Table Of ContentThe Christian State of Life
ADRIENNE VON SPEYR
The Christian State Of Life
Edited by Hans Urs von Balthasar
TRANSLATED BY
SISTER MARY PRANCES MCCARTHY
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Title of the German original:
Christlicher Stand
© 1956 Johannes Verlag
Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Cover by Victoria Hoke Lane
With ecclesiastical approval
© 1986 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-89870-044-2
Library of Congress catalogue number 85-081512
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
I Preparation
The Lord’s Choice
The Choice of One Called by God
The Choice Made by Others
II The Choice
The Channels of Choice
The Characteristics of the Choice
The Effects of the Call
The Safeguards of the Choice
After the Choice
III Implementing the Choice
In Act
In Being
In Further Development
IV Life in One’s Chosen State
In One’s New Life
In the Chosen State
In One’s Surroundings
In the Church
V Difficulties
Difficulties with Regard to Understanding and Being Understood
Difficulties with Regard to Vitality and Fidelity
Difficulties with Regard to Faith, Hope and Love
VI Consequences
For One Making a Choice
For One’s Surroundings
For the Church
The Choice Not Made
VII Vocation in the Gospel
VIII The Vocation of the Lord
IX The Vocation of the Apostles
X The Vocation of the Successors of the Apostles
XI The Vocation of the Saints
Notes
I
Preparation
The Lord’s Choice
Children who live in Christian surroundings usually adapt themselves
imperceptibly and without much ado to the forms of Christian life. Not until later
in life do they discover the inner content of these forms. While the child is still
young, while the words are still strange and the sentences meaningless to him,
his mother begins to pray simple prayers with him. At some point, the child
begins to ask questions about what he is doing. He begins to understand. Prayer
is no longer just something he does with his mother; slowly but surely it comes
to be a conversation with God. The form reveals the meaning that lies beneath it.
Or it can happen, at Sunday school or elsewhere, that the child encounters
expressions he does not understand, and his mother explains their meaning to
him. When this happens, the child proceeds from the content of a prayer to its
form.
If the child’s religious instruction is a good one, the face of the Lord shines
forth more and more clearly from the form and content of every prayer. The
child understands that he has been enrolled in a service that is required of all
Christians and that was first offered to the Father by Jesus Christ. All the child’s
previous experiences direct his attention to the Lord: prayer, visits to church, the
attitude of those praying around him, conversations with adults, everything that
takes place in a religious atmosphere. Perhaps the angels played an important
role in his childhood experience: he has been told that he has a guardian angel
and that the other children have one, too. But angels are servants of the Lord. Or
he has become aware of evil and has been told that evil caused the Lord’s death.
The things he learns—to join his hands in prayer, to genuflect, to be quiet in
church—are things he must do to please the Lord. Eventually he forms a mental
picture of the Lord and understands that the Lord did everything to please his
Father. The Lord’s words and deeds, his attitude of obedience, his death on the
Cross—all these were acts of service to the Father. The Son’s whole life can be
summarized in one word: choice. He chose to serve the Father.
At such a moment, the child may perhaps comprehend that everything in his
life thus far that has had to do with God is meaningful only in relation to the
Son’s choice. What he has hitherto regarded merely as custom, ceremony or
inclination will henceforth determine the course his life will take, just as the
Lord’s choice determined the course of his life. The Son fulfills a mission; he
lives for the sake of the task assigned to him. But he does nothing for himself.
On the contrary, he does everything with and for the Father. Everything leads
back to the divine unity from which the Son proceeds and from which he was
never separated during his life on earth.
It may be that the child will begin now to ponder in his soul the possibility of
entering the Lord’s service. The Son did not make his choice so that he could
travel a way reserved for him alone. By the very act of traveling it, he opened to
persons of faith the possibility of making the same choice. Is it possible that my
life, too, is being directed along this way? School, recreation, conversations at
home and with friends, plans for the future, present inclinations and
disinclinations: could all these things be brought into a unity that is related to the
Lord’s choice? It is not necessary to call the individual elements into question
but only to bring them into order. None of them need be lost, but each of them
must be given an ultimate meaning.
The Choice of One Called by God
Does such a possibility exist? How does it make itself known? Perhaps the child
is still too young to envision a practicable path. Or perhaps he has a vague
intimation of the way he is to go, but the concept is clouded by the weaknesses
and uncertainties of youth. Perhaps he does not himself quite believe that it can
be realized; or, if he does believe it, if he seriously regards himself as one with a
choice to make, he does not see how he can make it. He is still too immature to
make a choice that will affect his whole future. Perhaps the most he can do is
leave the matter open, steadfastly refrain from making any choice at this time,
decide nothing in haste. In this way, his life becomes a kind of study—not of
himself but of what is being offered him. He tries to deepen the experiences he
has already had, to study the interrelationships of things around him, until he
truly understands them and can assimilate and order them. In doing so he
becomes more and more aware that there is no such thing as chance, that what
seems to have been offered him by chance is actually full of meaning and that
this meaning is not an isolated one, not a passing phenomenon, but a part of that
interrelationship of phenomena whose total meaning is not yet apparent to man,
although it exists in God. The proper choice for one who has not yet reached
maturity is to hold himself in readiness for the choice that is still hidden in God.
That is not to say that he may not have a distinct preference for certain subjects
or kinds of work. But he will never regard the things he pursues and loves and
desires for himself as final choices. He will know that they are parts of a whole
that rests in God. Yet this fact will not prevent him from devoting himself
wholeheartedly to the tasks that He before him. On the contrary, he will
surrender himself wholly to the work that is clearly presented to him in the here-
and-now. He may take pleasure in it, but he must not regard it as an ultimate
choice. His devotion must have the potential of reaching beyond its present
horizon, and it must somehow suggest the existence of this greater potentiality in
the background of the limited object to which it is presently referred. It is not
important that he cannot picture to himself this wider horizon. It need not—and
does not—matter that everything is provisional. He knows that he is still
growing toward maturity and must undergo a constant and rapid succession of
new experiences, in the process relinquishing the narrower concepts of
childhood. What he is doing now will not receive its final, conclusive meaning
until later in any case. While he is growing, his principal concern must be to
remain free—that is, to be always at God’s disposal. For this reason, he will
avoid whatever can limit him spiritually, whatever seems to be without purpose,
whatever does not in some way open him and lead him to the Lord.
The Choice Made by Others
When a young person experiences again and again, particularly in prayer, that
the Lord has a plan for him, and when he perceives this experience as an
admonition to hold himself in readiness for whatever the Lord may ask him to
do, he becomes more and more aware of the distance that separates him from the
Lord. The choice lies with the Lord; it does not yet lie in the young person’s
soul. At some point, there arises in him a certainty that he will someday have the
strength to make a definitive choice. But such an action requires time and
reflection. He begins to approach the matter by observing the people around him.
