Love Alone Is Credible Balthasar Summary

Kyle Kelley

Love Alone is Credible and Mother Teresa The book Love Alone is Credible is written by Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Through the book Balthasar puts forward the notion that love is the only true and credible witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Balthasar goes on to say that theologians can put forth work after work of theological essays and thoughts, but that those are the true witness of Jesus. The only true witness of what Jesus did for us on the cross is love. One of the ways that Balthasar makes this argument is by discussing what happens when love is not the sole credible witness. When Christianity is tried to make credible without love one of the things that can happen is what is called the cosmological reduction. The cosmological

The first thing that I believe should be brought up when doing a character analysis on Mother Teresa is the darkness inside her. I think this should be talked about first because it is the most unusual of all her characteristics and one that is not experienced in the way she experienced it. Page 3 also claims this as a huge part of her life saying, “The darkness would become the greatest trial of her own life, and a fundamental part of her mission.” The darkness, though, was not just human depression and sadness as we would typically think about depression and sadness. No, Mother Teresa’s was an extraordinary experience. On page 3 the darkness is described as a sharing of the passion of Jesus on the cross. This is discussed in much more detail later in the book, but the idea is explained on page 250 of why she was given the darkness. The darkness, “In God’s design, she was allowed to experience some of the dreadful reality of a life without God, which she likened to hell, the consequence of the ultimate rejection of Hid love and mercy.” God gifted Mother Teresa just a glimpse of what he felt on the cross so that Mother Theresa could share in his passion. The fact that Mother Teresa likened the absence of God in her life to hell shows how miserable hell must be and how much God sustains us on a day-to-day basis. The darkness

How then did this apparent contradiction within Mother Teresa happen? Page 180 says that Mother Teresa was “torn between the feeling of having lost God and the unquenchable desire to reach him.” She felt as though she were completely empty and absent from the presence of God, but to the outside people thought she exemplified Christ in everything and truly embodied the spirit of being a loving and kind nun. We see this on page 187 where Mother Teresa describes this apparent contradiction in her own life. She said that the people around her think she is filled with unity and intimacy with God, but what they didn’t know is that she covered up her darkness, emptiness, and misery with a cloak of cheerfulness. Even through this suffering Mother Teresa embodied Christ in everything she did, and we can see this clearly in the Missionaries of Charity and what the entire goal of the organization was. It says on page 73 that she wanted the sisters of the Missionaries of Charity to be truly united to Christ, and through that shine Jesus’ love on dark souls. They wanted to live among the poor and beggars to care for them the way Christ cared for the poor and sickly. The Missionaries of Charity is what Mother Teresa worked and strived for her entire life so by looking at the Missionaries of Charity and what they care about, we can see what Mother Teresa