The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedHans Urs von Balthasar
Title QuotedHerrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästetik.
Date (Year/Month/Day)1964/09/27
Imprint[S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1961
QuotationThe wonderful package of books has arrived, and I am reading the first volume of Herrlichkeit, not without a little difficulty, but I think I am getting most of it. At any rate there are parts that make me very happy, even though I have to read slowly and can only do a few pages a day. Really I am most grateful, as this is exactly what I have been looking for: a truly contemplative theology, for which we have been starved for so many centuries (though of course there have been little intervals of refreshment and light with people like Scheeben). I think I am going to enjoy your second volume even more. I am so grateful to you for daring to launch out into this fruitio [enjoyment] and intellectus [understanding]. How can there really be any other theology? Actually, I see that the attraction of things like Buddhism today resides in the "hidden" sapiential quality which is absent from our purely "scientific" theology and Scripture study. Underneath all the apparent ambiguities of Buddhism about suffering (they do in some cases seek to avoid it) there is actually a deep wisdom and admiratio [wonder] at the mystery of truth and love which is attained only when suffering is fully accepted and faced.
Quotation SourceThe School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction.; Selected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1990, p. 241
Letter toFather Hans Urs von Balthasar
Notes 
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