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We No Longer Dare To Believe In Beauty And We Make Of It A Mere Appearance In Order The More Easily To Dispose Of It. Our Situation Today Shows That Beauty Demands For Itself At Least As Much Courage And Decision As Do Truth And Goodness, And She Will Not Allow Herself To Be Separated And Banned From Her Two Sisters Without Taking Them Along With Herself In An Act Of Mysterious Vengeance. We Can Be Sure That Whoever Sneers At Her Name As If She Were The Ornament Of A Bourgeois Past -- Whether He Admits It Or Not -- Can No Longer Pray And Soon Will No Longer Be Able To Love.

-Hans Urs Von Balthasar

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We No Longer Dare

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

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We No Longer Dare To Believe In Beauty And We Make Of It A Mere Appearance In Order The More Easily To Dispose Of It. Our Situation Today Shows That Beauty Demands For Itself At Least As Much Courage And Decision As Do Truth And Goodness, And She Will Not Allow Herself To Be Separated And Banned From Her Two Sisters Without Taking Them Along With Herself In An Act Of Mysterious Vengeance. We Can Be Sure That Whoever Sneers At Her Name As If She Were The Ornament Of A Bourgeois Past -- Whether He Admits It Or Not -- Can No Longer Pray And Soon Will No Longer Be Able To Love.

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Being Disguised Under The Disfigurement Of An Ugly Crucifixion And Death, The Christ Upon The Cross Is Paradoxically The Clearest Revelation Of Who God Is.

St. Paul Would Say To The Philosophers That God Created Man So That He Would Seek The Divine, Try To Attain The Divine. That Is Why All Pre-christian Philosophy Is Theological At Its Summit.

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Hell Is To Be Contemplated Strictly As A Matter Which Concerns Me Alone. As Part Of The Spiritual Life It Belongs Behind The 'closed Door' Of My Own Room. From The Standpoint Of Living Faith, I Cannot Fundamentally Believe In Anyone's Damnation But My Own; As Far As My Neighbor Is Concerned, The Light Of Resurrection Can Never Be So Obscured That I Would Be Allowed Or Obliged To Stop Hoping For Him.

We No Longer Dare To Believe In Beauty And We Make Of It A Mere Appearance In Order The More Easily To Dispose Of It. Our Situation Today Shows That Beauty Demands For Itself At Least As Much Courage And Decision As Do Truth And Goodness, And She Will Not Allow Herself To Be Separated And Banned From Her Two Sisters Without Taking Them Along With Herself In An Act Of Mysterious Vengeance. We Can Be Sure That Whoever Sneers At Her Name As If She Were The Ornament Of A Bourgeois Past -- Whether He Admits It Or Not -- Can No Longer Pray And Soon Will No Longer Be Able To Love.

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When You Say Yes To God Unconditionally, You Have No Idea How Far This Yes Is Going To Take You. Certainly Farther Than You Can Guess And Calculate Beforehand... But Just How Far And In What Form? At The Same Time, This Yes Is The Sole, Non-negotiable Prerequisite Of All Christian Understanding, Of All Theology And Ecclesial Wisdom.

Our Situation Today Shows That Beauty Demands For Itself At Least As Much Courage And Decision As Do Truth And Goodness, And She Will Not Allow Herself To Be Separated And Banned From Her Two Sisters Without Taking Them Along With Herself In An Act Of Mysterious Vengeance.

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Above All We Must Not Wish To Cling To Our Suffering. Suffering Surely Deepens Us And Enhances Our Person, But We Must Not Desire To Become A Deeper Self Than God Wills. To Suffer No Longer Can Be A Beautiful, Perhaps The Ultimate Sacrifice.

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Everything In Irenaeus Is Bathed In A Warm And Radiant Joy, A Wise And Majestic Gentleness. His Words Of Struggle Are Hard As Iron And Crystal Clear, ... So Penetrating That They Cannot Fail To Enlighten The Unbiased Observer.

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Wonder — The Enthusiastic Ardor For The Sublimity Of Being, For Its Worthiness To Be An Object Of Knowledge — Promises To Become The Point Of Departure For Genuine Insight Only Where It Has Reached The Stage In Which The Subject, Overwhelmed By The Object, Has, As It Were, Fused Into A Single Point Or Into Nothing.

Whoever Removes The Cross And Its Interpretation By The New Testament From The Center, In Order To Replace It, For Example, With The Social Commitment Of Jesus To The Oppressed As A New Center, No Longer Stands In Continuity With The Apostolic Faith.

If One Does Away With The Fact Of The Resurrection, One Also Does Away With The Cross, For Both Stand And Fall Together, And One Would Then Have To Find A New Center For The Whole Message Of The Gospel.

There Is A Moment When The Interior Light Of The "eyes Of Faith" Becomes One With The Exterior Light That Shines From Christ, And This Occurs Because Man's Thirst, As He Strives And Seeks After God, Is Quenched As He Finds Repose In The Revealed Form Of The Son.

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