NO GREATER LOVE: CROSS AND RESURRECTION

The last chapter of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's book, Prayer, deals with what is called in theology "soteriology". This word refers to the study of salvation or the "last things."

For the Christian, the human person (body and soul) has two possible final states, heaven and hell. Purgatory is not one of the options since it is not a "final" or "eternal" state but a temporary state. Naturally, the preferred state is heaven, but. for Christians, heaven was only opened to us because Jesus Christ took upon Himself our sins. The Father's acceptance of His death on the cross was proven by his Resurrection from the dead. Von Balthasar explains what this means.

Heaven, in which we already share by way of anticipation, has fashioned our earthly life and given it its meaning; similarly, in the final, "soteriological" tension, it is the resurrection which determines our relation to the cross. We are Christians because the Lord is risen; else would our faith be empty and meaningless (1 Cor 15:14). Jesus suffered with a view to glory; he took upon himself the penance of the cross with a view to the Father's absolution. And, initially, we cannot in any way be regarded as Christ's companions; we do not share his path, walking in step with him---otherwise there would be no qualitative difference between him and us. He would only be primus inter pares and we could seriously be regarded as co-redeemers. But "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us ... while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Rom 5:8, 10). If we do walk some part of the way with the Son, it is by the grace of the redemption he has accomplished. The sentence which in principle determined our fate was performed upon Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners: in him we were crucified and condemned to death; in him we were made the recipients of grace and adopted as children. In him, and without any activity on our part, God's anger toward us has changed into tender, caring love. All this has become a reality, in and through Christ, in the Father's heaven: our task is to let it come true in all its fullness in our temporal existence on earth.

We need to realize that only Christ's Resurrection makes it possible for us to share in Christ's suffering and even this is the gift of Christ. Von Balthasar explains this further. Thus. Paul always speaks of his own sufferings, many and varied as they are, as a demonstration of the power of the Risen Lord, never as being in competition with the Lord's Passion. This is particularly the case with regard to the wounds of Christ which he bears on his body (2 Cor 4:10; Gal 6:17), when he even speaks of being "crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:20) and of completing in his flesh "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" (Col 1:24). This is only possible because he has been chosen by the Risen and Ascended One to demonstrate His power in him, to "show" him how much he must suffer for the name of the Lord (Acts 9:16). Thus, the servant has no reason for boasting; he only does his duty (1 Cor 9:16) in allowing the Father to reveal his Son in him (Gal 1:16). All this "bearing death in the body" is the result of a contemplation of the resurrection in which we are assimilated more and more efficaciously to the glory of the Son, who transforms the beholder into himself: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:18)..........Out of the fullness of his victory the Son endows the different kinds of men with different modes of sharing in his temporal sufferings and in Calvary's profound mystery of judgment. Such participation, as the Lord wishes, can go to the extremes of powerlessness, spiritual darkness, forsakenness and rejection; since these things are a sharing in the cross, they may go beyond what can be experienced and endured at the natural level. They can be so intense that the subject seems to lose all spiritual light whatever, all prospect and hope of redemption and resurrection. And yet, infallibly, this is all a result of that light; it presupposes it, objectively and even subjectively. For the light is never withdrawn from a believer unless, having already experienced it, he consents, at least implicitly, to be deprived of it.

St. Francis could receive the Lord's stigmata in 1224 on Mount Alverno, and after much mental and physical suffering die in peace in 1226 because the Lord accepted St. Francis' intense love from Him just as the Father accepted Christ's death on the cross through the Resurrection. St. Francis must have experienced much darkness in the last years of his yet his willingness to undergo it all presupposed the Triumph of the Cross through the Resurrection.

What about us ordinary people? How do we contemplate the cross and resurrection? Von Balthasar gives us his thoughts on this matter. All faith is resurrection faith. Hence contemplation of the cross is part of contemplation of the resurrection. In turn, contemplation of the cross is the context in which we are to contemplate our own sin and the sin of the world. For from a Christian point of view we cannot reflect fruitfully upon sin unless we do so on the way to penance, and the origin of penance is the cross. Only in the light of the cross and its judgment on sin can the sinner hope to get some idea of what his sin is. Our so-called good or bad conscience, however necessary a function it may be, is inadequate on its own, for sin is by nature a lie and thus casts a fog over our insight into ourselves. It is easier than we think to circumvent our consciences and to adopt the standards of the "world". On the other hand, we can be thrown into a sudden despair with regard to the abyss of our own sin, and this despair is not God's will either, but comes from our own attitude of sin. The cross gives the sinner the proper objectivity (a God-given degree of insight into his sinfulness) and the proper subjectivity (a God-given experience of contrition, repentance and sorrow), resulting in an appropriate sense and fear of judgment. There is nothing Christian about unleashing an unrestrained anxiety about judgment which ignores the reality of the cross---indeed, it is totally un-Christian. But there is a dialectic in our contemplation of sin in the light of the cross: only by looking at my Redeemer can I understand the extent of what I have done. In the face of redeeming love, I am pierced through by a nameless terror: I might be, indeed I am, a murderer of Eternal Love; no excuses are of any avail; I deserve unconditional damnation. Beholding the handiwork of ultimate love between Father, Son and Spirit, performed for me, loveless as I am, I begin to understand that I do not belong among them, that I do not have love and thus am deserving of eternal wrath.

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In the traditional Act of Contrition, we detest our sins because of "Thy just punishments", but the biggest reason why we detest our sins is that "they offend Thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love." Thus, even our own condemnation is the working of the all merciful and compassionate God whom we should never stop loving. On the other hand, we can derive hope from the repentant criminal on the cross. "One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying 'Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!' But the other rebuked him, saying, 'Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we, indeed, justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.' And he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.' And he said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.'" (Lk 23:39-43) The repentant criminal hoped in the Lord even under condemnation, and he was rewarded with heaven.

Von Balthasar emphasizes that in our contemplation of the Cross we are really bystanders observing what the Lord is doing for us. Anyone who tries to contemplate the Passion in all seriousness is bound to feel that there is something liberating in this idea of a fundamental distinction between the Lord and us. Integrity and simple decency demand it. There is something basically untrue and disproportionate about putting my own trivial emotional states in the same context as the vast mystery of redemption. That is frankly, kitch. More than anything else, contemplation of the Passion summons us to kneel in the dust, to worship without looking at ourselves, to direct our gaze solely to the image of the suffering Lord, to what is happening to him externally and internally.

John and Mary were both beneath the Cross. As a sinner, John, like us, was responsible for Christ's suffering. Mary was sinless, but she could not share completely in His suffering since she did not have the Lord's Divine Nature. Von Balthasar tells us about Mary’s role in our post-resurrection sharing in the sufferings of the Lord. The more he is initiated, by grace, into an authentic contemplation of the Passion, the easier he will find it to distinguish between the Lord's suffering and his own fluctuating dispositions. Only the Ecclesia, the pure Bride, symbolized in the Virgin Mother united in suffering with her Son, precedes the rest of mankind in standing on the Son's side; she forms the door by which the others, sinners, may come to share in the Passion. Yet even she is only there because of the prior grace of "preredemption".  – Jim Nugent, CFP