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April 7, 2018“‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” (Jn 20:20)
A word for today’s feast from Hans Urs von Balthasar:
“The spring leaps up even more plenteously. To be sure, it flows out of a wound and is like the blossom and fruit of a wound; like a tree it sprouts up from this wound. But the wound no longer causes pain. The suffering has been left far behind as the past origin and previous source of today’s wellspring. What is poured out here is no longer a present suffering, but a suffering that has been concluded—no longer now a sacrificing love, but a love sacrificed. Only the wound is there: gaping, the great open gate, the chaos, the nothingness out of which the wellspring leaps forth. Never again will this gate be shut. Just as the first creation arose ever anew out of sheer nothingness, so, too, this second world—still unborn, still caught up in its first rising—will have its sole origin in this wound, which is never to close again. In the future, all shape must arise out of this gaping void, all wholeness must draw its strength from the creating wound.”
( Heart of the World, 152-3)
The wound is the gate of heaven and the source of all life – what does this mean? Could it not mean that my wound also – because of his – is a gate of heaven and a source of life?
