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.”