Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

THE DIVINE CALL

From a book by Hans Urs von Balthasar5

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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?”

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.

5 The Christian State of Life – Hans Urs von Balthasar – Ignatius Press – San Francisco – 1983 –

pg 393.11