The Grain of Wheat by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898705409
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

Love

Better perverted love than no love at all: the woman in the Gospel who had sinned out of love is thought worthy of forgiveness, but not the Pharisee, for the simple fact that he had done “nothing”.

❖

Il me semble que le coeur pleinement confiant est celui qui, fasciné par la puissance infinie de l’Amour Divin, ne laisse pas les impossibility humaines limiter son esperance, mais qui donne à sa confiance la tailie de l’Amour: “It seems to me that the fully trusting heart is the one that, enthralled by the infinite power of Divine Love, does not allow human impossibilities to limit its hope but gives to its own trust the proportions of Love itself.” CONSUMMATA

❖

Dostoyevsky is wrong when he says that a universal love for man is a false front for egotism, which in this way is avoiding the concrete demands of love. But Nietzsche, too, is wrong when he compares the narrowness of a particular love for those around us with the liberating breadth of a love for those farthest from us. Christ loves in each man the wonderful image of God, which shines out to him new and unique in each particular case. Thus, his love is at once unbounded and wholly concrete. This would not be the case if he were to love the individual either aesthetically, on account of his particularity, or communistically, only on the basis of his common human nature.

❖

Awe is more transcendent than longing. The latter possesses only its own measure; the former, precisely by stepping back, can measure the distance from the Beloved and therefore also his actual proximity. Longing can only make immanence swell beyond its proper bounds; awe brings the transcendent into the immanent.

❖

We are not asked; we are invited.

❖

“The lover assumes that love exists in the heart of the other person; precisely this assumption allows him to build up love in the other starting from the bottom. An architect does not think very highly of the stones and rubble he needs for the construction; a teacher presupposes ignorance; a disciplinarian, unruly ways. But the lover who is busy building up knows only one procedure: he must presuppose the existence of love. Supposing that the lover should succeed in building up love in another person: when the edifice is finally complete, then the lover will stand apart by himself and with shame say to himself: I always knew that this existed!” KIERKEGAARD

❖

And yet we must contrast this statement of Kierkegaard’s with Scheler’s thought that true love does not see value in the beloved but creates it. Or, in a better formulation: he discloses it creatively. For what could be creative if not love? But Kierkegaard is just as right: How could love ever ascribe a work to itself? As always, the solution lies in Christ: foundering in his awareness that he could not awaken the love of the world, his vessel shattered in the abyss of his deed’s uselessness (in the words of Albert Schweitzer)—but then his fragrance came

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.