Tragedy Under Grace: Reinhold Schneider on the Experience of the West

281 Pages·1997·1.672 MB·English

by  Hans Urs Von Balthasar

TRAGEDY UNDER GRACE
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR
TRAGEDY UNDER GRACE
Reinhold Schneider on the Experience of the West
TRANSLATED BY BRIAN MCNEIL, C.R.V.
A COMMUNIO BOOK
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Title of the German original:
Nochmah: Reinhold Schneider
© 1991 Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln, Freiburg
The author prepared this
revised and expanded edition of
Reinhold Schneider: Sein Weg und sein Werk
before his death in 1988
Cover by Roxanne Mei Lum
© 1997 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-555-3
Library of Congress catalogue number 96-78008
Printed in the United States of America
Written for and dedicated to
the Secular Institutes
CONTENTS
Preface to the New Edition
Introduction
ORIGINS
PORTUGAL-THE DREAM
The Coast
The Idea
The Image
SPAIN-THE FORM
The King
The Castle
Faith
PRUSSIA-POWER
The Misery
The Deed
The Rift
HISTORY
ENGLAND-THE GUILT
The Island
The Parting of the Ways
Right
RUSSIA-CONFESSION
The Good Thief
The Left Cheek
The Thief on the Left
GERMANY-PENANCE
Turning Around
Insight
The Work
THE CHURCH
ROUEN-THE GLORY
The Commission
The Encounter
The Only One
ROME-THE MINISTRY
The Office
The Renunciation
The Kingdom
MARIENBURG-KNIGHTHOOD
The Fortress
The Spirit
The Cross
Curtain
The Departure
Nada
Bequest
Bibliography
PREFACE TO
THE NEW EDITION
The first edition of this book was placed in the hands of Reinhold Schneider
when he turned fifty in 1953, with the request not to read it if my presentation
confused him and dammed up the flow of his inspiration. The preface
emphasized how much his mighty work is the fruit of prayer and renunciation
and the giving of testimony, in such a way that the person, harassed through and
through and exhausted by intellectual and physical pain, unshaken either by
boycott and slander or by the many honors paid him, wished to recede totally
behind his task, and succeeded in doing so. What most fascinated me in this
work was the omnipresent drama of the encounter between two missions that are
equally original and yet stand in a deadly mutual conflict: the mission of the one
who is entrusted with the task of administering the earthly realm and the mission
of the saint as the real symbol of the kingdom of God that descends into the
world. The inescapable quality of this encounter appeared to me as a guiding
image, an image to be retained at all costs, for the secular institutes that had
recently been permitted to exist in the Church: their fundamental aim is to
combine the radicalism of the gospel with a total, active involvement in secular
work, enduring in their own selves the conflict described here. At that time, it
was not yet possible to recognize how deeply and variously Reinhold Schneider
had thought through this problem, returning to deal with it again and again and
averting one-sided solutions; one may well say that only the publication of his
diaries from 1930 to 1935 (almost a thousand pages) has shed sufficient light on
his ever new struggle with what he saw as the decisive and tragic conflict
between life in the world and transcendence—and this in the years before his
return to the Catholic faith. And what position does the writer take on this
fundamental problem of Christian existence? “Faith addresses the indivisible
man. This is why it is so senseless to make a distinction between the statesman
as politician and the statesman as Christian, between the Christian as soldier and
as the one who kneels at the communion rails. So if faith is present, it flows into
the literary composition.” And yet there is active here “Kierkegaard’s doubt,
which I cannot rob of its force: Is it genuinely possible to busy oneself with