Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

THE DIVINE CALL

From the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar1

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Christian revelation is primarily a revelation of hearing, not of seeing.

Although the image of seeing is not excluded – for “we see now through a

mirror in an obscure manner”; wisdom, when it appears, is the “mirror … and

image” of the divine goodness; and Christ is “the image of the invisible God”

so that, in seeing him, we also see the Father – nevertheless the comparison

with hearing is the dominant one in revelation: the Second Person is heard

primarily as “Word” and faith in him comes by hearing. The hearing of the Word

is by no means a temporary substitute for the seeing that is wanting to us here

below. On the contrary, it is the lasting proof that God never is and never will

be a mere “object” of knowledge to us, but is rather the infinitely sovereign

majesty of a Trinity of Persons that makes itself known in whatever way and to

whomever it wills.

That God speaks to us in his personal word is a greater grace than that we

are allowed to see him: That we are deemed worthy of his word is the grace of

graces that makes us partners in a divine, even Trinitarian, conversation. That

the word of God is spoken to us is the highest revelation and honor the personal

God can bestow upon us, for it presumes that God considers us capable of

understanding his word through the gift of his grace and of possessing the Spirit

who “searches all things, even the deep things of God, that we may know all

things that have been given us by God”. So tremendous is this grace that the

creature thus addressed by God must forget its own wishes and desires, even its

longing for “eternal happiness” and for the “vision of God” so that, trembling

in the depths of its being, it may fall to the ground and hear his voice only to

ask: “What shall I do, Lord?”5

But one who has been thrown to the ground by the impact of this

compelling voice is also “set upon his feet” by it. When God speaks, He wants a

partner. He wants one who is erect, who, hearing his voice, is yet able to stand

upon his feet and answer: “…I fell upon my face, and I heard the voice of the

one that spoke. And he said to me: Son of man, stand upon your feet, and I will

speak to you. And the Spirit entered into me after he spoke to me, and he set

me upon my feet; and I heard him speaking to me…”.

When God speaks personally, he wants to be understood personally;

when he utters his personal word into the world, he wants that word to be

returned to him, not as a dead echo, but as a personal response from his

creature in an exchange that is genuinely a dialogue even though it can be

conducted only in the unity of the divine Word that mediates between the

Father and us. But just as that divine Word proceeds from the Father, yet is not

the Father, but only declares the Father, so the creature can give back to the

Father this word it has received by uttering itself in it – or better, by letting itself

be uttered by it.