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.
