De Caussade - 1 - The Hidden Operations of God

FIDELITY TO THE ORDER ESTABLISHED BY GOD COMPREHENDED THE WHOLE SANCTITY OF THE RIGHTEOUS UNDER THE OLD LAW; EVEN THAT OF ST. JOSEPH, AND OF MARY HERSELF.

God continues to speak to-day as He spoke in former times to our fathers when there were no directors as at present, nor any regular method of direction. Then all spirituality was comprised in fidelity to the designs of God, for there was no regular system of guidance in the spiritual life to explain it in detail, nor so many instructions, precepts and examples as there are now. Doubtless our present difficulties render this necessary, but it was not so in the first ages when souls were more simple and straightforward. Then, for those who led a spiritual life, each moment brought some duty to be faithfully accomplished. Their whole attention was thus concentrated consecutively like a hand that marks the hours which, at each moment, traverses the space allotted to it. Their minds, incessantly animated by the impulsion of divine grace, turned imperceptibly to each new duty that presented itself by the permission of God at different hours of the day. 

Such were the hidden springs by which the conduct of Mary was actuated. Mary was the most simple of all creatures, and the most closely united to God. Her answer to the angel when she said "Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” contained all the mystic theology of her ancestors to whom everything was reduced, as it is now, to the purest, simplest submission of the soul to the will of God, under whatever form it presents itself. This beautiful and exalted state, which was the basis of the spiritual life of Mary, shines conspicuously in these simple words,“Fiat mihi”(Luke i, 38). Take notice that they are in complete harmony with those which Our Lord desires that we should have always on our lips and in our hearts: “Fiat voluntas tua.” It is true that what was required of Mary at this great moment, was for her very great glory, but the magnificence of this glory would have made no impression on her if she had not seen in it the fulfilment of the will of God. In all things was she ruled by the divine will. Were her occupations ordinary, or of an elevated nature, they were to her but the manifestation, sometimes obscure, sometimes clear, of the operations of the most High, in which she found alike subject matter for the glory of God. Her spirit, transported with joy, looked upon all that she had to do or to suffer at each moment as the gift of Him who fills with good things the hearts of those who hunger and thirst for Him alone, and have no desire for created things.

Jean Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (c.1740) Ch.1

Balthasar - Water and wine: all human activity/inactivity taken up and transformed, offered to the Lord

The wedding of Cana: Mary has to show our poverty to the Lord—“They have run out of the wine of love.” She orders us to fill the stone jars with the clear water of pure readiness, and the Lord transforms the water of nature into the wine of grace. Not one little glass of wine results from ten jars of water, but all of the water of human life—all man’s activity and inactivity, all his sleeping, eating, loving, and dying—everything is taken up into the transformation, and in the end we have the privilege of serving this wine—our best wine, saved up for last—to the Lord.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - Christ not afraid of suffering because "from all eternity he is absolute dependency"

The courage of Christ: to take his stance in the most vulnerable location possible, to place himself between sin and God’s wrath—the very spot where the lightning bolt (and what lightning!) must strike him. But he lacks every trace not only of fear and insecurity but also of bravura. Rather, he is the very embodiment of simple, trusting shelteredness. What can happen to him? Fall out of the Father’s hand he cannot, since he has himself chosen absolute dependency, or, rather, since from all eternity he is absolute dependency.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - Christ's sufferings both temporal and supra-temporal; He suffers until the end of time

Like everything in his temporal existence, the Lord’s sufferings were at the same time supra-temporal: every moment of his suffering has an “eternal” intensity, and, precisely because of this, it towers far above chronological time. Thus we can in truth say that he suffers until the end of time. The fact that at the same time he can abide in a glory from which all suffering is absent is a contradiction only for our temporal manner of thought. The most contrary currents converge “at the same time” in Christ’s supra-temporality as in an ocean.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - Christ wholly universal and wholly concrete, is simultaneously in every human situation

Humanly speaking, the Lord is astounding because he displays a purely divine quality—that of being at once wholly universal and wholly concrete—now within the human reality. Thus did he truly become all things to all men, and he simultaneously stands on every level of human experience and is to be found in every human situation, even in those that fully contradict and exclude one another. And yet, in so doing, he does not cease being wholly human. And he gives his holy ones a participation even in this quality. 

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - “Omnitemporality” of Christ - every moment of His human life is eternal

Every moment of Jesus’ life has an eternal meaning: it is taken up into his eternity and represents not only his abiding in his Mother’s womb but also his dying on the Cross and his Resurrection. He is now, simultaneously, everything that he could then be only within temporal succession. This is why Mary, too, eternally remains in the situation of the Pregnant Woman—like the envelopment through which alone Christ operates—and also in the situation of the Woman Giving Birth and of the Mediatrix of Graces. In this form of Christ’s “omnitemporality”, we can see something of our own form of existence in eternity.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - Jesus' life and sufferings are a direct revelation of the interior life and intentions of God

All external scenes of Jesus’ life and sufferings are to be understood as a direct revelation of the interior life and intentions of God. This is the fundamental meaning of biblical symbolism and allegory, without which the whole gospel remains nothing but superficial moralism. Thus, for instance, Jesus’ silence before Caiaphas, the Ecce Homo episode with Pilate, the figure of the Lord covered with the cloak and flogged, his nailing to the Cross, the piercing of his Heart, his words on the Cross, and so on. All of this is a direct portrayal and exegesis of God (John 1:18), accessible to the senses.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ

Balthasar - All human life illumined by the Sacred Humanity of Christ

“There is no moment, there is no place, there is no circumstance that is not illumined either by the operation or by the suspension of some grace or admirable effect that the humanity of Jesus was intended to bear within itself.”    [quotation from Pierre de Bérulle] 

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ