... true and real giving and taking is a grace; it is God in us, for God is an interchange among Persons. This is a grace, however, that does not simply take effect over our heads, as it were: it makes us active participants as real givers and takers: "Life has taught me that no one is consoled in this world who has not first consoled and that we receive nothing we have not first given. Among us we an speak nly of an exchange, God alone gives, only he. "Between one man's hand and another's there intervenes, I firmly believe, more than just a density of this world. It may well be that, from so far away, all we are capable of is the gesture of giving. It is God who actually gives." The great skill of the Christian consequently, is that he can give infinitely more than what he has: "O marvel, that we should be able to make a gift of what we do not ourselves possess. O sweet miracle of our empty hands! The hope that was dying in my heart blossomed again in hers.
"Since I am coming to you with empty hands, it may well be that he will put ther what you desire to find in them. It may also well be that I will find in yours what I am not looking for in them and what you have not put there."
"Whoever cannot give more than he receives begins to decompose. The law ruling a poor Christian is precisely to give what he does not have. Otherwise, where would charity be? Where would be the sweet miracle of charity? We are always unworthy of what we receive, my child, because we never receive anything except from God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence. 1988
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