Unless You Become Like This Child

To follow up on he post of 12/21/2019 we continue with von Balthasar's reflection on being a child.

"... for a child, his parents' concrete love is not at first separable from God [see post of November 22, 2017 here ]; if everything follows an even course, this difference must be tenderly shown to him by his parents' humility and their own dependency on God. If this occurs as it should, the "archetypical; identity" will once again be confirmed for him in expanded form. The child will see clearly that love is realized only in reciprocity, in an oppositeness that is encounter and not opposition, a relationship that is held together in its very difference by the spirit of love and that, far from being endangered by mutuality, is rather strengthened by it. Love, too, is what enables the child to experience its absolute neediness as some thing other than a threat, since it is lived as the situation in which the mother's ever-latent love may be realized always anew.

The "archetypical identity", which we discover in creatures within a clear separation of persons who are held together by love, is a creaturely imago trinitatis ...."

Unless You Become Like This Child, Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 18-19

A Praying Servant

From the January 2020 edition of First Things

LITANY

For the fire that answers the covering dark,
For every marriage that ends in faith,
For the hand that finds desired work,
And for every reconciled death,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
             we may be added to their number.

For the wall that answers wind’s assault,
For every roof that withstands weather,
For the level and square and the justly built,
And for long lives that have kept their savor,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
        we may be added to their number.

For the hour that we have squandered,
       Have mercy on us.
For the hour we have begrudged,
       Have mercy on us.
For the good that we have coveted,
       Have mercy on us.
And for the good we have neglected,
       Have mercy on us.

For the day lived with its end in mind
And for the remembrance of such a day,
For the losing race, run to its end,
For the blue sky and the night sky,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
       we may be added to their number.

—Timothy Dusenbury

On the Becoming of a Child

 Balthasar, early in his short essay on becoming a child, takes us to the most intimate of our connections, the creative ability of God. The mystery into which his contemplation takes the reader is portrayed as the sacred union of God and mankind and reflected in this union is the sanctity  of the the union of man and woman. Contemplating this collaboration between God and mankind and God’s highest forms of creation, man and woman, we can appreciate God’s plan of creation with wonder and awe. Yet, we in our hubris and self-reliance reduce our sexuality by considering this magnificent gift to be just another form of recreation or make of it a merely physical process that can be manipulated to cater to our desires and whims. In so doing the sacred nature of the mystery loses its hold on our spirit.

Quoting from the essay:

Nevertheless, there does exist the sphere in which every person born possesses an archetypical model in keeping with which he is to direct his conscious life, surely following the course of his existence into the future but always with the memory of his origins before him.

Between the mother and the child she bears in her womb there exists an "archetypical identity", a unity which by no means is purely "natural", "physiological" or "unconscious": the child is already itself, it is already something "other" than the mother because it derives from the man's seed as much as from her. She had to conceive in order for the child to come to be in her, to come out of her most intimate being, as of course the father too had to receive from his wife in order to become fruitful in her. They had to be "two in one flesh", with mutual gratitude, in order to be able to procreate and love the new life that surpasses them both, the new life that will owe its existence to both of them together but for which they, together, will always have to be thankful in the site of the absolute creative Power that transcends them: "Children are a gift of the Lord" (Ps 127:3). Neither father nor mother would pretend that their contribution has given the child its spirit, its freedom, its immediacy with God.

Unless You Become Like This Child, Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 15-16

Mary of Magdala Mourns for Jesus

Sholem Asch's portrayal of Mariam of Magdala's mourning on Jesus' death from the final pages of his novel, Mary.

p. 424

Of all Yeshua was mourners no one, with the exception of the mother, felt his loss more poignantly then Miriam of Magdala. If for all others the Nazarene had been Israel's, even the world’s, Messiah, for Miriam he had been her personal Redeemer. The others, after all, were of the holy community of Israel. If there hopes in Yeshua had faded, they still had the root from which the Messianic faith had sprung. This was not the first, no, nor the last time that Israel had been deceived. Jewry loved its Messiah, sickened for its coming. Their love and their nostalgia would in time nurture the new Messianic fruit. If the Nazarene had failed them, another would arise, the true Redeemer who would rally the heavenly host and descend in the panoply of vengeance.

But for Miriam of Magdala, Yeshua and none other had been the Messiah, and with his death perished her hope. What other Messiah, or what other rabbi, would stoop to lift her kind out of the gutters, cleanse her polluted body and soul, efface what was past even as the light of day scatters the bad dreams of the night, and infuse her with a new spirit to thirst for purity and holiness? What other rabbi would turn his back on the mighty, the learned, and the elect to embrace sinners; and finding her among the most unclean, on whom sin lay like a constrictor snake, would call out to her judges, "Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone?" What other master would admit her to his presence?

But if Yeshua was not the Messiah, then all her effort was in vain, and vain was her purgation in the fires of penance. She would relapse into the clutch of sin from which he had delivered her. With all her longing and hunger for purity, she would be thrown back into the gutter that had been her cradle.

For her no hope existed outside Yeshua, the redeemer who had come with the blessing of God in his hand to help fallen ones like herself. All things passed away with him – the love and the splendor of God, the thirst and the longing, the hope and the remission of sins. Life with him had been blessed, without him it would be perdition.

St. Peter the Rock

A brief of decription of St. Peter.Note the spectacular composition of the second paragraph. Could more be expressed with so few words as is done in these lines?

"This Friday eve, when the meal had been eaten with the disciples together, Yeshua slept once more under his mother's roof. And when he had laid himself down to rest, Miriam went out into her garden to learn what manner of men her son had chosen for his followers. She had seen them before, at the marriage in Cana; they were the three whom he had apparently elected to be his closest intimates, for they never stirred from his side.

St. Peter

Among them was the stocky fishermen with the leathery face – Simon, whom they were already calling Cephas, signifying "a rock." A curly black beard, which seemed continuous with his hair, framed all his features. His eyes were overhung with heavy brows and made a pattern of crow's feet at their corners, all of which would have expressed only simplicity and kindness had not the frank gaze of his eyes suggested the practical sagacity of the people, the accumulated wisdom of generations.

Simon showed her all possible reverence, addressing her with utmost humility and catering to her where he could, and Miriam sensed in him the love and devotion which the simple Jew of Galilee had for her son. She soon came to understand why Yeshua held him in such high regard. For the man was all faith, and this faith had begotten his conviction that the ways of his rabbi were those of righteousness and that his every act was performed on the word of God. It fortified his hope and assured him that no harm would come to his rabbi, that Yeshua, like Elijah before him, would avoid the narrow Strait of death and ascend, undying, into heaven, there to sit on the right hand of God for the judgment of the world. In this hope Miriam found her affinity with him, for since his coming to her house, Simon had been strengthening and consoling her, saying:

"Do I not see the Angels going in and out of his door as in Abraham's house? What evil can befall him, or what hurt can come to him, when a host of ministering angels stand at his right and left, waiting to act at his bidding?"

This hope of Simon's for happy issue of his rabbi's ministry brought him close to the mother and awakened her love."

from Mary, by Sholem Asch, p. 366-368

Coincidence of experience and disconnect of experience. What do we seek in life? What is our personal experience of life and are the conclusions we draw from these experiences valid as a measure of how we should live our lives?

To provide light on the answers to these questions we look the many sources of reinforcement of or cause to abandon our experience based conclusions. One of the ways we seek such guidance is by examining the experience and conclusion of those who have placed their experience at our feet and allowed us, at their great risk, to either accept their offerings as validating our own or rejecting their conclusions as inconsistent with our own.

In our effort to validate our own experience and the conclusions we can draw from them, the seeker could be guilty of only seeking the experience of others that reinforces their own conclusions. Such a seeker could be accused of not being open to new ideas or new ways of looking at our experience, of not “thinking outside the box” so to speak.

On the other hand one could be so open to new ideas that in efforts to accept the new experiential offering, which has not been coincident with our own, that they could be guilty of abandoning accepted norms and accused of “following false prophets” so to speak.

Where then is the balance between these two opposite tendencies? Can one actually attain such a balance? When one is faced with choosing one or the other on a particular issue how is one assured that their choice is consistent with the will of God, that being the ultimate goal of existence.

Particular dangers exist in our philosophical environments that enjoy the practice of deconstruction. By deconstruction I mean the deliberate practice of trying to reinterpret certain accepted cultural axioms, even moral norms, and presenting them in innovative ways. This being “thinking outside the box”. We are constantly presented with ways in which practices once considered unacceptable to a prudent way of life are re-presented in ways which attempt to make them appear to have virtues, opposite to their original intent, which can justify their acceptance.

I offer an answer. Only look at things plainly. When you hear something or read something it evicts from you a sense of truth or a sense of self-service, believe in that initial sense. Whichever sense (feeling) you experience is probably due to the coincidence with or disconnection from your own personal experience. Follow that sense in the direction of truth.

Critics of what I say may argue that feelings are not a reliable indicator of truth. God gave us emotions for a reason. Our emotions are guided by that “tabernacle in our heart” placed in us by our creator when we were formed in the womb and through which our God speaks to us.

From Christian Perfection and Contemplation, by Rev. R. Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P., p. 207:

"Prayer is a more powerful force than all physical energies taken together, more powerful than money, than learning. Prayer can accomplish what all material things and all created spirits cannot do by their own natural powers.  According to Pascal: "All bodies, the firmament and its starts, the earth and its kingdom, are not equal to the least of spirits . . . . By assembling all material things one could not succeed in producing even one small thought.  This is impossible and belongs to another order. . . . All material bodies together and all spirits, and all that they produce are not worth the slightest movement of charity, which belongs to an infinitely more elevated order." [Pensees (Havet ed.), art.17,1.] Prayer can obtain grace for us which will make us produce this act of charity.
"Prayer thus plays an infinitely greater role in the world than the most amazing discovery."

Jesus Comes of Age

Court of the Women in Jerusalem

At the age of twelve Jesus went with his family to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. The author depicts a scene when Jesus and Mary were together in the Court of the Women. Jesus was attempting to understand the practice of burnt offerings as against the psalmist’s admonition in Palm 51, “For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased, the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not spurn.”

While Jesus was pondering reconciling these two realities Mary knelt at his side and prayed –

 “Father in heaven, I have brought him safe into thy house who is Thy pledge to the world. Behold, he is grown to manhood, but in seeing and hearing he is not like to other men. For his young heart is bruised by our sinful lives and his spirit troubled by the injustice he has met so soon in his way. Even now, standing at my side, he burns with the sacred indignation that raged in Thy Prophets. With contempt he views the flesh and fat they kindle on Thy altar, and like Isaiah he demands that the heart alone be offered before Thee.

“I know not to what paths he shall be led, nor what road Thou hast paved for him. But I do see him, like a launched arrow, speeding toward the target Thou dids't set, and my heart trembles between joy and fear. Father, I fear for him, for I see the walls of fire in his path. He is too young, Father in heaven; the thread of his life is too frail. For a little while yet, let him see the flowers, not the thorns. Leave him to me for a little while longer. And teach me what to do, Father in heaven, for I am in awe of the power of his spirit and feel too weak to be his mother.     Mary, by Sholem Asch, pp. 256-257

Sholem Asch's Portrayal of the Young Jesus

Some descriptions of the young Yeshua taken from the book, Mary, by Sholem Asch.

p. 209

The boy, Yeshua, both at school and at home, was invariably found to dominate his immediate company. What the other boys found irresistible in him was an unquestionable, absolute sincerity. And Yeshua asserted his domination with a light hand, like a born prince – not by any display of superior scholarship, but by a natural authority of character which radiated from his least action or remark.

p. 210

The boys of the higher grades, all learners of the oral Law, found their diversion in mock trials to which they brought all the penetrating sagacity of scholastic pilpul, as taught during school hours. They would choose one of their number to act as judge, and he, after hearing the case – usually an involved contrivance of improbabilities – handed down a sentence framed in the spirit of the scribes and Pharisees. Not infrequently the sentence passed was of such astuteness that it was reported to the Rabbi, who, on occasions, had been known to pass it on to Jerusalem. The elders, therefore, encourage the game, seeing it as a welcome means for whetting a child's intellect and fortifying him in the knowledge of the Law.

Young Yeshua showed no ambition to excel in the game. The truth was that he had little relish for the oral Law with its labyrinthine technicalities. And when his friends challenged him to take part in the mock trials, he answered with finality, "I don't like to pass judgment on people."

p. 211

Yeshua lived in the world of the Prophets. He did not shine in the other studies, some of which called for great keenness and subtlety, involving as they did complex calculations concerning measures and crops. Nor was he much taken with interpretations of the Law, no matter how ingenious they might appear to others. His affinity was with the Prophets, whom he interpreted according to his own judgement.

Mosaic of the Prophet Jeremiah in the
 facade of Basilica of Saint Paul
outside the walls. Rome, Italy

In Yeshua’s grade they were studying the book of Jeremiah. They had come to the passage where the Prophet comforts his people and, in the face of the direst peril, foretells the future of radiance and joy. No man could more cruelly damn and execrate his people – and no one knew better how to console. The majestic mourner of Israel was also the sweetest minstrel of Israel's hope. Even now he had brought his fiery scourge down on their cowering backs, adding the Prophet's lash to the enemies sword, as though he gloried in his nation's wounds and had sworn to unscab their sores that they might never heal – but all at once he changes pitch and sings again of forgiveness to make the heart burst with hope. No man expressed more intimately his nearness to God than this Prophet of wrath and lamentation. Never once did he utter a plaint for his own torments, which were the wages of his exhortations. Not a drop of his personal bitterness stained the cup of comfort which he held out to his people. The spittle in his face was forgotten, his bruised body covered over, his prisoner's ditch consigned to oblivion. From the mouth of the Rachel he let poor and undying lament for his people, the mothers lament for her sons. And the voice of God itself he invoked to restrain Rachel’s tears with assurance of love and forgiveness. And finally, he stirred the deepest

Rachel

longing of his people till the end of time, when, like a messenger of love, he delivered the mystery of Israel's marriage with the Lord: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was a husband to them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After these days, saith the Lord, I will put My Law into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." [Jer. 31-35]

By these words Yeshua was so deeply stirred that he could not hold back his tears while he recited them in class. There was laughter among some of the boys; others wept with him. All felt moved by the Prophet’s compassion, and even those who pretended to laugh did so with forced bravado as if to show their manly self-possession.

A Model for the Mother-Child Bond

Sholem Asch, in the passage that follows, provides a scene between the small child, Jesus and his mother. The child is wrestling with the story of Cain and Abel and Mary tries to answer the questions posed by Jesus. The segment in bold (my emphasis) is one that underscores Mary's role as an intercessor, even perhaps as co-redemptrix, on our behalf; and this from a Jewish writer. It is no wonder that Sholem Asch took a lot of heat from his fellow Jews.

***************************************************** 

   “Why,” he asked suddenly, “why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and reject Cain’s?”

   “God reads the inward thoughts of men,” said Miriam, “and knows His servitors who are pure and contrite of heart and bring their offerings in love and goodwill. And He knows such as sacrifice in greed and hope of preferment. For there are men who have the grace of God and others who walk in darkness, destitute of grace.”

   The boy weighed the words and asked at last: “And what shall they do who have not God’s grace? Are they not to be pitied?”

   “Have you not learned,” Miriam asked in reply, “what the Lord said to Cain? – ‘If thou doest well, Shall you not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door and unto it shall be your desire, but thou shalt rule over it.’ God said this not to Cain alone, tinoki, but to all his descendants who envy their brothers, and, like Cain, wear a wroth and fallen countenance. God says to them – why art thou wroth and why is your countenance fallen? You can counter the sin at your door, for the choice is yours. You can choose the good or the evil. Punish then the evil that lies in your heart and seek to do well.”

   Yeshua pondered this in silence, sighing with finality, said: Emi, do you know what I think? I think God should appoint a helper for those who do not have the Lord’s grace, to take their part before God. These men more than the righteous need a helper, for the righteous have father and mother to take care of them.”

   Then Miriam’s eyes grew moist, and she said, “Tinoki, tinoki, when you grow up you shall be their helper.”

   “No, Emi, not I but you!”

   “Why I tinoki?”

   “Because you have pity for whosoever stands on your threshold, and there is no one can prevail against your tears. When your tears fall God will have compassion for them.”

   “Please, tinoki, I can bear it no more,” She turned her head away so that he would not see her tears.

(from Mary,part 2, chapter V, p.170-171)

A Spiritual Insight into Mary

Asch’s book on Mary is, of course, a novel. It is probably a weaving of fact and fiction.  Who but the most astute scholar of Jewish life and history would be able to distinguish those threads one from the other. Early in the book Asch describes a small patch of the fabric of Miriam’s spiritual life. Does it matter if it is true? Can we assume Asch is giving us a glimpse into the spirituality of the religious Jew at that time? Regardless of the answer to these questions, it cannot be denied that the author provides a moving account of the Jewish people’s reverence for Rachel and of Mary’s in particular.

   “… for a long time past, certain individual women had been mainstays of the imaginative life of the people. Their names assumed high rank in Israel’s hierarchy and quickened the creative fantasy of the myth makers. The Matriarchs of Israel were canonized by the people and placed , beside their men, on the uppermost rungs of Jacob’s heavenly ladder.

Rachel at the well

   …. ‘But of all mothers in Israel none was loved more deeply than Rachel. Rachel, Jacob’s bride-elect. For her the youthful Jacob had toiled twice seven years, and still she was an outcast in the holy matriarchy. In pain and agony she had born Israel a son, and had died bearing him another. And she alone among the Matriarchs was not laid in the ancestral sepulcher, to share the shade of Abraham and Isaac and her doting husband Jacob – as did her rival, Leah. She, Rachel, was hastily interred on the road to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem, like some worthless stone that one thrusts out of one’s way. Yet, surely, there was providence even in this. For she was buried on the highway down which, in years to come, Nebzaradan would lead Jewry into exile. The ruthless Babylonian would be scourging them past Rachel’s grave, and she, a sentinel by the roadside, would arise from her tomb and come before the Lord with bitter weeping for her children’s sake. And God would sustain her with words of comfort, saying:

‘Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and thy children shall return to their own borders.’

…. For the girl Miriam, Rachel had long been the chosen patroness, a guardian angel watching over her. Many times she saw her, not only in her dreams at night, but in broad daylight, seeing with inward eyes. The mother Rachel would appear to her, swathed in a dusky veil. At times her features were uncovered to reveal large dark eyes, reddened and moist, and heavy with grief and compassion, as though the anguish of all Israel were stored in them. And from those eyes Miriam felt the anguish radiating into her own heart as if the mother Rachel wished to make the girl a part of her and bind her to herself in a community of love and grief. To the girl Miriam the thought of Rachel was like the immanence of heaven.”

At this point in Sholem’s narrative, Mary is unaware of her coming commission as the mother of the Messiah. Yet her visions of Rachel and Rachel’s agony over the plight of her children has instilled in Mary a prescient sense of her impending role. Asch’s quote from Jeremiah, 31:15-16 hints at the author’s scriptural foundations of the story he is weaving.

It is interesting to compare Mary’s innate sense of history with today’s tendency to lay our memories at the feet of change and ignore, if not completely forget or obliterate, our past.

All commentaries aside, our author is a master of conjuring Jewish religious sensibilities.

The Genesis of the New Covenant

   EVERY dawn renews the Beginning, and to behold the earth struggling out of the formless void, out of the night, is to witness the act of creation.

   The night hung low over the chine of the hills; but the concave of heaven, inlaid with innumerable brightness, diffused a shower of starlight that lent transparency to the night air. In the limpid darkness of the valley small houses nestled against one another in drowsy hamlets, where cypresses and olive groves shielded them on all sides. And on the hills each leaf of grass could be distinguished as it trembled under the fresh dew, swaying in the breeze as in mute prayer, and irradiated by the selfsame glow with which it had been charged in the first hours of Genesis.

   Over the dew-blown hills rode a young traveler, clothed in a white mantle to protect him from the damp of night.

 *******************************************************************************

   THE first breath a Jew draws on awakening from a night’s sleep belongs to God; thus, too, in the house of Hannah. Stepping out of their separate chambers after the first cry of the cock, mother and daughter washed their hands and eyes and pronounced the morning blessing.

   The second daily duty in a Jewish home, after due praise had been offered to God, was to provide feed and water for the animals. Man must not sit down to his morning meal before the hunger of his animals is stilled. Thus, as the mother attended to the work indoors, the daughter went forth to cater to the herd.

   Outside, the mist that weighted the atmosphere was beginning to lift. Loose shreds of cloud, like floating veils, stole through the air, catching on branches and roofs. The mist was decomposing into drops of dew that shone again from every leaf and petal. The girl’s feet soaked up the damp, and pearly drops settled on the thick black locks that strayed from her kerchief. Her frail throat, showing above a homespun tunic, shivered at the freshness of the early morning.

*********************************************************************************

What you've read above is taken from the opening chapters of  Sholem Asch's novel, Mary. It tells of the journey of Joseph to Nazareth to meet and acknowledge Mary as his betrothed. It provides a sample of the eloquence with which the author portrays his vision of this momentous occasion in our salvation history.

Intrinsic Good

The Catholic Church lays out for us the concept of intrinsic evil. 

In Pope John Paul II's Encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, he offers the following definition.

80. Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" ("intrinsece malum"): they are such "always and per se," in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which "per se" and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object".

One might ask,"What then is 'intrinsic good'?" In the first volume of Theo-Logic Balthasar offers an idea of intrinsic goodness.

p.35 – “Thus, there may be people who … have become used to doubting the existence of intrinsic goodness.”

“If, however, such people come face to face with the evidence of a selfless act that another … performs for its own sake, and they realize by their own inward experience that the naked overcoming of self is a really attainable possibility, they … bow before the simple fact of goodness.”

Luke 17:5-6

Luke 17:5-6

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

The Lord replied,
"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

Some thoughts to contemplate:

Jesus compared an amount of faith to a mustard seed – something very small.

He could have compared faith to a single atom or a muon or a quark

for that matter.

So we might say:

It doesn’t take much faith to do something seemingly impossible. Why ask

for more if only a little will do the job?

Or, faith does not come in sizes and can’t be increased or decreased. You

either have faith or you don’t.

Did the apostles mean to say, “Lord help me to believe.”?

Can faith be equated to belief? Heb 11:1 equates faith to assurance and conviction.

If I cannot do the seemingly impossible does that mean I do not have faith?

Did Jesus mean that if you have faith God will give you all you ask?

Was Jesus just using hyperbole to make a point?

James 2:18

Indeed someone may say, “You have faith and I have works.”

Demonstrate your faith to me without works,

and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

Here it’s said that faith can be exhibited by seeing one’s actions.

Can the apostle’s request of Jesus “increase our faith” be rephrased to

“Lord give us the assurance and the conviction to be able to follow your way”?

Balthasar' Theo-Logic

The following quote of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is from the April 2006 edition of First Things and was the motivation for my interest in Balthasar.

"He went in for heavy-duty intellection that is sometimes ponderous and exhaustingly discursive, but always adorned with dazzling erudition and rewarding one's effort with scintillating insights of a frequently counter-intuitive nature. One spends pleasurable hours reading Balthasar not so much in an analytical mode as in surrendering oneself to the beauty of how his mind works and its adventurous probings of theological imagination. Reading Balthasar is in large part a meditative exercise bordering on the contemplative."

Once again I've gathered the fortitude to wade through more of Balthasar's "heavy duty intellection" in search of some "scintillating insights".

I don't know how scintillating one may find the quotes that follow. One may say, "Oh, yea, I knew that." But, have you ever attempted to put the ideas presented into your own words? Thanks to Hans Urs von Balthasar I am able to articulate some thing that I was previously able only to intuit.

From Theo-Logic Volume 1:Truth of the World

P.12 – “… the supernatural takes root in the deepest structures of being, leavens them through and through, and permeates them like a breath or an omnipresent fragrance.”

p.16-17 – “All of the perversions that human freedom can inflict upon being and its qualities always aim at one thing: the annihilation of the depth dimension of being, thanks to which being remains a mystery, even, indeed, precisely in its unveiling. The formula “A is nothing other than …” typifies this perversion, whatever the transcendental it affects. It is much rather the case that A is always “something other than …” Neither goodness nor beauty nor truth is exhausted by any definition; the multi-dimensional reality of the transcendentals can ever be flattened out by any kind of reduction, and there is no way to capture the mystery either of their existence or of their essence in a formula. Of course, the ultimate ground of the mysterious character inherent in the knowable is disclosed only when we recognize that every possible object of knowledge is creaturely, in other words, that its ultimate truth lies hidden in the mind of the Creator, who alone can speak the eternal name of things. …. It is God, then, who secures the transcendentals against all the assaults of human freedom – however much ruin this freedom might cause.

A SARCOPHAGUS AND THE SINNERS

Tomb of St. Francis

Roman Brandstaetter was a Polish poet (1906-1987). The poem that follows was published in a collection of poems entitled Francis and Clare edited by Janet McCann and David Craig. I felt a need to return to this volume of poetry and it is curious that this poem found me after two posts consisting of excerpts from another Polish author, Sholem Asch.

Two parts of the readings from the previous Sunday's scripture readings struck me as meaningful when I heard them.

"keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith" Heb 12:2    and Jesus' words,
“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!" Lk 12:49

Am I allowing Jesus to perfect my faith? Is there a fire ablaze in my heart? Am I dousing it out or fueling it with love?

Our poet appeals to St. Francis to help us set our hearts on fire.

A SARCOPHAGUS AND THE SINNERS

We came to you from afar,
Because we want to be good,
O Sarcophagus.

We seldom manage.
Perhaps never.

Evil torments us
Like black goats.

We torture the people
We love.

We wrong our neighbor
Whom we want to help.

Behind our every sacrifice
Stands egoism
Like a skinny prompter.

One beautiful poem
Is more important to us
Than a good deed.

That's why we speak to you
By way of crying,
O Sarcophagus.

A long examination of conscience
Can only be told in tears.

Sail on the brackish waters of our tears
Saint Francis.

Sail on a crusade
Against our sins,
O singing Middle Ages.

Sail, sail,
You bird song.

Can a new man be born
From a tear?

Create us from our tears,
Create us from our cries,
From our stormy cries,
Dear Saint Francis.

Your sarcophagus reposes
On our prayers
As on expectant columns.
                  Roman Brandstaetter

more from "The Nazarene" by Sholem Asch

Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion

The prose in the volume of The Nazarene that I read was quite lofty at times. In the excerpt below Asch in one short paragraph provides a physical description of Joseph of Arimathea, a view to his character, his inquisitive nature and a description of the culture in which Joseph Arimathea lived.

"When I came to know Joseph Arimathea he was no longer young, for he had passed his fiftieth year. But his body had retained all the manliness and vigor of its prime. His limbs were firm and muscular; his body was erect and square, as if cut out of a giant cedar. But the whole was light and elastic in movement, as became a man who had frequented the gymnasium in his youth. Even his head was still youthful, despite the streaks of gray in his curly hair and trimmed beard: and I noted that, in the matter of his beard, he did not encourage the full growth, as the pietists did, nor, of course, did he permit a razor to touch his face. He compromised, and the result was the Roman style. It was strange that he should make this impression of unspoiled pristine vigor, for his face was a mask of care and thoughtfulness. Only the straight Roman nose and the long jaws had been rescued from the network of wrinkles. In the company of the philosophers Joseph was all ears; he took their discussions perhaps more seriously than they; his eyes were drawn down in the intensity of his concentration, and he sat on his raised stool like a picture of spiritual concern. One would have, said that he was not listening to an analysis of distant themes, but rather to a debate which had a practical life-and-death significance for him; and the conclusion of the discussion would have for him the validity of a juridical pronouncement on his own fate. In a sense this was comprehensible; for the struggle still went on within him and the argumentation which moved back and forth dragged his soul now to this side, now to that; it was a battle for the possession of his inmost self. Yet it was more than this; for he conceived that the dispute over his individual soul was parallel with that over the possession of the soul of his people; indeed, the soul of the world. My Rabbi [Nicodemus] was like a seraph armed with a fiery sword, bursting into the harmonious earthly paradise which the Greek philosopher Philippus [ Philippus of Gederah]had created for Joseph. Beauty, and the grace which flows from it, was for the latter the highest conceivable good; the soul of man was but a note in the wholeness of the harmony of the gods. But the soul was not entrusted to all men; it was the privilege of those who were blessed with a superior intelligence. The soul introduced balance into the passions of man, calmed the fiery outbursts of lust and imparted to his bearing the grace of the gods. Therefore the wise man followed the golden mean, having refined his desires and impulses according to the nobility of the soul."

The Nazarene by Sholem Asch

 Asch (1880 – 1957) was a Polish-Jewish, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. I was introduced to his writings in his novel, The Prophet. I've always been attracted to the Old Testament and the way it describes the development of faith in the people of God. The revelation of God to the Israelites is intricately entwined with their very earthy and natural relationship with creation. The development of humanity through the centuries has had the effect of pulling us away from the natural world. Our work lives and our play lives are being drawn into a world of high-tech effects, rapid changes and into a world of video fantasy. I look at my being drawn into biblical worlds as a yearning to return to the experience of the natural. Longing for connection between my mind and my body to the natural world around me, connecting me to the Earth, plants, animals and my fellow human beings; connecting all of God's creation to our past and lighting my imagination to a picture of the road that humanity took to be where we are today. This is the draw I feel to the Biblical world.

Asch has written a number of novels that depict the Jewish and early Christian world. One of his more controversial novels is The Nazarene is one I’m currently reading. His fellow Jews were not all happy about his depiction of Jesus. He tells the story of Jesus through a narrator who is transported to Israel during Jesus's life by a mystic Pan Viadomsky. The novel is divided into three sections each one having a different point of view from which to experience Jesus's life. Part one of the novel provides a picture of Palestine through the eyes of Cornelius, a military governor of Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. Part two depicts Jesus’s world through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. Part three through the life of Joseph, the son of a sheep herder who desired to have one of his sons become a student of the Torah. At the age of 13 his father took him to a Rabbi Nicodemus to begin his education.

The book could be considered to be three novels: the book is 698 pages in length. The beauty of the writing however carries the reader through the stories effortlessly. The author has a way of putting flesh and mentality on the biblical characters he's portraying. I hope to do several posts on some of the text from the third part that I found particularly appealing.

I’ll start with the narrator's description of one aspect of the culture in Judea during the time of the Herods.

“Thus Greek and Roman went hand-in-hand. And it was a powerful alliance. All the measures taken by our Rabbis to halt the advance of this demoralization were vain; the poison spread through thousand secret channels into the heart of Jewish life. It affected the daily conduct of the Jews; it was manifest in the meals they prepared, their clothing, their headdress and their choice of ornaments. But there was something deeper: a change in the attitude toward the body. This was, among many Jews, no longer regarded primarily as the vessel the soul, but as an intrinsic treasure, a gift of God to man. The influence of the Greeks crept into our language, too, and the Aramaic dialect of Jerusalem began to sprout Greek words.

But it must not be thought that this influence was wholly one-sided. Many Greeks, observing at close range the pious modesty of Jewish life at its best, learning for the first time the nature of the Jewish faith, with its central concept of the single and living God, were deeply affected in turn. They were moved by the lyric expression of the desire for life beyond death, and they meditated on the universal hope which was embodied in the Messianic idea. The Greek mood of fatality was disturbed, the Greek mind set in motion among unaccustomed thoughts by the measureless devotion of the Jew to his God, by the voluntary acceptance of the strong discipline, by the tragic struggle against the temporal and the destructive, springing from deep faith in the divine and the timeless. It was as though a cold Greek statue had ceased to stand in moveless indifference, but had been touched with spirit, so that the lines trembled and the original harmony was disrupted. There was something extraordinary in the juxtaposition of Greek and Jew; two hostile worlds felt an inner longing for each other. They were like the complementary halves of a single being which had long regarded each other as enemies, and which now, brought into intimate contact on the soil of Judea, were beginning to discover in the midst of warfare a unifying principle.

The song of that contact between the two worlds was heard in its most harmonious form in the house of Joseph Arimathea.“

I'll close this post with a prayer from part two of the book. It is typical of prayers that preceding sections of part two describing Jesus’ world through the eyes of Judas Iscariot.

“Blessed art thou, O father in heaven, that thou hast chosen our portion that we may serve thee, and that thou hast not made us as the peoples of the world into idolaters which bow down and worship the work of their hands. Have compassion, father in heaven, on thy creatures and open their eyes, so all of them may see that thou alone art king of all the worlds, and that there is none beside thee."