Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum: Leben der Balance aufgrund der Differenzierung des Seins; Unterwerfung unter das Geheimnis

Kurzinhalt: The balance that sustains the full vitality of life depends on the full differentiation of Being; The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole

Textausschnitt: 199b The balance that sustains the full vitality of life depends on the full differentiation of Being. This provides the deepest understanding of mundane reality, which is beheld without illusion for what it is, but at the same time is contemplated in its full finality beyond itself. Life in this world is not merely confined to its parameters. It is pregnant with implications for participation in Being itself. Through the theophanic intervention, the luminosity of existence has been opened up as a participation in the drama of the God who becomes man in order to redeem the human world for himself. What is at stake is not mere survival, but life itself. It can be lost through the overreaching that prompts us to step outside of our stature in the order of being and thereby slip into the abyss of all that lacks reality of any kind. As a result, life here is ennobled or elevated beyond its mere biological-psychological significance. To the extent that we lose sight of this transcending dimension of existence, we are also losing our grip on what most deeply affirms the value of mere physical and emotional and factual existence. The imperative of balance could not be more heightened, and neither could the line through which it is to be found more clearly delineated. (Fs)

200a Life is to be accepted on its own terms. It is incapable of providing the uninterrupted, peerless satisfaction we crave, but neither is it for that reason to be burdened with the concupiscent drive doomed to disappoint. Within that modest range, our earthly existence is capable of the highest actualization of life through the receptive opening toward transcendent Being. But that transcendence remains dependent on acceptance of our creaturely status. The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole in which we find ourselves. No murmuring against our fate is permitted if we are to become the vehicle for ineffable divine Love, whose deepest reality consists in the same outpouring of itself toward all creatures. Not only is this world affirmed, it is enhanced as the royal road toward the truth that contains it all. Revelation of the divine gift of self freely offered to all men and shining on the whole of existence becomes the beacon transforming and drawing all things to itself. The irruption of transcendent Being within time not only saves all that respond to it from the fatality of genesis and perishing; it sanctifies the process of becoming through which the transfiguring event of intervention takes place. Suffering, life, and death are no longer the impenetrable barriers of our existence. Now they assume the radiance of utter abnegation of self by which the translation into the being of Being takes place. (Fs) (notabene)
9.Kommentar (28/12/05): Zu "The way toward reception of the transcendent fullness lies through complete submission to the mystery of the whole in which we find ourselves.": Vergleiche dazu: John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 4 On Obidience. Die fr heutige Leser so seltsam erscheinenden Ausfhrung ber die Bedeutung des Gehorsams erhlt ihre Grundlage in der "submission to the mystery of the whole".

201a A dimension far beyond this transcendent finality of revelation, however emerges with the advent of Christ. The preceding meditation might be drawn from the Sermon on the Mount, as the account of how those open to the drawing of God ought to conduct themselves. The injunction toward perfection is reiterated because that is the way of the Father. Throughout, the refrain is repeated that the motivation for going beyond what we are strictly bound to do arises from the superabundant generosity of the Father who "makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad" (Matthew 5:45). The opening toward unconditioned Love requires the unconditional self-donation of love. There is no point at which we might hold back in expending ourselves in service toward others; not even their hardness and opaqueness can be sufficient reason for not doing more than we are expected to do. It must be toward all and for all and with all. Only then will we become the kind of men and women who are capable of becoming children of God, vessels of the transcendent Spirit that lives in us too. But we forget that the Sermon on the Mount was only the beginning of the teaching of Jesus, not its culmination. Beyond the reception of the luminous teaching is the recognition of who the teacher is. The Sermon reaches its apogee in the recognition that the utter submission of self that it calls forth is undertaken most perfectly by God himself becoming man in Jesus. (Fs)

201b Another level is attained through the recognition that the fate of perfect submission is undergone by Being itself present within the world. Not only is the full acceptance of the order of existence apprehended as the way toward Being; it is also revealed as the way of Being. A dimension over and above the revelatory movement toward the Beyond is contained in the recognition of the participation of the Beyond in the full realization of existence. It is best expressed as redemption. Not only is the path of self-submission before the mysterious order of Being unmistakably clear, but its realization has been definitively attained within time as being effective for all other beings. The sacrificial surrender of Christ to the divine will accomplishes what is lacking in the submission of all other beings throughout creation. Not only is a decisive rupture marked within time radiating its light in all directions, but all finite existence has been definitively raised up toward the redemptive participation beyond all immanent expectations. The transfiguration toward which all reality unattainably aspires has been differentiated as the culminating fulfillment of the eschaton. Indeed, the eschaton has become present in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Finite reality already exists in the tension that is transparent for its transfiguring fulfillment. No higher possibility can be conceived for immanent being. (Fs)