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An excerpt from the section entitled
“The Mediating Word” from Christian Meditation by Hans Urs von Balthasar
Everything about Jesus is Word. This includes his silence before human tribunals, his being scourged and spat upon. Above all, his death after that great, inarticulate cry followed by the icy muteness of the corpse. No Word of God is more eloquent than this extreme condition of his mortal being. For if we did not have this Word and this self-expression on God’s part, we would not know that in the midst of all gloom “God is love”, a statement that no other religion in the world has dared to make. Nothing more than this statement is needed to prove that he is present. “He who has seen it gives witness to it, and his witness is true. He knows that he is reporting the truth, so that you too may believe” (Jn 19:35). What is narrated about the risen Christ over and beyond this is still more transparent in regard to God—paradaisal is too weak a word for it. Precisely for this reason, there is nothing in the Gospel more tenderly human than the conversation with Magdalen at the tomb and with the disciples in the Cenacle; the loving reproof of Thomas and the granting of his request; the scene on the way to Emmaus; the gesture of blessing at the Ascension. This reaches even to his glorious apparition to Paul, to whom Jesus repeatedly appears at very difficult moments to console and strengthen him (Acts 18:9-10; 23:11; 27:24). Even in the transfiguration, everything remains corporeal and concrete; in the world of redemption nothing pertaining to the world of creation is disowned.
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Christian Meditation. Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.
