Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

100 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel the heart o f the Trinity, and o f all personal being.41 It is in the “being-for o f Christians that the mystery o f Being as Love is concretized in salva­ tion history.”42 Love creates: it is “being for another” and in this sense “taking anoth­ e r ’s place” that calls the other into being. Citing examples such as St. Maximilian Kolbe, Hoffman writes that it is this “taking the place” which rather than replacing someone else, opens oneself to the other, lets the other find his place, find himself, against the forces o f nega­ tion.42 Karl-Heinz Menke, in his monumental study,44 points out that “tak­ ing the place o f another” really means a “being for” the other. Stellvertretung is bigger than vicarious suffering: it is, in a way, vicari­ ous living. Menke writes that for Balthasar “there exists a relation of representation ( Stellvertretungsverhdltnis ) between the ground o f being and its appearance in the individual existent, outside o f which neither the individual existent, nor the actus essendi are ‘real.’”45 Moreover, Menke points out that for Balthasar the human “I” is “created” by the “Thou” of the summoning other, while in the Trinity, each person is “for the other.” “Representation” is at the very heart o f the Trinity: Balthasar characterizes the trinitarian God as the unsurpass­ able primal image o f all representation - if representation means that two persons are so tied to each other, that the one is only itself through the “Stell-vertretung” representation o f the other. Inasmuch as the Father becomes the “place” of the Son, he “loses” nothing, even though he retains nothing “for himself,” but rather he is the entire essence o f the divinity in this self-abandonment.46 Jesus’ death in expiation for our sins is the pure revelation of that love, that sort o f love, which is at the heart of the Trinity. In His Passion, Jesus is mocked, and bears it meekly. As such, He reveals to the world who God is in the face o f the world’s rejection and contempt; more, He models, and lives as, the “new Adam,” in whom the sufferings inflicted after Eden are borne in a way which purchases for the world the way to the tree o f life. Indeed, in Jesus, the tree of suffering becomes the tree of life. He experiences the darkness o f sin deeper than the sinner himself47. Jesus comes to the “place” on the Cross which is the opposite “place” o f “connection, communio, love (the opposite o f the ‘place’ o f the Trinitarian God).”48