Truth and Incarnotion

I say that -- "incarnotion" -- because I'm reading in Balthasar how Christian contemplation is really a kind of enfleshment of divine energies and ideas, thus, incarnotion. But mainly I say it because the title just popped into my head before I wrote the post, and it is merely up to me to write a post in conformity with the title so given.

In contemplation we are "an open ear to the ever-new word of God," wherein "God is speaking to this person and no other; to this beggar at the Temple gate..." "The whole glory" of this exchange -- and this is the key point -- is that "the very same personal encounter is meant to take place as in the Lord's earthly life."

I read somewhere words to the effect that it scarcely matters if Christ was incarnated in Nazareth or Bethlehem 2,000 years ago if he isn't incarnated in you. The Light must be onglowing. The Incarnation is always present tense. It is a perpetual possibility. Otherwise, what's the point?

It is the same vis-a-vis crucifixion and resurrection. I suppose it's really all a single movement of Incarnation-Crucifixion-Resurrection; which must in turn reflect an even deeper principle about the very nature of God. Which is what this weekend -- this Season -- is all about.

A "vast, living kingdom of heaven watches over transitory time..." For us this certainly includes the communion of saints and other worthies, i.e., those nonlocal operators standing by ready to assist us.

What do they see? Not bound by linear time or by various urgently trivial agendas, they "have an entirely different view of things; what seems important to us is utterly insignificant to them, and vice versa. What we are at pains to avoid can be the very thing which they see as significant, profitable and necessary..."

Oh great. Let this cup pass!

"Sorry. You don't know what's good for you."

Given that more tears are shed from answered than unanswered prayers, the corollary must be that more joy is spread from unanswered than answered ones. Not to say that the latter don't evoke joy, only to put things in their proper perspective.

Do people still try to "find themselves?" In the absence of God, there is simply no there there. "The man who concentrates on himself in the attempt to know himself better and thus, perhaps, to undertake some moral improvement, will certainly never encounter God..."

Conversely, "if he earnestly seeks God's will," then "he will -- incidentally, as it were -- realize and find himself (as far as he needs to)."

So, "finding oneself" is a byproduct of finding God -- which is really a tri-product of God finding us. In other words, the individual person is really a unique incarnotion, i.e., an Idea of God. Otherwise we'd all be the same, like animals and leftists.

Compare with the following quintessentially antichristic response to the definition of sin: Being out of alignment with my values.

This is helpful, for it explains why Obama regards political opponents as evil, for being out of alignment with his policies is a mortal sin.

Back to the God <--> Man complementarity which is brought to a cosmic pinnacle in the Incarnotion of the Godman.

If you think about it at all, you will be struck by the fact "that there should be something else apart from the 'all,' apart from the ocean of Being, a kind of 'non-all,' an 'almost nothing,' something that is not Being and yet somehow 'is,' something whose existence is not necessary but 'accidental'..."

What I'm driving at is this striking differentiation-in-unity and unity-in-differentation which reaches a climax in man, except that man can't bridge the chasm between the differentiation and the unity without effacing the one or the other, i.e., without ascending into a Vedantic nondualism or descending into a pantheistic monism.

I suppose only the incarnotion of Christ can bridge that abyss.

In conclusion, if man is (?) then God is (!). We get a sense of this truism whenever we experience a little spontaneous (?!).

The creature is a perpetual question addressed to God.... Fundamentally, God is the 'Other' in every possible way, and so he is the answer to the question which I am. --Balthasar