Divine Kenosis: Day-by-Day with Hans Urs von Balthasar

By Philip Krill

To appreciate the theological genius of Hans Urs von Balthasar, we must note his inseparable connection with Adrienne von Speyr. Balthasar referred to Von Speyr as the inspirational source of his theological vision and literary achievements. Says Balthasar: ‘Her work and mine are neither psychologically nor philologically to be separated: two halves of a single whole, which has as its center a unique foundation’ (My Work: In Retrospect, 105, 89).

This ‘unique foundation’ is a mystical apprehension of the immanent Life of the Trinity. At the heart of the Trinity, Balthasar and Speyr see a primordial Mystery of Kenosis, i.e., self-dis-possession. Balthasar terms this Trinitarian self-expropriation Ur-kenosis, since the self-emptying (kenosis) within the Trinity applies not only to Christ but also to the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Father divests himself of himself in the begetting of his Son; the Holy Spirit is the fontal Power of self-abnegation (kenosis) within the Trinity, so ‘emptied of himself’ that he, as Spirit, is absolutely incognito.

DIVINE KENOSIS is an attempt to draw attention to the neo-patristic synthesis and anagogical vision promoted by Han Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr. It is also an extension of my personal mission to ‘promote a Trinitarian vision of deification and contemplative prayer.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823020138

Philip Krill

PHILIP KRILL is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO

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Published by AuthorHouse 12/29/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2014-5 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2013-8 (e)

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Editorial Assistance: Jessica Livengood and James McCullough, Ph.D.

Revised Standard Version

Scripture taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Glossary

Bibliography

Introduction

To appreciate the theological genius of Hans Urs von Balthasar, it is necessary to note his inseparable connection with Adrienne von Speyr. Balthasar referred to Von Speyr as the inspirational source of his theological vision and literary achievements. Says Balthasar: ‘Her work and mine are neither psychologically nor philologically to be separated: two halves of a single whole, which has as its center a unique foundation’ (My Work: In Retrospect, 105, 89).

This ‘unique foundation’ is a mystical apprehension of the immanent Life of the Trinity. At the heart of the Trinity, Balthasar and Speyr see a primordial Mystery of Kenosis, i.e., self-dis-possession. Balthasar terms this Trinitarian self-expropriation Ur-kenosis, since the self-emptying (kenosis) within the Trinity applies not only to Christ but also to the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Father divests himself of himself in the begetting of his Son; the Holy Spirit is the fontal Power of self-abnegation (kenosis) within the Trinity, so ‘emptied of himself’ that he, as Spirit, is absolutely incognito.

DIVINE KENOSIS is a modest attempt to draw attention to the neo-patristic synthesis and anagogical imagination promoted by Han Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr. It is also a continuation of my personal mission to ‘promote a Trinitarian vision of deification and contemplative prayer.’

January

001IMAGEtriquetratrinityedited.jpg

January 1

Why in fact is there something rather than nothing? … If there is no absolute being, what reason could there be that these finite, ephemeral things exist in the midst of nothing, things that could never add up to the absolute as a whole or evolve into it?

Love Alone Is Credible, 143-44

MEDITATION

The miracle of being is love. All that exists comes forth ex nihilo from the God of love (cf. 1 Jn., 4:8, 16).

PRAYER

Arrest us with Your creative Love, O God. Fill us with divine wonder at the miracle of existence.

January 2

Love is the quintessence of all reality.

Prayer, 218

MEDITATION

If all comes from God, and ‘God is love’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8, 16), then all that exists shimmers with divine Love.

PRAYER

Open our eyes to the world as the sacrament of Your divine Love, O God. Show us that even nature is supernaturally graced.

January 3

Love is … the depth and height, the length and breadth of being itself.

Love Alone Is Credible, 145

MEDITATION

Where can we go that we are not immersed in divine Love? Is not the whole of creation a tangible sign of God’s loving, sustaining Presence?

PRAYER

You reveal Your cosmic Presence in something as small as a grain of sand, O God.¹ Show us that the whole world is a sacrament of Your divine Love.

January 4

The meaning of being consists in love.

Theo-Logic I: Truth of the World, 111

MEDITATION

‘To be’ is to be infinitely loved. Why? Because the Source of existence is God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8, 16).

PRAYER

Reveal Yourself as the Alpha and Omega (cf. Rev. 1:8) of our existence, O God. Show us nothing exists - or can ever be separated from - Your divine Love.

January 5

The meaning of the world is love.

Heart of the World, 203

MEDITATION

Love is the source and the purpose of creation. God creates for one reason only - to share his Love and Life with that which is other from himself.

PRAYER

Fill us with wonder at Your creative Love, O God. Show us that it is Your love that makes the world go round.

January 6

The essence of love is the giving of the self.

The Christian State of Life, 162

MEDITATION

Love is infinitely self-diffusive. Creation exists because God’s divine Love is un-self-containable.

PRAYER

Inundate us with Your overflowing Love, O God. Show us that You love us, not because of who we are, but because of who You are.

January 7

Love is the selfless communication of what is mine and the selfless welcoming of the other in myself.

Theo-Logic I, 123

MEDITATION

In love, there is no ‘you’ or ‘me.’ Instead, there are just ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ in a selfless unity of utterly other persons.

PRAYER

Grant us the gift of ‘communion-in-otherness’ and ‘otherness in communion,’ O God. Divinize our relationships in the self-transcending mystery of Your Love.

January 8

Love lies in both giving and receiving both the gift and the giver.

Theo-Drama II, 258

MEDITATION

Love has a life of its own. Love possesses those possessed of it, enveloping them in a mystery of self-transcending bliss.

PRAYER

Draw us into Your self-sustaining Love, O God. Assimilate our relationships into the infinity of Your pre-eternal benevolence.

January 9

God’s Trinitarian life … is an interminable flowing of the Divine Persons from one another to one another and in one another - an ever actual self-giving.

Christian Meditation, 95

MEDITATION

At the heart of God is the Spirit of dis-self-possessing Love. Creation is an outpouring of eternal Love that cannot be constrained.

PRAYER

Lift us up, O God, into the perichoretic flow of Your never-ending Love.² Show us that we have neither beginning nor end, but abide as eternal ‘partakers of Your own divinity’ (cf. 2 Pt. 1:4).

January 10

The Father’s act of self-giving by which, throughout time and space, he pours out the Son in the definitive revealing of the Trinitarian act in which the ‘Persons’ are God’s ‘relations’, forms of absolute self-giving and loving fluidity.

New Elucidations, 119

MEDITATION

Personhood - both in God and human beings - escapes definition. From all eternity, our ‘lives are hidden with Christ in God’ (cf. Col. 3:3).

PRAYER

Reveal us to ourselves, O God.³ In our relationships show us who we are and who You are.

January 11

God the Father is absolute love in himself, because, as eternal Father, he is perpetually begetting the Son whom he loves alone and who in turn makes himself totally available to the Father in eternal admiration and the gift of himself, and that an eternal exchange of love between Father and Son takes place in the Holy Spirit.

Creator Spirit III, 355

MEDITATION

There is no Father without the Son, and no Son without the Father. Every ‘I-Thou’ - beginning in the Trinity - is a ‘We.’

PRAYER

Show us that we belong together in the mystery of Your divine Love, O God. Reveal our relationships as of a piece with Your glorious, Trinitarian communion.

January 12

God is pure selflessness, the self-giving of the Father to Son, of Son to Father, of the Spirit to Father and Son.

Your Crown the Year with Your Goodness, 179-80

MEDITATION

‘Kenosis’ (self-emptying)⁴ is the inner-most Life of the Trinity, O God. ‘God became man so man could become divine.’⁵

PRAYER

Grant us a share in Your self-dis-possessing Love, O God. Inspire us to pour ourselves out for each other after the fashion of Your Trinitarian kenosis.

January 13

Herein lies the most unfathomable aspect of the Mystery of God: that what is absolutely primal is no statically self-contained and comprehensible reality, but one that exists solely in dispensing itself: a flowing wellspring with no holding-trough beneath it … In the pure act of self-pouring-forth, God the Father is his self …

Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, 30-31.

MEDITATION

God is a Mystery of uncontainable Love. Christ comes forth from the Father as inseparably one with him from all eternity, and we are created ‘through, in and for’ the Son (cf. Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6) to become ‘partakers of divine nature’ (cf. 2 Pt. 1:4).

PRAYER

Show us that we belong to You, O God. Show us that we are living icons of Your self-donating Love.

January 14

The Father is this act of begetting; he is not on this side of the Word or above it, a self-contained God who decided at some time to reproduce himself. In his innermost principle, God is a bottomless spring that is, in that it gives.

Explorations in Theology III, 105

MEDITATION

At the heart of the Trinity there is an Ur-kenosis.⁶ There is nothing ‘in God’ that is not a Mystery of self-dis-possessing Love.

PRAYER

Draw us into the abyss of Your self-emptying Life, O God. Show us that our existence is an expression of Your unconstrained Love.

January 15

God [the Father] is the primordial fountain, the source of self-giving love whose eternal tradition is to hand itself over.

Explorations in Theology V, 371

MEDITATION

Even in the Trinity, the Father ‘does not deem his sovereignty as God something to be grasped at’ (cf. Phil. 2:6-11). Rather, ‘he humbles himself,’ allowing the Son and the Holy Spirit to be eternally begotten of him (cf. Jn. 1:14; 3:16-18).

PRAYER

Make us partakers of Your triune, self-expropriating Love, O God. Show us that our lives are ‘hidden with Christ’ in You (cf. Col. 3:3).

January 16

Thought’s incapacity to exhaust God is one with its incapacity to exhaust the mystery of the Father, who was never a self-enclosed, all-knowing, and all-powerful person, but one whose identity, from all eternity, was to dispossess himself in favor of the Son and, that not being enough, to give himself over yet again, this time with and through the Son, to the Spirit.

Theo-Logic II, 137

MEDITATION

The Trinity is a cascading perichoresis of self-surrendering Love.⁷ We are hard-wired for giving and receiving because we are made in the ‘image and likeness’ of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (cf. Gen. 1:26).

PRAYER

Assimilate us into Your circumincession of Your divine Love, O God.⁸ Incorporate us into the unending flow of Your triune Life.

January 17

In [the immanent Trinity] [T]he Father gives the Son everything except his paternity. Nevertheless, this does not imply that the Father holds back something for himself. It is equally false to say that the triune God holds back something for himself when he lets creatures ‘participate in the divine nature’ (cf. 2 Pet 1:4) without their becoming themselves the divine giver. We thus encounter one last time the axiom of the positivity of the other.

Theo-Logic II, 148-149

MEDITATION

There is no ‘withholding’ in God. God’s identity consists in his ‘giving himself away’ - an infinite Mystery of self-emptying Love.

PRAYER

Show us that ‘when we lose ourselves, we find ourselves,’ O God (cf. Mt. 16:25). Show us that ‘holding on’ is death, and ‘letting go’ is life.

January 18

You will experience … the sheer joy of the divine life, which consists in being a closed circuit of endlessly flowing love.

Heart of the World, 213

MEDITATION

God’s Love - since ‘God is love’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8, 16) - is without beginning or end. All existence partakes of eternal Love.

PRAYER

As the infinite Plēōrma⁹ of eternal love (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8, 16), You are the Alpha and Omega of our existence, O God. Show us that we are created in love, fashioned through love, and made for love.

January 19

This relationship [between God and the cosmos] is a circulation that is included in the infinite circulation of the Trinity.

Explorations in Theology IV, 40

MEDITATION

God is in the world, and the world is in God, yet God is not the world, and the world is not God. The co-inherent love connecting Father, Son, and Holy Spirit includes the cosmos in a graced, participative way.

PRAYER

Make us ‘by grace’ what You are ‘by nature,’ O God. Reveal deification as the purpose for our creation.

January 20

The infinite [God] and the finite subjects [human beings] do not simply remain alongside each other; they live in a ‘fluidity’ flowing into one another.

Explorations in Theology II, 301

MEDITATION

The flow of divine Love within the Trinity creates and includes the whole of humanity. We come forth from God and return to God in one continuous act of cosmic re-creation (cf. Rev. 21:5).

PRAYER

Help us experience our indissoluble intimacy with You, O God. Dispel our illusions of independence from Your ever-creative Love.

January 21

Worldly being is destined to be harbored in Divine Being, worldly time in God’s eternally moved eternity, worldly space in the infinite spaces of God, worldly becoming, not in an immobile Divine Being, but in the eternal eventfulness of divine life.

Theo-Logic II, 84

MEDITATION

There is nothing static about God or eternity. The ‘impassibility’ of God is a movement of creative Love so elusively dynamic as to appear immobile.

PRAYER

Mesmerize us with the dynamis (power) of Your Love, O God. Draw us into the ecstasy of Your Trinitarian exchange.

January 22

The constantly repeated [theme of] ‘flowing’ refers not only to the animated, circling unity of life within the Godhead but equally to the overflowing of this life into the world, drawing all who believe and love into this torrent of Trinitarian life.

Theo-Drama V, 434

MEDITATION

At every moment, God is ‘drawing all things to himself’ (cf. Jn. 8:32). In the divine-humanity of Christ, we are ‘lifted up’ into the Life of the Trinity.

PRAYER

Show us the anagogical¹⁰ orientation of our lives, O God. Show us that at every moment, ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in You.’¹¹

January 23

The Trinitarian love that is the essence of all being … has become visible in Jesus Christ.

Theo-Logic III, 438

MEDITATION

All the Father has he gives to his Son (cf. Jn. 16:15), and all that the Son has, does, and says comes from - and glorifies - the Father (cf. Jn. 5:20; 8:28; 17:1-5). Simply put: God is as Jesus does.

PRAYER

Show us that