Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True understanding of love can only be attained through experiencing love itself.
This quote emphasizes that the essence and depth of love can only be truly understood through loving and being loved. It suggests that love is a profound experience that transcends intellectual comprehension, and that a genuine recognition of its reality comes from personal engagement in loving relationships.
Themes
LoveUnderstandingExperienceRelationshipEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a wedding could use this quote to highlight the depth of the couple's love.
More from Hans Urs Von Balthasar
All quotes βIt is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
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A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
The Holy Spirit knows what a particular age's most pressing need is far better than men with their programs.
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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.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
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.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
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If there is no humility, love remains blocked.
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