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The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
WOF 478: Bishop Barron on the Theology of Balthasar (9 of 12)
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Today we continue with lesson nine on our walk through Bishop Barron’s lecture series on one of the most important and influential Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, Han Urs von Balthasar. We will come to understand his life, his...
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Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm your host, Matthew Petrusic. We are continuing our walk through Bishop Barron's lecture series on one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Enjoy.
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We're talking about the theodramatique, the theo drama, this play between infinite and finite freedom, the fact that paradoxically, we discover who we are precisely in relationship to God. The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Is this acting area opened up by Jesus, who's the definitive person who's found himself in mission. So there's the framework we're talking about in this next lecture. I want to just put some more meat on the bones and follow Balthazar as he analyzes the Bible in terms of some of these great themes. Here's a first one is the unexpected and irresistible quality of the call. So go back to the Bible now and look at people who were summoned by God, who felt the divine call very often despite themselves, very often the least likely person being chosen. Think of the stammering Moses or the stammering Paul. There's some speculation that the thorn in the flesh for St. Paul was a speech impediment. Here's someone called upon to speak, and we know that from the account in Exodus that Moses said, look, I'm a bad speaker. And yet God summons him precisely to that task. Think of the barren women, Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, who are called upon to become mothers against all. Expect there's something very often unexpected about the call of God. So my life is moving in a particular direction, following my natural gifts, maybe following the encouragement of my community. And then comes the divine call, surprising, unexpected, out of the blue, maybe the last thing in the world I ever thought I'd be doing. Now I have to do it because of God's summons, the irresistibility of it. Despite these obstacles, despite the fact that it seems so counterintuitive. There's just something I have to do, I have to follow. You know, in this context, I think of my own vocation, how mysterious it was and is. And really, the older I get, the more mysterious it seems to me. You know, I came of age. I think of my brother, who's what, 15 months older than I am, so what they call Irish twins, you know, we're very close in age. We had the same parents, we had the same schools, we played with the same friends. We're in the same neighborhood. Everything's the same. Except I experienced this call from the time I was very young to the priesthood. And he Didn't. How do you explain that? On purely psychological grounds or sociological grounds or educational grounds. It's hard. What made this call happen? I don't know. Where did it come from? I don't really know. I didn't ask for it. And that's true of almost every person I've ever talked to. And I've been involved in seminary work a lot in my life. This call was just there. And there was something irresistible about it. And even though it went against the grain in many ways, like, that's not really what I want to do, yet there it was. You know what comes to mind, too, whenever I read this section of Balthazar, and I'm dating myself here, but the old Spielberg movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Remember when the alien spacecraft, and he's using them as kind of symbolic of the transcendent realm, they come and they mark certain people. And those people, against their will, are just affected by this experience. And they all have that compulsion, remember, to come to that site where the great mothership is going to arrive. And even though it was causing him enormous personal struggle, struggle with their families, loss of job, danger to their lives, they felt this compulsion to go to the holy mountain and commune with the mothership. See, all that is kind of biblical images updated for our time. We're marked, strangely marked, by this call, by this summons. It might go against the grain psychologically, it might not be in line with our experience, but there's an irresistibility to it. And so it goes in the vocational order we're called in this very unexpected way. And yet we feel it as something irresistible. And you see that now over and over again in the Bible. Now, here's something else we see in the biblical stories. It's altogether possible to accept the divine call only partially or in a struggle. So I mentioned before some of the stories about King David, the stories of Peter in the New Testament. People summoned by God, for sure, discovering themselves in mission, but accepting it only partially, only with extreme struggle. And that's okay. There's the life of all of us sinners responding to varying degrees to the divine call. Here's a nice quote from Balthazar that kind of sums up the point I've been making. It is precisely by forgetting his private subjectivity and becoming one with his function, that a person grows into what is most distinctive and personal to him. That's great, because it catches all that paradox, doesn't it? I want to be me. I want to walk my own path. No, but listen. Precisely by forgetting your private subjectivity, Becoming one with your function, with your mission, that you become who you're meant to be, you become more yourself. To me, the great example here is always St. Paul, the same Paul who says, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Well, does he strike you as being any less Paul than he was before? His personality leaps off the page, this distinctive character, but he's more, not less, himself in the measure that he no longer lives, but allows Christ to live within him. That's the biblical imagination. Something else, and Paul's. Another good example here is we might only come gradually to accept the call in its fullness. So Paul has the experience of Jesus on the road to Damascus. He's converted, yes, you might say in an instant. But in another way that conversion was an ongoing process, wasn't it? We hear that in the wake of it, he went to Arabia for three years and we're not sure what he did in Arabia, which is a very generic term. It's a bit like saying in our context, someone went out west or they went back East. It's not really telling you a lot. What was he doing during those three long years? I mean, I think he was trying to process what had happened to him, coming to an ever fuller sense of his mission. And so it goes that way too in the life of vocation, mission and response. Here's the last general point. Super important. Now, in a biblical framework, Israel is the chosen people. Certain Israelites are specially chosen. Wow. I guess that means they're the most important. I guess that means they're the special ones and everybody else falls away. No, that's not the logic of the Bible. As we've seen, God often chooses the weakest. He doesn't choose the best and brightest. In the eyes of the world. There's the stammering Moses, the stammering Paul, etc. But the basic point is they're never chosen for their own sake, just for their edification. They're always chosen for the sake of the whole. Why is Israel the chosen people? That they might carry the message of the God of Israel to the whole world? Why were Moses and Elijah and Solomon and Peter and Paul chosen precisely to go on mission for the benefit of everybody else? That's the logic of the Bible. Never revel in your election as though that's meant to aggrandize your ego. On the contrary, it's always meant for the sake of the whole. And see, once we get that, I think we overcome some of the hang up that people have about, well, who are you and what's so special about you? No, it's mission for service, always. Okay, so with those remarks in mind, let's look now at, really one of my favorite sections in von Balthasar. When he talks about different archetypes or prototypes or patterns of following the Lord, of accepting your mission, they'll fall into certain basic types. And watch how Vatican II very much took this in in its own reflection. So here's the first prototype of mission. It's associated with Peter, the chief of the Apostles. The Petrine mission is one of office and leadership and authority. So in my own life, and I'll say something more about it in a second, my ministry was largely Pauline. But in recent years, when I was chosen as rector of Mundelein Seminary and then sent out to California as an auxiliary bishop, I moved into a Petrine office, leadership authority, the official church. Now, Peter, is he the rock? Yeah. Jesus calls him Rocky Simon, son of John. From now on, you'll be Peter Cephas the Rock. Can we see that in the Gospels? Yeah. He probably was a natural leader. At the same time, was Peter a weak and vacillating figure? Absolutely. What's being signaled for Baltasar, it's the ambiguity of church leadership up and down the centuries. I mean, do we see these great magnificent figures of leadership in the history of the church? Yeah. And have almost all our leaders also been compromised figures, also sinners? Yeah. And don't we see it especially clearly in recent years? That's the Petrine prototype or archetype. But maybe that's your mission in the church, is to assume some role of office or leadership. Good. Study the stories about Simon Peter to find out what that looks like. The second one I've alluded to, it is the Paul line. So Paul, now he's a founder of churches, to be sure. But Paul never stays in a church to govern it. No, no, because he had a different mission. Paul's mission was to go out to preach and to teach and to evangelize, to engage the culture. He founds churches in various cities and then moves on. Think of Paul now on the Areopagus, right in Athens, engaging the philosophers, engaging the opinions of the time. Think of Paul debating and announcing and teaching and preaching. Paul there is the prototype of everyone in the church who's ever taught, theologized, engaged the culture, evangelized. I think of our word on fire ministry is a very Pauline ministry. It's apostolic in that sense. Going out, it's been sent out to preach, to proclaim, is There a danger in a shadow side? Yeah, there always is. In the case of the Pauline ministry, it's the danger of maybe losing our confidence in our faith as we dialogue with a non believing culture. Now in Paul's time, that took a particular form in our time. Think of the prevalence of modern atheism, skepticism, agnosticism, those who go out to engage that world. Well, that's a somewhat dangerous undertaking. So it goes. Or think of a theologian like Thomas Aquinas is very much in a Pauline mode, but he's in contact with all the different points of view. There's the challenge, there's the potential danger within the Pauline ministry. But maybe that's your call is to be teacher. Think of someone teaching catechism to fourth graders. That's very much part of the Pauline ministry. Someone evangelizing, whether it's street evangelization or using the new media or evangelizing a family member. That's a Pauline calling. Maybe that's yours. The third one, the third great prototype is the Johannine. Remember I told you early on John was a very important figure for Balthasar, the Joannes Gemeinschaf. The John community is what he forms with Adrian von Speier, who was John but the beloved disciple who rested his head on the heart of the Lord at the Last Supper. There are those beautiful Eastern icons that show the apostles with Jesus at the Last Supper. And then John is right next to him and he's depicted in this almost awkward way, like just leaning over with his head on the breast of the Lord. But the idea is that his vision is aligned with the vision of Jesus. That's the Johannine task. Now think of all contemplatives in the church. Think of monks in the church. Think of the liturgy, of the life, of sacraments and mysticism and prayer. That's the Johannine mission. Now maybe that's your call. Not so much office, not so much a public proclamation, but it's the cultivation of this mystical and prayerful dimension of the church. I think of so many people I've known over the years who are regular attendees at 6:30 morning mass. That's a Johannine expression. I think of older people maybe who can't be very active anymore, but they spend their days in intense prayer on behalf of the church. That's a Johannine ministry. I think of right now there are Trappist monks and Carthusian monks who were. Who are hidden away from the world. No one's going to see them or hear from them. But right now they're praying for the Church, that's the Johannine office. Think of these three now as corresponding to three of the classic divisions. The Petrine, well, that's the kingly office within the Church, The Pauline, that's the prophetic office in the Church. The Johannine. That's the priestly office. Priest, prophet, king. Likely your mission is going to fall under one of those headings. Maybe the most important discernment you're going to make ever in your life is determining which of those is your path. Okay, so those three great pillars, and that's how Balthasar refers to them, they're pillars within the Church. The Petrine, Pauline, Johannine. However, he says, underneath or enveloping those three masculine pillars, is the great feminine archetype of Mary. Mary is the mission of missions. Mary is the prototype of prototypes. Now, why? Because Mary is the one who from the depth of her being, said fiat, let it be. When she was invited by the angel to be the mother of the Lord. And Mary said, be it done unto me according to your word. Now, remember the last couple lectures I've given? Go right back to infinite and finite freedom. That's the Marian approach, is she surrendered her finite freedom to the infinite freedom of God and thereby became the bearer of Christ to the world. Mary, therefore, is the prototype. She's the archetype of the whole life of the Church. The Petrine, the Pauline, the Johannine. Find their orientation within that matrix. I love that word matrix, you know, from Mater Matris in Latin, mother. The mother vocation of them all is the Marian, and within that are situated the others, you know, and this is be a whole other course. But when we talk about the role of women in the Church, don't get obsessed with the question of priestly ordination. To me, that's a derivative secondary consideration. For Balthasar, the fundamental form of ecclesial life is not masculine. It's feminine. Mary's role is the most fundamental, more basic than any role played by a priest or bishop or pope. There's the fundamentally feminine orientation of the Church. So Mary's fiat, let it be done to me. Well, that's the whole relationship between finite freedom and infinite freedom. Let my finite freedom find itself precisely in that surrender.
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Matthew Petruzyk, here again, thanks so much for joining us on the Word on Fire show. As always, if you'd like to learn more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ and become a better evangelist with and for others, visit institute.wordpressfire.org that's institute.WordPress.org we'll see you next time, and God bless and protect you.