Daily Archives: April 4, 2009

Eschatological Existence

Posted by on April 4, 2009 1 comment

“Now then, ‘When anyone is united with Christ, there is a new  world; the old order has gone, the new order has already begun.’ (II Cor. 5:17) I think that here lies the heart of the eschatological existence. A new act of creation has taken us out of the oppression of our closed and too little world and put us in open history with wide horizons, in the middle of ultimate realities, which Jesus directs toward us from the ultimate. Only the man who is open toward this future is up to date; only he who expects that this new reality not only has evident surplus value over the old today, but also that it will again get superiority over it, only he deserves to be called sanguine.”

~ J.C. Hoekendijk, The Church Inside Out, 167.

Bit of Balthasar

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“Contemplation’s object is God, and God is triune life. But as far as we are concerned, we only know of this triune life from the Son’s incarnation. Consequently we must not abstract from the incarnation in our contemplation. We cannot contemplate God’s triune life in itself; if we did we would sink into a vacuum, a world without substance, into conceptual  mathematics or day dreaming. . . . In binding our contemplation to the humanity of his Son, God is giving more, not less. He gives us a concrete vision of triune life by involving us in it through grace and our serious discipleship of Christ. This vision is simply the inner illumination of the obedience of faith rendered to the Father, together with Christ, in the Spirit.”

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, 193.

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