Elucidations by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898706215
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

III

And so, for the man who undertakes the task in the Church of proclaiming officially the word of God which is Christ and of confronting the individual with it in its very particularity, there is no other way of doing this thoroughly and of remaining faithful to one’s task than by giving up one’s whole existence totally to it. He must identify himself with it; for that is what the apostles did at Jesus’ command when they left everything to follow him, not only their possessions and their parental home, but also wife and children. Of course the abandonment of material possessions, in order to offer one’s life to the word of God, is only the starting point; it only becomes a criterion for the “priest I want” if this first step becomes a sustained form of life. From a worldly point of view such a form of life is and must remain senseless, because it cannot be re-interpreted in terms of any sociological state of life; and all attempts to give ecclesiastical status to such a state of life by drawing on parallels in paganism or in Judaism always remained questionable. A priest must always be prepared for the possibility of again being excluded from the organization of society. Here, if anywhere, Augustine’s saying is true that whoever builds his life on Christ does not stand but hangs or “stands above himself”. And it is only through God in Christ that we receive the guarantee that whoever leaves everything “for my sake and for the sake of the gospel” does not fall into the void, does not fall between two stools, but (as he hangs) will be borne along in his impossible existence. That such a person can have no sort of “self-understanding” must be clear; he has given up interpreting himself, so that he may be interpreted by God alone. He does not judge himself but holds himself open to God’s direction, who knows him and judges him aright. It is the fact that he has abandoned his self-understanding that makes him the priest I want, one who with his existence can become for me a word and a light of God. The abandonment of existence with its own light is the thing that alone provides the guarantee of the essential humility which makes a man transparent for a life other than his own, which shines forth with a light which does not interest the man who has abandoned himself, on which he does not reflect, which he does not cultivate. The fire which bums in the truly humble man is that of love for God and for his incarnate word; it does not have its focus in the man himself but in the object of his love and is fanned by the idea that love, God, is not loved in the world, that it is despised or that men take offense at its weakness. “When men take offense, must I not burn?” Humility and zeal grow together.

The

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