Prayer

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

heir, is even more concrete: she asks what practical steps she must take to render the obedience expected of her. Thirdly, in response to the revelation of the Spirit who will overshadow her, she consents to God’s perfect Word which is to take effect in her, control her and become flesh in and from her. Every stage of the trinitarian revelation is a reply from heaven to a question posed by obedient earth. The creature wonders about the meaning of the salutation, “The Lord is with you”, and this very wondering is a prelude to the sending of the Son. The question of how to prepare for the coming of the Son results in the announcement of the Holy Spirit’s role. The New Covenant’s trinitarian revelation is not only inseparably interwoven with the Son’s incarnation: it is also inseparable from the obedient response of the praying believer; it cannot be isolated as an abstract object of contemplation. Indeed, contemplation does not even need to be explicitly trinitarian to be truly incarnational, for the trinitarian dimension is something that comes down from above, whereas Mary, a truly human mother, is entirely taken up with being the God-bearer. It is through this particular vocation that she learns that her Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit will bring her the Father’s seed. Thus, in caring for her Son and in her discipleship of him, keeping and pondering all his words in her heart, she will penetrate more and more deeply into an understanding of the Trinity: of the Father...