For the last ten years, I have been reading and praying with a little book of spiritual theology by the 20th century Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: Heart of the World. I have subtitled this work “A Passion Triptych” because it follows the three days leading up to Easter Sunday. The first panel, that of Holy Thursday, begins with the gospel that we hear on that day, Christ washing the feet of his disciples. That passage is then put in dialogue with von Baltahsar’s text, with an aria for soprano, violin, and organ that speaks to Christ’s mission on earth and the nature of the Church: “I am the vine and you are the branches / you are my blossoms / you my fruit.” The panel then concludes with the hymn that the Church suggests for Holy Thursday, the Ubi caritas, “Where charity and love prevail.” The second panel, that of Good Friday, follows in a similar fashion, with an excerpt from St. John’s Passion narrative put into dialogue with von Balthasar’s meditation on Christ’s words from the Cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” The second panel also concludes with the proper hymn for the day, the Crux fidelis: “Faithful cross the saints rely on / noble tree beyond compare.” 

 

Then, the piece transitions, with an intermezzo for violin and organ, into Holy Saturday and the harrowing of hell. “No one saw the moment of your victory,” von Balthasar writes. There is no Holy Saturday Mass, and, thus, no gospel to reflect on. Instead, we hear von Balthasar’s mystical vision of the harrowing of hell: “At the outermost margins of existence / at the furthest shore / where the Father is invisible / and wholly hidden / there the Son breathes out / His spirit. / And hovering in the Spirit / the Son turns back to the Father / glorified.” This is then put into dialogue with the hymn for Morning Prayer on Easter day, the Aurora lucis rutilat: “Light's glittering morn bedecks the sky, / heaven thunders forth its victor cry, / the glad earth shouts its triumph high,/ and groaning hell makes wild reply.” The works ends with a hymn of praise to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Heart of the World, the human heart whose beats resounded through hell, that has triumphed over sin and death, and which leads us back to the Father who made us.