My church celebrates the Lord’s Supper on the first Sunday of every month. Last Sunday we celebrated communion during the season of Advent. Birth and death in one act.

I know this is the third quote I’ve posted from von Balthasar’s Love Alone Is Credible, but it’s simply that good. This quote clarifies the relationship between Jesus’ birth and his death:

The radiant absoluteness of the teaching [of Jesus], which shines forth in what it says, promises, and demands, becomes intelligible only in terms of the fact that his life points as a whole toward the Cross. All the acts of self-disclosure in word and deed receive their validity through a Passion that explains everything and makes it all possible.