Reflection - A Coincidence of Events

Of course, Christmas is a joyous occasion. Jesus Christ is born. God has taken on human form. God condescended to become one of us. As difficult a concept as this is to understand, one cannot help but be gladdened, even flattered, that this is what our Faith asks us to believe. Yet, the postings of January regarding Balthasar's last chapter in his book Prayer, and two sermons serving as readings for the Office of Readings for Friday, January 8 (from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours, Catholic Book Publishing Co.), indicate that this is not a complete picture of the joy and the peace that we celebrate at Christmas.

In a Christmas day sermon Leo the Great closes the sermon with the following:

"Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ."

Peter Chrysologus in a sermon entitled "The sacrament of Christ's incarnation", ends his sermon thus:

"and so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain forever as he had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with the human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus…. Amen."

 

In the coincidence of reading these sermons and their connection with Balthasar's reflections on the Cross and Resurrection it became clear to me that the birth of Jesus, the joy of the Christmas season and the love and peace it promises, is not complete until we make that connection between Christ's birth and the birth of the new man, his death on the Cross and our death to ourselves, and Jesus’ resurrection and our resurrection to that divinized recreation.

"Prayer" - von Balthasar continues

Its one thing to read St. Paul's letters and it is totally different to see their theological fabric. Balthasar weaves his discussion on the contemplation of the cross and resurrection with words from St. Paul's various letters. In so doing he brings new dimensions to St. Paul's letters and new insights into our participation in the mystery of the cross.

More from the last chapter of Prayer:

It could be said that the center of Paul’s entire theology is the fact that the balance of the old and the new aeon, the first and second Adam, cross and resurrection, fear and hope, has been tipped in favor of the resurrection. Moreover, the first of each of these pairs is embraced by the second; the cross in the Christian life is borne by the power of the resurrection: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies …. So we do not lose heart. (2 Cor.4:8-10, 16-18)

…. Thus Paul always speaks of his own sufferings … as a demonstration of the power of the Risen Lord, never as being in competition with the Lord’s passion. …. Thus the servant has no reason for boasting; he only does his duty (1 Cor. 9:16) in allowing the Father to reveal his Son in him (Gal. 1:16). All this “bearing death in the body” is the result of a contemplation of the resurrection in which we are assimilated more and more efficaciously to the glory of the Son, who transforms the beholder into himself: “We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18) pp. 296-7 

"Prayer", Hans Urs von Balthasar

When searching my small library for a book, I cannot help but pass by my shelf of von Balthsar's writings. His seventeen volume Trilogy, The Glory of the Lord, Theo Drama, and Theo Logic are neatly lined up in a row. I've only made it to Volume 7 of The Glory of the Lord. Yet, each time I pass my eyes over this shelf I invariably grab a small paperback volume entitled Prayer. 
This most recent time I pulled it off the shelf, fully forgetting my reason for scanning my book shelves, and I began to reread some of the book. Now, someone told me once, (my spiritual director I think) that it is not the number of books that you read that is a most important thing, but, the number of books that you re-read. I have not re-read the entire book. Each time I pick it up I go to certain sections that struck me as particularly meaningful or especially beautifully phrased.

I offer here a brief snippet from the very last chapter in the book, Cross and Resurrection
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But “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us … while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom.5:8,10) … The sentence which in principle determined our fate was performed upon Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners: in him we were crucified and condemned to death; in him we were made the recipients of grace and adopted as children. In him and without any activity on our part, God’s anger toward us has changed into tender, caring love. All this has become a reality, in and through Christ, in the Father’s heaven: our task is to let it come true in all its fullness in our temporal existence on earth.

In the New Covenant “what we ought to do” follows from “what we are”. We are justified and should act accordingly. We have died with Christ, we have been buried and raised with him, and this should determine our behavior: we should no longer live in sin; the “old man” is dead and we should actually regard him as such, daily encountering his resistance to the death sentence served upon him, making him die daily (Rom 6). pp. 295-296