Hans Urs von Balthasar

Church Life Journal: Easter: We Walked Where There Was No Path by Hans Urs von Balthasar

The world’s ultimate destiny—as nature and as the history of mankind—is summed up both really and symbolically in the historical destiny of the man Jesus Christ. Ecce homo: behold man! Behold life destined for death! That is his destination; thither his destiny draws him, to a profound abyss of oblivion. And the shadow cast by this end covers everything with horror and chill, confusing all the threads of reason. But with the Resurrection from the dead, of whom the man Jesus Christ is the firstfruits, man comes forth from God, new, eternal. On the other side of death he begins his immortal life. And thanks to the death on the Cross on the part of the one man Jesus Christ, who was God’s Son, expiating sin and death’s doom on behalf of all, this eternal Resurrection life reflects a brilliant light onto the whole of our doomed existence. “Death, where is thy sting, where is thy victory?” Death is still there, and yet it has been superseded. The Cross is there but has turned into Easter. All the questions that guilty existence is bound to ask are still there, and yet “whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything”.