Lk 11:29-32 “Sign of Jonah” Von Balthasar

Mass

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

Gospel Lk 11:29-32 “Sign of Jonah”

MEDITATION OF THE DAY

The Sign That Is Given

We cannot look directly at Christ any more than we can look directly at the sun. He has to be "interpreted". His works, words, miracles are one and all signs that point to something: they do not signify only themselves. They possess an unbounded depth into which they attract and invite us. But we do not find the truth behind them, at a second, purely spiri­tual level. .. Rather (and the Fathers affirmed this as well): the Word became Flesh, the eternal Meaning has become incarnate within the temporal symbol. What is signified must be sought within the sign itself, the "moral" within the history, the God within the Man. No one shall ever leave Christ's humanity behind as obsolete instrument ...

"There is no moment, there is no place, there is no circumstance that is not illumined either by the operation or by the suspension of some grace or admirable effect that the humanity of Jesus was intended to bear within itself" (Cardinal Berulle).

FATHER HANS URS VON BALTHASAR  (+1988) was an eminent Swiss Catholic theologian who wrote prodigiously.

MAGNIFICAT Monthly: excerpt from The Grain of the Wheat Aphorisms, Ignatius Press 2007