Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
It is, finally, a word is untimely in three different senses, and bearing it as one's treasure will not win one anyone's favours; one rather risks finding oneself outside everyone's camp... Beauty is the word that shall be our first.
Interpretation
Beauty is a complex and often misunderstood concept that can alienate those who do not appreciate it.
In this quote, Hans Urs Von Balthasar reflects on the multifaceted nature of beauty and its timing in human experience. He suggests that holding on to the concept of beauty as a prized possession can sometimes lead to isolation, as it may not resonate with everyone, and can even result in being excluded from collective human connections.
In practice
In a discussion about art, this quote could highlight the subjective nature of beauty.
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.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach
Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.
What has been forgotten is never something purely individual. Everything forgotten mingles with what has been forgotten of the prehistoric world, forms countless, uncertain, changing compounds, yielding a constant flow of new, strange products.
For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt.
I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by, reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
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