The Christian State of Life by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898707885
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2012-07-20T04:00:00+00:00

By comparison with the priesthood, the lay community may seem, at first, to be but a passive recipient, to be overwhelmed beyond its power of comprehension by the immense fullness of God as it is transmitted and represented by those in the state of election. “. . . We are God’s helpers, you are God’s tillage, God’s building” (1 Cor 3:9). “Are you not my work in the Lord?” (1 Cor 9:1). The lay community is reminded again and again of its value in the eyes of God; of how much the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as well as the elect have done for it; of the extent to which everything it possesses exceeds its expectation, its comprehension. For what is promised to and bestowed upon the community by its ministers is greater than anything its faith can conceive. “Do you not know yourselves that Christ Jesus is in you?” (2 Cor 13:15). “Christ in you—your hope of glory!” (Col 1:27). This indwelling of Christ in the faithful is an actual participation in his death and Resurrection: “. . . If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with Christ” (Rom 6:8), for God has “raised us up together, and seated us together in heaven in Christ Jesus” (Eph 1:6). “If then any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:7) in Christ, “who has also stamped us with his seal and has given us the Spirit as a pledge in our hearts” (2 Cor 1:22). The description of Christian election in the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians depicts a veritable torrent of grace—starting with God’s original purpose before the foundation of the world, when we were already loved and predestined in Christ to be holy and to be the children of the Father; continuing into the fullness of time, when we were made coheirs in Christ “according to the riches of his grace [that] has abounded beyond measure in us in all wisdom and prudence” (Eph 1:7-8); and ending with our being stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit, the last mystery of the Holy Trinity. Thereupon the apostle bursts into an almost incoherent paean of praise before the community: May God enlighten “the eyes of your mind. . . so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what [are] the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what [is] the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe . . . his mighty power, which he has wrought in Christ in raising him from the dead, and setting him at his right hand in heaven. . . . And him he gave as head over all the Church, which indeed is his body, the completion of him who fills all with all” (Eph 1:18-20, 22-23).

But the community cannot stand passively by and simply allow itself to be overwhelmed by the mysteries of Christ, to

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