Hans Urs von Balthasar quotes - page 2
Charisms are not distributed at random but are dispensed by God to supply what is needful and lacking in his Church at each historical moment. If they are from God, they usually do not flow with the latest fashionable trend but much more likely contain an antidote and remedy for the perils of the time.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
In his Gospel, St. John, through long and deep contemplation, acknowledges Jesus to be the Logos of God. In his epistles he points entirely away from himself toward Christ. Finally, in the Apocalypse, in the vision of the Lamb of God, Old and New Testaments are united, and the whole drama of salvation is summed up.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Christ's Passion, viewed from within, is of a diversity that the biblical texts and images leave hidden; but numerous mystics through the centuries have been allowed to experience a great deal of it in ever-varying aspects-if only by drops, as it were, compared with the Son of God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
There were many mystical phenomena in Adrienne's life-stigmata, transferences, the radiating of light, levitation, speaking with tongues, and other things of that kind, but they all occurred in a totally unemphatic way. They were mere accompaniments to show forth the heart of the matter: what was to be passed on to the Church, invisibly through prayer and strenuous penance, visibly through the dictated works. The criterion of her mysticism's authenticity lies primarily, if not exclusively, in the quality of what she did and what she had and has to say.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the "work” of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it; to believe against all the evidence of experience ("credere contra fidem” like "sperare contra spem”), against every "rational” concept of God, which thinks of him in terms of impassibility or, at best, totally pure goodness, but not in terms of this inconceivable and senseless act of love.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Photo:
Wikimedia commons,
CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: Swiss Theologian
Born: August 12, 1905
Died: June 26, 1988
Quotes count: 37
Wikipedia: Hans Urs von Balthasar
Related authors
