

When I was a kid I memorized this little anonymous verse.

He drew a circle that shut us out

Heretic, rebel a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win

We drew a circle that took him in.

The following reflection speaks to the same issue. 

                                             -------------------------------------------

[A] relationship comes to the breaking point. There is an argument which separates the two. One breaks it off and says: "It is all over between us." . . .

 But the one who loves says: "I abide. We shall yet speak with one another, because silence also belongs to conversation at times." Is this not so? Even if it is three years since they last spoke together, it doesn’t make any difference. If you saw two people sitting silently together and you knew nothing more, would you thereby conclude that it was three years since they spoke to each other? Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, now there is no more conversation? Does the dance cease because one dancer has gone away? In a certain sense, yes. But if the other still remains standing in the posture that expresses a turning towards the one who has left, and if you know nothing about the past, then you will say, "Now the dance will begin just as soon as the other comes." Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break! . . . 

What marvelous strength love has! The most powerful word that has ever been said, God’s creative word, is: "Be." But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, "I abide." Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle. He only says: "I abide." But he will conquer, conquer by his abiding. There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by his abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to his abiding—in eternity if not sooner. If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other’s hate. Yes, the eternal will open his eyes for love. In this way love never fails—it abides. 

Søren Kierkegaard, in Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

The Revival of Israel

John the Baptist - Rodin

In Vol. VII of The Glory of the Lord Balthasar's prelude speaks of the the revival of his people from their long exile after the destruction of the temple. His description of the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ and the way in which the news of the coming Kingdom was to occur is quite moving. Pay attention as well to Balthasar's use of  various scriptural sources to weave his exposition of John's mission. It would be difficult to use scripture in this way with merely a cursory or even very attentive reading.

"… Israel must set out afresh, for since the exile it has existed no more. The messenger, sent out by God before his face in Malachi (3:1) has also the commission to ‘turn again’ the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and of the sons to the fathers (4:6); this is taken over by the grandson of Ben Sirach and receives explanation and expansion in the ‘restoration of the (twelve) tribes of Jacob’ (Sir 48:10) The word ‘restoration‘ (apokatastasis) is applied to the Baptist by Jesus himself (Mk 9:12; cf. Lk 1:17) before it is applied to Jesus (as his own forerunner for the day of the Parousia) in Peter’s sermon (Acts 3:21).

God’s word comes upon John in the wilderness. He was of priestly descent, but the name which the angel ordered to be given him indicated that he had been chosen out of all the priesthood of the Old Testament. His dwelling in the wilderness was not like that of the men of Qumran, but was in solitude, ascetical clothing and extreme frugality; nor was his message like that of the political messianic movements which mostly started out from the wilderness, for his message was one of pure salvation history. This permits the origins of Israel in the concept of the wilderness to awaken once more. The wilderness is the place to which God wishes to woo back the apostate Israel, as a bridegroom his beloved, so that he may speak to her heart there (Hos 2:16); but not without 'stripping her naked and making her like a wilderness' (Hos 2:5). The wilderness is the dreadful and glorious state of being handed over to God: the greatest temptation (among demons and wild beasts) and the greatest nuptial intimacy (Jer 2:2). The 'journey through the wilderness' is unavoidable for Jesus, but also for Christians (1 Cor 10:6; Heb 3:8-11), for whom it is the place where God's Word like a two edged sword pierces to the inmost division of joints and marrow, thoughts and intentions, and lays all open before him (Heb 4:12f). It is the place where one learns to pray and where one can then teach others to pray (Lk 11-1). It is the place where there are no fixed points, but where only a nomadic existence is permitted upon earth (Lk 3:3), such as the existence of which Israel once led under God's guidance, and which Jesus too, driven by the Spirit, will lead once more (‘nowhere to lay his head’, Mt 11:18)."

Our Call to Love

Following is an excerpt from The Christian State of Life by
Hans Urs von Balthasar. Much of the chapter this is taken from has been left out as I just wanted to capture what in my opinion are the highlights of his meditation. I can forward a copy to anyone who would like the entire chapter.

“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” He answers them, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets” (Mt 22:36-40).

… the commandments are so completely contained in the dual commandment of love of God and love of neighbor that whoever keeps this commandment, on which the whole law and the prophets depend, has done all that is necessary.

Without love, on the other hand, even the perfect observance of the commandments is meaningless and useless …. this commandment is so unconditional and inflexible in its formulation, so transcendent of time and so apparently immutable in the face of every human ability or inability to observe it, every hope and doubt, every striving and failure, even every conviction, that no one on earth can seriously claim to have observed it in its entirety; that we are, in fact, more likely to regard it as an expression of wishful thinking, of an ideal but unattainable polestar riding high above the lowlands of human wretchedness, than as the commandment it actually is.

But the Lord does not call this commandment a wish on the part of God or a recommendation … he does not speak of it as a steep path beside which there are other—easier—ones.

“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: that as I have loved you, you also love one another. By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35).

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12), it has also become the criterion of our love of God: “He who has my commandments and keeps them”—precisely these commandments of love—“he it is who loves me” (Jn 14:21).

If we do not love, we have so completely failed to fulfill our calling that we are dead even though our bodies are still alive: “He who does not love abideth in death” (1 Jn 3:14).

Thus the principle is affirmed that the calling to love is an absolute one, admitting of no exception, and so ineluctable that failure to observe it is tantamount to total corruption. Let there be no doubt. We are here to love—to love God and to love our neighbor. Whoever will unravel the meaning of existence must accept this fundamental principle from whose center light is shed on all the dark recesses of our lives. For this love to which we are called is not a circumscribed or limited love, not a love defined, as it were, by the measure of our human weakness. It does not allow us to submit just one part of our lives to its demands and leave the rest free for other pursuits; it does not allow us to dedicate just one period of our lives to it and the rest, if we will, to our own interests. The command to love is universal and unequivocal. It makes no allowances. It encompasses and makes demands upon everything in our nature: “with thy whole heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”.

… this commandment takes no heed of our human potential for observing it. All that is important is that it be observed; how this is to be done is a second question with which the first is not concerned. If we are unable to observe it by our own strength, God will not fail to give us the means to do so. But one thing God will not do: He will not accommodate his great commandment to our human insufficiency. For he knows there is only one thing that love cannot endure: to have limits set to it.

Love has its origin in God, who is eternal and boundless life. A love that is not active, that is not ready to prove itself in ever new and different ways, is not love.

It can never mean that it has reached the limit of its capacity to love … and can now find comfort in the thought that it has fulfilled its obligation to love. If such a thought enters the love of two individuals, their love is already growing cold.

Love can never give itself sufficiently, can never exhaust its ingenuity in preparing new joys for the beloved, is never so satisfied with itself and its deeds that it does not look for new proofs of love, is never so familiar with the person of the beloved that it does not crave the wonderment of new knowledge.

“Obligation”, then, is a word that pure love does not know. Or rather: its “obligation” is always a “choice”. It experiences the necessity it is under of loving the beloved as the highest and most perfect freedom—a freedom not to be exchanged for all the goods of this world.

What lover would not gladly lay the whole world at the feet of the beloved? If we love, we do not know the difference between command and wish. The wish of the beloved is our command. We forestall every unspoken desire on the lips of the beloved and fulfill it.

We are not asking here whether this is the nature of human beings or whether and to what extent they are capable of loving in this way ….

… in every purest expression of it, we encounter anew the mystery of self-giving. For the sake of the beloved, love would gladly renounce all its possessions if it could thereby enrich the beloved.

We cannot perceive of love as a merely penultimate good of our spirit, cannot reserve for it a circumscribed place in our soul, cannot assign to it but a limited portion of our strength.

The spirit of love is a spirit of self-giving and, consequently, of “choice”. It is nothing but self-giving. For this reason, it needs no other law than itself; all other laws are subsumed, fulfilled, transcended in the one law of love.

von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Christian State of Life (Kindle Locations 176-415). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Irenaeus

“My entire period of study in the Society of Jesus was a grim struggle with the dreariness of theology, with what men had made out of the glory of revelation. I could not endure this presentation of the Word of God and wanted to lash out with the fury of Samson: I felt like tearing down, with Samson’s own strength, the whole temple and bury myself beneath the rubble. But it was like this because, despite my sense of vocation, I wanted to carry out my own plans, and was living in a state of unbounded indignation. I told almost no one about this. [My teacher at the time Erich] Przywara understood everything; [to him] I did not have to say anything. Otherwise there was no one who could understand me.”

These thoughts of Hans Urs von Balathasar are taken from his introduction to Adrienne von Speyr’s journals. His feelings reflect what he saw as dry Thomist theology that lacked the passion and the fire inherent in the Word.

In Vol. II of the Glory of the Lord Balthasar selects five theologies that represent what he sees as preceding the branching off of the disciplines of theology and philosophy; Irenaeus, Augustine, Denys, Anselm and Bonaventure. In Vol. III he selects seven whose theologies were developed after the split of the two areas of study; Dante, St. John of the Cross, Pascal, Hamann, Soloviev, Hopkins and Peguy. He selects these as representative of those theologies that project the fire and passion, what he termed “the glory of the Lord”,  he felt was lacking in the theology being taught at the time.

An example of what he saw in Irenaeus is taken from Vol. II P.64 – 65:

“ …. Irenaeus is totally amazed at the miracle of the human body made alive by the soul. It is for him the most fundamental example of what distinguishes the creature: its being formed by God's hand: `The flesh is not without a share in the artistic wisdom and power of God, because God's power, which bestows life, is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12.9), that is, in the flesh."" Strange and impressive exegesis! `The flesh is devised to be receptive and to be able to contain the power of God, since in the beginning it received the art of God, and one part became an eye for seeing, another an ear for hearing, another a hand for feeling and making, another nerves, tensed in all direction and holding the limbs together, another arteries and veins for the circulation of the blood and the soul-breath, another in turn different internal organs, and another blood, the link between body and soul. It is indeed impossible to describe the whole masterly structure of elements which makes up man; it did not come into being without greatness and wisdom. But what shares in the art and wisdom of God also shares in his power.'

And from p.74-75:

 “This is the source of the central concept of `glory' as the mutual glorification of God and man. Man, who preserves God's art in himself and obediently opens himself to its dispos­ing, glorifies the artist and the artist glorifies himself in his work. `You do not create God; God creates you. Therefore if you are God's work, wait patiently for the hand of your artist, who does everything in due proportion, and in due proportion as regards you who are being made. Offer him your heart soft and pliable, and preserve the form which the artist forms out of you: preserve it by keeping yourself moist, so that you do not dry out and harden and lose the trace of his fingers. Keeping the form that has been impressed on you, you will move towards perfection, for the clay that is in you will be hidden by the artist.   His hand has created the substance in you, and now it will cover you inside and out with pure gold and silver and beautify you so much that "even the king will lust after your beauty" (Ps 45:11)”

Soul Stirring Rhetoric

A formative influence on Von Balthasar was the Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara (1889-1972). Edward Oakes’ book Patterns of Redemption addresses Przywara’s influence on von Balthasar and uses the following quotation from Przywara’s writings. The passion of Fr. Przywara and his student can be glimpsed in the following reflecting on the mission of the prophets.

“The prophets whom the angels seized up into heaven and brought before the Throne of Glory to experience how much they had to “suffer for His Name” could only remain alone. Alone in the fullness of mission-determined communication, distant in the confusion of close-order battle with friend and foe, with one’s own people and with foreigners, forced into the distance for the sake of discerning the spirits as commanded, but only by the virtue of first having been touched with the all-consuming fire that would mark them henceforward and which they would never forget. Their Word burns: it does not baptize in water but in spirit and fire. Zeal for God’s house consumes them. They themselves are certainly fire. And when – misunderstood and rejected of men, despised, mocked and betrayed by family and neighbors – they gave their soul, fatigued unto death, back to God, then it can be that He Who Consumes with Fire will send them his fiery chariot to call them home.”