Quotes from Hans Urs von Balthasar

He is not pestered by the banal desires common to all men; he is tempted by the greatest, the most momentous, messianic temptations; they must be met and overcome in the desert where Israel experienced them and later succumbed.

They try to reveal revelation to themselves. For the grace of the Holy Spirit never destroys the capabilities of nature. Just the opposite: it makes nature, which has been weakened by unnatural habit, mature and strong enough once again to function in a natural way and leads it upward toward insight into the divine.

God creates only one world. Human beings have spoilt the Creator's work, the Son has redeemed the old creation through his Cross, the Spirit has sanctified it. This one world will be enough for God in eternity, and for us, whom he has created, redeemed, and sanctified, this God will be enough.

The world seeks it for us, who have need of such illumination. So also the Word became flesh, not for himself, but rather to bring the mystery of the Incarnation to reality for our sakes.

As One and Unique, and yet as one who is to be understood only in the context of mankind's entire history and in the context of the whole created cosmos, Jesus it the Word, the Image, the Expression and the Exegesis of God.

And when Wisdom, the focal point of this divine involvement in the world, finally shone forth for Christian faith as the personal Word, the human Christ, all doubts about the possibility of a reconciliation between God and the world disappeared.

It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.

To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.

Above all we must not wish to cling to our suffering. Suffering surely deepens us and enhances our person, but we must not desire to become a deeper self than God wills. To suffer no longer can be a beautiful, perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.

The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.

God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.

Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself.