Vigils Reading
PERFECTION IN WEAKNESS
By Fr Hugh Rahner
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The Catholic Church is a house full of glory extending far and wide into
every land of this our terrestrial world. We sing her praises because we love her.
For she is the hidden queen of human history.…
All this would be, however, only “boasting according to the flesh” and not
“glory in the cross of Christ” – all would be counterfeit, falsified, and therefore
filled with that furtive disappointment that we so often experience after
ecclesiastical ceremonies, if we did not also speak of the incomprehensible
mystery of Christian existence which Paul describes with the words: “If I must
boast, I will boast of the things that concern my weakness.” The Apostle is
speaking here of his own wretchedness.
However, one of the principle truths of the revelation of the New
Testament, as sketched by Paul, is that the strength of God reveals itself in
human weakness. The salvific work of the Father, which was contained in love
before the very foundation of the universe, reveals itself to us in the Word which
became flesh, and will be completed through the instrument of the Church in
the power of grace victorious up to its blessed conclusion in weakness. For as
Scripture tells us: “The power of God reaches its perfection in weakness”. Let us
leave these words as they stand. Indeed let us keep the expression in the
shocking bluntness of the Greek words: “The dynamis of God reaches perfec-
tion in asthenia.”
The force of these words can be vaguely perceived from what technology
has to say today about dynamics, and from what medicine has to say about
asthenia. So, let us read: the power of God reaches its goal in asthenia, in
stunted asthenic growth, in frailty, therefore in all that is in contrast to what is
big, strong, healthy, well formed, humane, rational. So, and only so, does the
explosive power of the Father’s salvific love reveal itself, passionately driving
onward to victory in the mystical Christ. “For the foolishness of God is wiser
than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men…and the base things
of the world and the despised has God chosen…lest any flesh should pride itself
before him. So that, just as it is written: ‘Let him who takes pride, take pride in
the Lord’”.