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Hans Urs von Balthasar Image-Filled and Imageless Contemplation In this much-discussed matter all depends on whether the contemplator is a Christian or not. If he is not a Christian, he will from the beginning strive for imageless contemplation, wishing to free himselffrom the daily assaults ofa world overwhelmed by sensual images, shapes, and outlines, hoping to gain the quiet and personal depth that lies behind or above it all. Such a quest can range from simple psychological therapy to a philosophical and religious contemplation and experience ofthe depths ofthe cosmos beyond all appearances, phenomena, and concepts. For the Christian all is different. For him the Absolute is the God of love, who merits this name only because within God is both a lover—one beloved from his origin in God and become beloved in God's bosom—and their mutual love. The beloved of the "Father" is called "Son," radiance, reflection,Word, Image. His Reprinted fromlbu HaveWords ofEternal Life by Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 1 1-13.© 1991 Ignatius Press, San Francisco. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Ignatius Press. Logos 1:1 1997 112 Logos imageness is just as absolute and eternal as the primal Source that generates without images. Both are identical in essence and one in their love, which is the fruition and evidence, the overflowing, the "Holy Spirit" of this love.We know about this fullness in God only because the eternal Image has entered the multiplicity of our world of images, portraying and explicating the imageless Father, immersing us in the Divine Spirit so that we gain access to the divine world of love. Ifthat is so, then the incarnate Son lives out before us, in images perceptible by men (individual deeds, words, actions), that which belongs to him alone, as the eternal, suprasensible image of the Father, to reveal to us of the Father. He does this so that, graced with the divine spirit oflove "poured out into our hearts,"we might sense something of the unimaginable Source of all love. Thus the path ofall Christian contemplation is prefigured in the essence and purpose of the incarnate "Word" (or Image) himself: because God and man are not two different persons but one and the same person in theWord, the path of contemplation moves from a comprehension ofthe world's image to the Divine Image that is expressed therein. Because of the unity of the Image's "person," there is really no path to follow; rather, the divine "meaning"lies directly in the human "sign" (sëmeion), or "expression." Our sole aim is to view the sign in the manner in which it seeks to reveal itself. For example, if one reads properly one ofthe stories ofphysical healing, it is directly apparent that the incarnate Son is the real and divine healing One, the saving One. His way of speaking ("never has a man spoken like this one" [John 7:46]) itself announces directly that he speaks with a "completely new," truly divine "authority" (Mark 1 :27). Jesus continually emphasizes that this transition from surface to the depths takes place right in his being and acting. Everything else depends on whether men have eyes to see and ears to hear, on whether they have the purity of heart to see the divine in the human (Matt 5:2ff.). Image-Filled and Imageless ContemplationJ13 Yet with that we have merely passed from one image to another. Is not the thrust ofall contemplation to arrive beyond all imaging? In a Christian sense it is impossible to arrive at the Divine "Image," or "Word," or "Son" without also directly "seeing" in him his imageless Origin. "Show us the Father," one of them begged. Jesus answered, "Have I been amongyou so long and you have not yetknown me? He who has seen me has seen the Father. Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" (John 14:9-10). It is no rational conclusion that leads from the Son to the Father but rather faith in God's perfect unity, in which Image and Imagelessness, Birth and Birth-giver are simply integrated.The Son is so much...

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