Balthasar’s Contemplations on Jesus’ Self-Giving Love
Describing the divine “must” that defines Jesus’ earthly journey, i.e., that He must drink this cup, be baptized with the baptizing fire of the Cross, Balthasar says that all this takes place within and in perfect harmony with His sovereign freedom (p. 18). [As a side note, the fact that Balthasar says that without the slightest tinge of "logical" discomfort is for me a highly attractive aspect of Balthasar, viz., he embraces (true) mystery (i.e., mystery-for-us) and does not wield the principle of non-contradiction as that which should define and be Lord over our Triune God]. Balthasar continues his thoughts with the following beautiful and amazingly devotional words:
“But here the journey and the goal (the latter being passage to the Father in the unity of death and resurrection) are so integrated that Jesus’ Passion (18, 4-8) can be interpreted as the personal consecration of Jesus for the men whom God has given him (17, 19), and as a proof of supreme love for his friends (15, 10). This love asks as its return not only the same ‘laying down of our lives for the brethren’ (1 John 3, 16), but also the joyous self-abandonment whereby the beloved Lord was drawn into that death which brought him back to the Father (John 14, 28). And yet the shadow cast by the Cross is so heavy to bear that Jesus, while on his way, ‘weeps’ and is ‘deeply moved’ (11, 33ff), wishes to flee from this ‘hour’ and yet remains faithful (12, 27-28). ‘Becoming flesh’, since it involves ‘not being received’ (1, 14, 11), is for that reason a crushing of the self (6, 54, 56). It is dying into the earth, disappearing (12, 24), yet being ‘lifted up’ in death-and-resurrection like the serpent in which all poison at once gathered and met its antidote (3, 14). For this is the One who, light of heart, was sacrificed for the multitude—and for more, indeed, than his murderers thought (11, 50ff)—as the bread of life which vanishes in the mouth of the traitor (13, 26), and the light which shines in the darkness that does not comprehend it and therefore cannot extinguish it (1, 5). […] A direct line joins the Prologue to the Footwashing—that gesture which sums up the distinctively Johannine unity of intransigence and tenderness, of total abasement and a purification that exalts” (pp. 18-19).
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