von Balthasar on Marriage:
What could be stronger than marriage, or what shapes any particular life-form more profoundly than does marriage? ... Marriage is that indissoluble reality which confronts with an iron hand all existence's tendencies to disintegrate, and it compels the faltering person to grow, beyond himself, into real love by modeling his life on the form enjoined. [This form is the self-giving love of the communion of Divine Persons that is the Triune God. MG]
When they make their promises, the spouses are not relying on themselves-- the shifting songs of their own freedom-- but rather on the form that chooses them because they have chosen it .... As persons, the spouses entrust themselves not only to the beloved "thou" and to the biological laws of fertility and family; they entrust themselves foremost to a form with which they can wholly identify themselves even in the deepest aspects of their personality because this form extends through all the levels of life-- from its biological roots up to the very heights of grace and of life in the Holy Spirit. And now, suddenly, all fruitfulness, all freedom, is discovered within the form itself, and the life of the married person can henceforth be understood only in terms of this interior mystery....
~Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar
So wonderful! Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDelete