Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that true autonomy and freedom come from selflessness and commitment to others.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar explores the concept that being a true self involves a blend of autonomy and surrender. He suggests that freedom is not merely about personal independence but is deeply intertwined with the relationships we have with others, where giving oneself to others ultimately leads to authentic self-expression and fulfillment.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of selflessness for collective well-being.
Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
The Holy Spirit knows what a particular age's most pressing need is far better than men with their programs.
The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.
But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former.
Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.
Life becomes fully understandable only the moment we realise that we are all mad.
It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to even try to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick: your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit, and your honesty - and all the rest of it.
So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn.
Man always is perfect, or he never could become so; but he had to realise it.
The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world ... Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.
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