Thought for the day – Von Balthasar edition

As my Lenten reading I’ve decided to have a go at Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale. I’m only about ten pages in, but it’s full of rich nuggets of theological goodness like this:

The image of man which revelation sets before us differs radically from the idea of the animal rationale, mortale which empirical inquiry suggests. In point of fact, man is ‘destined’ and chosen ‘before the foundation of the world’ to be ‘blessed … with every spiritual blessing’, so that he might stand ‘holy and blameless’ before his Creator ‘in the Beloved’, that is, in the Son and ‘through his blood’ (Ephesians 1, 3-4). In this way, the entire order of sin and redemption appears inclusively integrated. The first idea of what man is already bears the determining mark of the Trinitarian economy. (p. 12)