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Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology
This little collection of Christological meditations and reflections has two points of origin. The first was the Congress on the Sacred Heart of Jesus that was held at Toulouse in the summer of 1981 in connection with the Eucharistic Congress held earlier at Lourdes. In the quiet of the Dominican cloister in Toulouse I was able to work on my talk for the Congress, which became an impetus for me to consider Christology more from the aspect of its spiritual appropriation than I had previously done. During the same year I was unexpectedly led in the same direction by a very different event. The 1600-year commemoration of the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople was being celebrated, as was the 1550-year anniversary of Ephesus, but, to my surprise, almost no attention was paid to the fact that the date of the Third Council of Constantinople—681—might also have been the occasion for a memorial. This caused me to acquaint myself more closely with the pronouncements of this Council. As I read the texts it became clear, much to my astonishment, that the achievement of a spiritual Christology had also been the Council's ultimate goal, and that it was only from this point of view that the classical formulas of Chalcedon appear in the proper perspective. I had no time to make a study of this particular theme, but the thought of a spiritual Christology remained with me and found its way into other works. It is from this perspective that the individual pieces were collected into this book, which, I admit, is more the presentation of a theme than its exposition. My heartfelt gratitude is due to Hans Urs von Balthasar, who, in connection with the Congress on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, encouraged me both patiently and persistently to attempt such a collection.
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