NO GREATER LOVE: PRAYER AND ESCHATOLOGY

For the last two thousand years, the Church has been in the “end of time” or the last things. The branch of theology dealing with the this is called eschatology. It can refer to the last things of the individual or the last things of the Church and humanity in general. In the book Prayer, theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar discusses the general eschatology of the Church and humanity in relationship to prayer.

Contemplation becomes a reality in a here-and-now which is part of contemporary world history. It is partly shaped by it, and influences it in turn. Furthermore, contemplation takes place within the era of the Church, the "end of time", as scripture calls it. Thus it is situated between the two parousias of the Lord, a time peculiarly suitable and set apart for contemplation. There is no suggestion in scripture that the Lord's imminent return implies that the Christian should employ the time that remains to the Church in the widest possible practical action. "Work while it is day" refers to the life-span; it does not refer to historical time at all, stretching into an indefinite future which is at our disposal, but to the time of grace, which is "today" (2 Cor 6:2; Heb 4:7). It is a time of waiting for the parousia, of "abiding" after the departure of the Bridegroom, as John prefers to describe the Christian life. It is a time of waiting in the wilderness, facing the untiring assaults of the dragon whose very ferocity is "because he knows that his time is short" (Rev 12:12 f). So this "waiting" means that our life in the Church is emphatically contemplative. The Christian's activity springs from the fact that he and the world in which he dwells have not yet attained the status made possible in principle by the redemption accomplished by Christ. But activity can only help him to approach this new status (always going from the Old Covenant to the New) provided it is an activity in the strength of the grace, already bestowed, of the New Covenant, i.e., in the strength of contemplation.

These words of Von Balthasar were written in the 1950’s, before the post-Vatican II turmoil when part of the Church shifted from a “religious spirituality” of seeking to know the Lord and obeying Him to a “secular spirituality” of attempting to bring about the Kingdom of God and “peace and justice” by action and especially political action.

Von Balthasar next discusses how the Church’s position between the two comings of Christ is so offensive to the secular world.

The Church lives in the "last time"; therefore, from the point of view of salvation history, nothing "new" can happen. Everything has been "accomplished", brought to completion, and the Victor waits "until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified" (Heb 10:13-14). The Holy Spirit who leads us into the fullness of Christ, interpreting it in all its wealth and profundity until the end of the world, draws upon a source which, historically speaking, lies in the past. In prayer we too have no choice but to look back to this event. This means that the Christian approach runs counter to the onward march of history; the Christian's contemplative tendency is bound to offend merely historical man.

Those who do not see the last two thousand years as the “last days” before the second coming of Christ but as one more step in the onward march of history, will be offended by those who see Christ as the Victor over sin and death. We need to know Him as well as make Him known to others. Even if we are not alive when He comes again, we do not know the impact our faith has on subsequent generations.

Theologian Von Balthasar sees the Church’s position as resembling that of Judaism just before the coming of Christ when it looked back to the Mosaic Law and the time in the desert and forward to the coming Messiah.

The Church in the "wilderness" of the time of waiting bears a certain resemblance to the final phase of the Old Covenant. During the Exile (and even after the Exile, in terms of salvation history, there is basically no new initiative) the nation had the opportunity of entering more deeply into past salvation history, obliged as it was to contemplate this history from a distance. It is at this time that "theology" comes about, it is the time of the Wisdom literature, which, within scripture itself, initiated a contemplation of the history of the Covenant. Here, at last, the Pentateuch can be put into its final form since the understanding of the meaning of salvation history has come to fruition; now the stupendous event of the Covenant can be clothed in appropriate words and images. Now the oral traditions and separate sources coalesce into a whole under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Here, at last, in the Wisdom literature, revelation contemplates itself, locating the interrelationships, identifying the inner rationale, deducing the doctrines and their application, and bringing it all together in a form which praises God and profits the believer.

When the Messiah did come, some were ready for Him, but some were not. We have to be ready for the Lord when He comes and this readiness takes the form of prayer. Theologian Von Balthasar tells us:

"Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them" (Heb 4:1-2). Jesus takes up the commandment at this point and impresses it upon his disciples: they are to "be awake" in that nocturnal darkness and he does not mean simply a bodily wakefulness but an inner preparedness for some imminent event, an event, however, which cannot be deduced or foreseen, not even by mystical knowledge. "Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when it is kairos" (Mk 13:33). Videte, vigilate, orate. The "seeing", "watching", called for in this time of waiting is definitely a kind of "keeping one's eyes open" to the future. It is based on a fundamental nescience, which makes New Testament contemplation the antitype of that of the Old. This is watching, waking under the form of "prayer", a readiness of the heart for God, who can come and surprise us at any time. And everything depends on our preparedness at his sudden coming; he will himself minister and wait upon those who have served him by watching and waiting, but those who have slept, who did not take the trouble to know him, will find the door barred against them, for he does not know them either.

We need to see that the Lord can come at any time and without warning. Yet the Lord asks “Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8) Our waiting for the Lord is interconnected with our everyday life of prayer. Von Balthasar explains this connection.

From this vantage point we can see the contemplative's free service of love, to which we have already referred, in a new light. Now we can appreciate the full theological basis for that personal service offered to the word of God which takes the form of a straightforward, sober faithfulness in everyday matters. This service, in its fullness, as the Church understands it in its liturgy (which means the "offering of service"), always involves all three temporal dimensions: it ministers to the mystery of the Son who has appeared in the flesh (vigilate mecum: Mt 26:38), to the mystery of the Word who is continually present and coming, in hidden form, in the Church, and to the thickly veiled mystery of the Word who is to return at the end of time. The disciples on the road to Emmaus found that he who spoke to them made their hearts burn within them; the conversation which fanned the flames of this fire was concerned with events of salvation history in the past, interpreted by the Lord present with them, and it inflamed their yearning for a future, unrestricted vision of him who suddenly had disappeared from among them. Thus the eschatological factor in Christian prayer is calculated to promote contemplation in the Church. The campaign against contemplation, which is waged from time to time in the name of eschatology, is ill-conceived. All that is necessary, when the timeless-present element of mystical contemplation is overstressed and put forward as absorption into the presence of eternity, is a corrective element. An unbalanced contemplation of this kind would very soon lose its sense of the word of God; it would cease to "hear" it, i.e., it would lose the sense of faith and replace it with (cloaked or naked) "sight". The fact that the Word of God is to come at the end of time keeps us mindful that he came in history, in the midst of time; it keeps us alive to the fact that he comes anew every day to the Church as a whole and to the praying believer, in a way which no seeing or understanding can surpass. Only in this experience of the Word who has come, who comes and who is to come, can the Church, placed in the midst of time, be adequate to the active side of its task. It must not be done in a hurry, as if the Word himself had not already achieved everything; yet it must not be neglected, as if it were already time to rest in contemplation in the three "booths" of Mount Tabor. Since the Lord has accomplished everything in fullness, the Church can proceed with its work in confidence, looking unto him. Secure in the promise of eternity and already enjoying a foretaste of it, it yearns together with the Spirit and cries "Come!"

– Jim Nugent, CFP