Monday, January 22, 2024

Leave everything and follow (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

    Even now, thirty years later, I could still go to that remote path in the Black Forest, not far from Basel, and find again the tree beneath which I was struck as by lightning… 

   And yet it was neither theology nor the priesthood which then came into my mind in a flash. It was simply this: you have nothing to choose, you have been called. You will not serve, you will be taken into service. You have no plans to make, you are just a little stone in a mosaic which has long been ready. 

   All I needed to do was “leave everything and follow,” without making plans, without wishes or insights. All I needed to do was to stand there and wait and see what I would be needed for…. At that stage it was just a matter of surrendering myself. [The question was,] how to put myself entirely at the disposal of God. 

--Hans Urs von Balthasar 

Image source: https://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Switzerland/North-East/blog-440554.html
Quotation source

No comments:

Post a Comment