Hans von Balthasar on Mechtilde of Hackeborn, Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena

Hans von Balthasar on Mechtilde of Hackeborn, Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena

“Mechtilde of Hackeborn (died 1299) heard these words from the Lord:

“I tell you the truth that I am very pleased when men trustingly expect great things from me. For everyone who believes that I will reward him after this life with more than he deserves, and who correspondingly gives praise and thanks to me in this life, will be so welcome to me that I will reward him with far more than he could ever believe or boldly hope for, in fact, with endlessly more than he deserves. For it is impossible that someone should not attain what he has believed and hoped for. ... With confident hope you should believe that I receive you, after your death, as a father receives his dearest son. … I who am faithfulness itself am incapanle of misleading through any sort of deceit.” (Note 1: Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, vol. (Solesmes and Paris, 1887), pp. 201-2)

…

To Mechtilde, this something more than can be hoped for is not just promised and given to her personally but is expressly intended to be given in turns to others. (Note 3: Revelationes, pp. 34-36)

…

“heaven and earth and infernum, for I embrace and contain within me every created being. And if I appear before the Father to praise and give thanks, then it cannot be that, through me and in me, the shortcomings of all creatures are compensated for in the worthiest way.” (Note 4: Ibid., pp. 48-9)

Those “who are entangled in great sin I nevertheless constantly look upon in the love which I have chosen them and in the clarity to which they will come”; therefore, one should “often recall to mind with what wondrous and hidden judgments I regard everyone caught up in sin as a just man and how lovingly, in thought of him, I turn everything for him, including the bad, into something good.” (Note 5: Ibid, p. 281) The kiss of Judas can serve as an example here, about which the Lord says: “At this kiss, my heart through and through that, had he only repented, I would have won his soul as bride by virtue of this kiss” (Note 6: Ibid, p. 196)

…

What she says about the judgments of Jesus is very similar to statement by the Magistra Theologorum (as Bordoni has called her), Angela of Foligno:

“Nothing gives me so comprehensive a knowledge of God as the experience of the judgments of God, which he unceasingly pronounces. If, therefore, I say in my evening or morning prayers: “Through your Incarnation, your Nativity and your Passion, redeem me, O Lord”, then I add with a greater joy than I otherwise ever feel: “Through your holy judgments, redeem me, O Lord!” I say that because I recognize God’s goodness no better in a good and holy man than in a damned one. This unfathomable thing was revealed to me once only, but it will never slip from memory, nor will I forget they joy I felt about it. … He turns everything to the advantage of the good.” (Note 10: P. Doncoeur, Le livre de la Bienheureuse Angèle de Foligno (Paris, 1926), pp. 88-89)

Angela’s most profound insight pertains to God’s final humiliation, his highest freedom in his most extreme obedience, in his final Franciscan poverty, in his “most piercing and most severe pain based on his quite wondrous compassion for mankind. He participated in the sufferings of everyone with the deepest pain, according to the degree of guilt and punishment that was the lot of each.” (Note 11: Ibid, p. 104)” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Dare We Hope That All Men Shall be Saved? With a Short Discourse on Hell’, pp. 62-4)

“Thomas Aquinas thought that “one can hope for eternal life for the other as long as is united with him through love” (Note 7: STh II-II, q.17, a.3. Besler’s exegesis of this passage is simply inadequate (Th, 1986, p. 7332)), and from whom of our brothers would it permissible to withhold this love? Or could we really believe Dante when he inscribes above his door to hell: “I was created by divine power, supreme wisdom and primal love” (Inf. Ill), only to have to stand by and watch afterward what goes on in his hell?

Should we not, rather, follow the Church Doctor Catherine of Siena when she admitted to her father confessor, the blessed Raymond of Capua: “If I were wholly inflamed with the fire of Divine Love, would I not, then, with a burning heart, beseech my Creator, the truly merciful One, to show mercy to all my brethren?” She spoke, Raymond tells us, in a soft voice to her Bridegroom and said to him:

“How could I ever reconcile myself, Lord, to the prospect that a single one of those whom, like me, you have created in your image and likeness should become lost and slip from your hands? No, in absolutely no case do I want to see a single one of my brethren meet with ruin, not a single one of those who, through their like birth, are one with me by nature and by grace.  I want them all to be wrested from the grasp of the ancient enemy, so that they all become yours to the honor and greater glorification of your name.”

The Lord replied to her, as she secretly confided to Raymond: “Love cannot be contained in hell; it would totally annihilate hell; one could more easily do away with hell than allow love to reside in it.” “if only your truth and your justice were to reveal themselves”, the saint replied to this, “then I would desire that there no longer be a hell, or at least that no soul would go there. If I could remain united with you in love while, at the same time, placing myself before the entrance to hell and blocking it off in such a way that no one could enter again, then that would be the greatest of joys for me, for all those whom I love would then be saved.” (Note 8: Vie de Sainte Catherine de Sienne par le bienheureux Raymond de Capoue, ed. Hugueny, O.P. (Paris, n.d.), pp. 479, 481. I owe this reference to this passage to Fr. Christoph von Schönborn, O.P.)

But precisely at this point, someone will come up with the numerous texts providing evidence that Catherine herself and many other mystics who, in their imitation of Christ, had experiences of eternal-seeming damnation and godforsakenness – Besler has filled pages in stringing together their statements – were all convinced, despite everything, that the damnation of many was a fact. And it is precisely here that we are faced with the absolute paradox of Christian love. The hell is brought before their eyes does not at all produce resignation in them but fires their resolve to resist it more strongly than ever.” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Dare We Hope That All Men Shall be Saved? With a Short Discourse on Hell’, pp. 136-8)

 


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