Priestly Spirituality by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586176938
Published: 2013-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

2

How difficult and muddled the situation of the person looking for help seems from the foregoing. Can the demands I am making actually be satisfied by any man? He would have to mediate on my behalf in my unique relationship with God, without, however, dissolving this relationship in inner-worldly generalities. He would therefore have to know, from his own unique relationship with God, what this uniqueness actually is and at the same time be equipped with the mission and the authority to be able to know this, in the Holy Spirit, for others, also, and to give them the appropriate guidance. Mission and authority from God, combined with experience in the Spirit: this would give him the capacity to demand of me—not for himself, but for God and for me—what I do not trust myself to demand of myself.

This is the first quality he would have to have, the priest I seek—for he would have to be a priest, or at any rate someone commissioned and authorized from above, by Christ, to hold out to me God’s Incarnate Word, so that I can be sure that I cannot dispose of it myself, that I have not already emasculated it in advance by psychologizing, interpreting, de-mythologizing it in such a way that it can no longer generate in me what it wishes; in such a way that I cannot escape its demands because they come to me in the concrete form of ecclesial authority, which through its ministry actualizes the concrete reality of the divine. But it is not enough for someone to confront me inexorably with the demands of the Word, only then to leave me standing there. Maybe I have already got as far as this demand by myself. He must also help me to persevere and not to run away by staying alongside me with an unwavering love. With a terrifying love that says to me again and again: “This is after all what you actually want.” A love that deserves our most profound gratitude, for it is simply irreplaceable. At certain moments, such a person is like the angel on the Mount of Olives, strengthening us to be alone with God. The strength with which such a person does this stems partly of course from his mission (which has within it the strength and relentlessness of God); but it also springs from his own strength that has grown within him through his being alone with God. Simultaneously, from his mission and from experience, he can embody both aspects—the inexorability and the love that lies within the will of God—so that we no longer wish or are able to run away.

Were he lacking in experience, then he could not even credibly proclaim the Word of God from the pulpit; he could at best be a lifeless echo of what others (like Paul, for example) have proclaimed of the Word of God in their existence. Still less would he be capable of existentially accompanying the believer in the existential confrontation with the Word of God and of holding him within it.

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