Sunday 2 December 2012

HE AND i Gabrielle B. Dec 1, 1949

First Sunday of Advent. Community Mass.
Fr. Hugh (Homily) quoted Merton this morning, who had complained to the Senior Monks at Gethsemani Abbey, that the Novices were not keeping the "SILENCE".
Fr. Louis (Merton), Novice Director, commented, "Silence begins when you realize someone else is speaking."
Latest Weblog Post gives the same wavelength, "the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar urged Catholic thinkers to develop la théologie a genoux, a theology on one's knees." 
Today, even better, is to listen to the speaking in the "HE AND i" communion of Gabrielle. The listening here 'realizing someone is speaking!'   




Weblog HE AND i, Gabrielle B.
1949
December 1 -  Holy hour.
  •  "Concentrate on going higher, always higher in the Holy Trinity. This is your Family, your End and your Centre. Your Home, too, so you must take up your residence there. (. . . )
  • Be grateful to be invited to it. Dwell on the thought of it with praise and song, remembering your nothingness and the tenderness of the invitation. It's a long time since the invitation was sent out, isn't it? Don't you think you should respond by focalising all your desires on this one end? What a blessed Home - the heart of the Trinity opening up all its unutterable delights for you in the love untold of the Father and the Son! How can you refrain from thinking of it every day with impetuous longing?
  • Ask your heavenly mother who understood better to lead you there. She is the bride of the Spirit, the mother of the Son, the daughter of the Father on whom her immaculate heart was forever centred. Let her go with you before the Holy Trinity to whom you belong, free though you are.
  • You are thinking, 'But these three Persons are so great. What can I say - I, who am so little?'
  • Have you forgotten that it is your weakness that attracts your God? Then give Him your utmost confidence - boundless trust, you understand? He can give you everything. He owns everything and is only waiting for your call. Be sure of Him. Aspire to reach Him. Thirst for Him with a thirst that can never be quenched. Your loving insistence honours Him greatly. Don't be like the silent ones who consider themselves too unworthy to ask for magnificent favours. I tell you, they will never overcome their unworthiness. Be like the humble ones who expose their poverty and count on their Christ to transform them at each confession, because He hears their cry of regret and turns it into a hymn for His glory. Don't restrain your heart's upsoarings, My child. Come more often into the secret place of the Most High. That's where your permanent home will be. "

December: The Month of the Immaculate Conception



Scott P. Richert

December: The Month of the Immaculate Conception

By , About.com GuideDecember 1, 2011
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A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she appeared at Lourdes, France, in 1858. Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, Alabama. (Photo © Scott P. Richert)
During Advent, as we prepare for the birth of Christ, we also celebrate one of the great feasts of the Catholic Church. TheSolemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) is not only a celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary but a foretaste of our own redemption. It is such an important feast that the Church has declared the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception a Holy Day of Obligation.
In keeping the Blessed Virgin free from the stain of sin from the moment of her conception, God presents us with a glorious example of what mankind was meant to be. Mary is truly the second Eve, because, like Eve, she entered the world without sin. Unlike Eve, she remained sinless throughout her life--a life that she dedicated fully to the will of God. The Eastern Fathers of the Church referred to her as "without stain" (a phrase that appears frequently in the Eastern liturgies and hymns to Mary); in Latin, that phrase is immaculatus: "immaculate."
The Immaculate Conception was not, as many people believe, a precondition for Christ's act of redemption but the result of it. Standing outside of time, God knew that Mary would humbly submit herself to His will, and in His love for this perfect servant, He applied to her at the moment of her conception the redemption, won by Christ, that all Christians receive at theirBaptism.
It is appropriate, then, that the Church has long declared the month in which the Blessed Virgin gave birth to the Savior of the world as the Month of the Immaculate Conception.  


Saturday 1 December 2012

Hans Urs von Balthasar, a theology on one's knees


A theology on one's knees
Scrapbook. A very simple quote may lead to vast Browsing on a favourite subject.
The result on this scale is unmanageable and can only serve as a SCRAPBOOK for the moment.
The opening is the wide door by Google.

Google:
About 36,100 results (0.44 seconds) 
Hans Urs von Balthasar, a theology on one's knees
About 36,100 results (0.44 seconds)  

1.     www.amazon.co.uk/spirituality_books
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www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/.../introduction.ht...
... Fr Aidan Nichols of the great theological trilogy of Hans Urs Von Balthasar... betende Theologie, 'theology on one's knees', as well as confidence in the ...
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www.theway.org.uk/Back/38Quash.pdf
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Urs von Balthasar. Ben Quash ... Von Balthasar is therefore a theologian both of astonishing com- ... can only do theology properly 'on one's knees', he argued.
www.catholicpreaching.com/theology-on-ones-knees-the-anch...
5 Oct 2007 – Theology on One's Knees, The Anchor, October 5, 2007 ... “theologians on our knees,” to use the celebrated image of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/04/.../the-habit-of-theology...
12 Apr 2010 – The conceptualization of the theological (and other) virtues is one of .....theology on one's knees.” [HansUrsvon Balthasar, “Theology and ...
www.oswaldsobrino.com/.../kneeling-theology-of-hans-urs-vo...
3 Oct 2003 – 124 note 35, quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, tr. ... With Balthasar, you wait on your knees to hear the word of God; with the revisionists ...
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by MA GONZALEZ - Cited by 7 - Related articles
Often, when one hears the name Hans Urs von Balthasar in theological circles, two .....the scripture, on one's knees, prostrate, in the conviction that the written ...
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by J Astley - 2011 - Related articles
theology. For there are many species of theologyHans Urs von Balthasar argued that knowledge of God should properly be approached 'on one's knees'.
scienceandbelief.org/tag/hans-urs-von-balthasar/
21 Jun 2012 – Posts about Hans Urs von Balthasar written by Ruth Bancewicz. ...extended posts sums up my recent work on beauty in science and theology... but they should also spend time on their knees – perhaps both mentally and ...
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Enjoy the best Hans Urs von Balthasar Quotes at BrainyQuote. Quotations by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Swiss Theologian, Born August 12, 1905. Share with your ...
books.google.co.uk › Biography & Autobiography › Religious

             
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Pattern of redemption: the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar ... mother, even in being other than his mother, therefore all being is one,- 2) that that love is good, ...
Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905Ð1988) was one of the most prolific and influential theologians of the twentieth century. This book, the first English-language study of Balthasar, seeks to show the fruitfulness of his thought by drawing out its philosophical implications for the question of truth. D. C. Schindler argues that a "dramatic" approach, shaping both the form and content of philosophy, enables a new conception of being, of human consciousness, and of their coming together to satisfy both traditional concerns about unity and postmodern calls for difference-while avoiding the pitfalls of a one-sided emphasis on either. 

Responses:
I'm grateful for theologians such as Fr. Nichols. God knows how much we need men and women in the Church who can speak God's Truth, lovingly. I'm sorry that Fr. Nichols did not speak a bit more about the great women Doctors of the Church: St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Therese of Lisieux. I especially liked the conclusion to the first article:
Ideally, The Theologian Should Be A Saint
In order to preserve this sense of the unity of God’s approach to us through a medley of discrete facts and truths, the theologian must always be concerned to develop his or her own personal relationship with the Christian Absolute found in all these particulars: the God of Jesus Christ. And this brings us back in conclusion to the idea that to see the theological habit at work, we should look to its highest practitioners, the Doctors of the Church. The final aspect of that habit, which needs highlighting, is the quality of the intersubjective friendship between a theologian and the Lord. Ideally, the theologian should be a saint; at any rate, all theology should be what the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Baithasar called die betende theologie or La théologie à genoux: “theology on one’s knees.” [Hans. Urs. von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” in Word and Redemption. Essays in Theology 2 (English trans., New York: 1965) 49-86]

Although the personal relationship of the theologian with God is a reality wider than prayer, since it necessarily involves the entire Christian life, nevertheless prayer is its conscious heart. The fourth-century desert Father Evagrius of Pontus had a saying, “If you pray, you are a theologian.”[ Evagrius, On Prayer 60. See I. Hausherr, Les Leçons d’un contemplatif (Paris: 1960).] The saying has been, perhaps, a little overexposed and not a little misunderstood. The term “theologian” here carries a somewhat specialized meaning. It really means someone who contemplates God as the Trinity. But at least we can echo Evagrius and say, “If you do not pray then you are not a, theologian.” It is a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for becoming a theologian (in the non-Evagrian sense) that one has some kind of prayerful quality to one’s life and thought. How we should understand this is a delicate business. Clearly, it is not the case that if we flop down in a church for half an hour a day we shall emerge from the pew reborn as a latter-day Duns Scotus. But continued exposure to God and a God-centered vision of reality brings a greater quality of intuitive ability when it comes to theological judgment. In other words, if two people who differ on some aspect of theology share a comparable theological culture, but one prays and the other has stopped praying, it is the one who still prays that we should be well advised to follow.[ J. Leclerq, Theology and Prayer (English trans., St. Meinrad, md.: 1963).]

THE PAROUSIAN WEBLOG
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 01, 2007

"You need interior life and doctrinal formation. Be demanding on yourself! As a Christian man or woman, you have to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for you are obliged to give good example with holy shamelessness. The charity of Christ should compel you. Feeling and knowing yourself to be another Christ from the moment you told him that you would follow him, you must not separate yourself from your equals - your relatives, friends and colleagues - any more than you would separate salt from the food it is seasoning. Your interior life and your formation include the piety and the principles a child of God must have in order to give flavour to everything by his active presence there. Ask the Lord that you may always be that good seasoning in the lives of others." ~ Saint Josemaría Escriva, The Forge, 450

Truth is not something merely recited, and love is not a fleeting feeling expressed by the overwhelmed amorous. Love is a choice which requires constant reaffirmation; likewise, it is a choice for all of us who still gaze through the glass darkly to gather our ability to focus so that we may live a life conformed to the truth of Christ's love. To avoid hypocrisy and bear the real fruitfulness of the life of grace, the interior life must be cultivated rather than the exterior presentation of love or truth.

To see the unity of truth and love is a work of grace. A mere exterior presentation will ultimately divide the two. One may err with a presentation built on a faulty concept of love that ignores truth, but I imagine the person who has thought the matter out this far would be more apt to succumb to an intellectual pride. His or her presentation of truth would be built on ego, or worse, self-righteousness, which may be read by sinners quite rightfully as a lack of humility or an anger against their person. Such anger is never holy anger.

But development of the interior life is the development of full communion with Christ and conformity to his image. It allows us to become "another Christ" to those we come in contact with. Likewise, doctrinal formation allows us to more freely live as Christ lived. It is right thinking which begets right action, orthodoxy begetting orthopraxy. It is for this reason that many spiritual directors urge people to pray the catechism.

We cannot speak what we do not know, and our knowing is ultimately of the Person of Christ. For this reason, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar urged Catholic thinkers to develop la théologie a genoux, a theology on one's knees. A prayerful life dedicated to the study of God's truth has its place in every Catholic's life, be it in the halls of the Vatican by clergy, an ivory tower office of a professor, or some rural adoration chapel in South Louisiana by a layman keeping watch by night. It is a necessity for all who would practice the new evangelization.

Does this mean that we hold our tongues until we learn enough? No. We will never learn enough and Christ has called us to reach those near us. We must speak, but with humility. Does this mean we cave to cliché and not talk the talk until we walk the walk? No. Such is a concern about exterior presentation rather than a genuine love for the souls of others who need the same grace offered to sinners like us. Again, we speak the truth in love, but with the humility to acknowledge our own frailty. And with dilligence, we seek interior growth knowing any good thing we may do must be rooted in Christ's deep work in us. "The charity of Christ should compel you."

The motto of the Parousians is Veritas in Caritate. Humilitas in Excellentia. Pray for us as we pursue a life of truth in love and humility in excellence. If it happens, be certain, it will have to be a work of grace.
Posted by Thomas Tobias D'Anna