Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [5]
Obviously, he could not have completed this monumental work in just two brief summers without the benefit of the earlier graces he had so abundantly received, of the Christian experiences he had accumulated, of his spiritual readings, and of his own prayer life. Also, it is quite likely that in the mysterious plan of God’s Providence, the sufferings Dietrich von Hildebrand endured in Vienna were the price he had to pay to be instrumental in helping so many souls to come closer to Christ by their inner transformation in Him and through the Cross.
Transformation in Christ ends with a prayer. This is appropriate, since the whole book is prayerful: a hymn of praise, a song of gratitude. Dietrich von Hildebrand’s deepest wish was that this book would inflame its readers to be ever more transformed in Christ. He knew that our Savior came to bring fire on this earth, and it was His desire that it should be kindled.
Author’s Introduction
Traham eos in vinculis charitatis. (Hosea 11:4)
GOD has called upon us to become new men in Christ. In holy Baptism, He communicates a new supernatural life to us; He allows us to participate in His holy life. This new life is not destined merely to repose as a secret in the hidden depths of our souls; rather it should work out in a transformation of our entire personality.
For the goal which the gratuitous mercy of God has called us to attain is not merely a moral perfection qualitatively identical with natural morality, owing its supernatural meaning only to a super-additive gift of grace; it is Christ’s supernatural wealth of virtue, which in its very quality represents something new and quite distinct from all merely natural virtue. “That you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
Almost all the prayers of the ecclesiastical year refer to the succession of stages that leads from Baptism, imparting the principle of supernatural life, to our actual transformation in Christ—to the full victory in us of Him whose name is holiness.
In our treatment of the subject of a transformation in Christ, the theological foundations and dogmatic presuppositions of this mystery will be taken for granted. We are conscious of being in complete accord with the classic tradition as established by the Fathers of the Church, and above all, by St. Augustine and by the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.
Our own theme in these pages is exclusively the operation of supernatural life in the sphere of personal morality: the shaping of that life which lights up the face of the “new man in Christ.” Here, again, that aspect of the transformation in Christ which is related to the zone of mystical experience does not come within our scope.
Our purpose is to analyze in their essence some of the spiritual attitudes which are characteristic of the “new man in Christ,” thereby indicating the course we must follow, and in particular, the goal we are called upon to reach. The full import of that Call addressed to the Christian is not always fully appreciated; what God expects from us is too often minimized and taken lightly.
While we start, in our description, from the types of attitudes which, as it were, mark the initial stages of the road in question, the order of succession in which the supernatural virtues will be considered here cannot claim a strictly systematic character. The supernatural virtues are so interrelated as to make each of them appear a precondition to the other in one respect and its fruit in another. Hence, the succession of the virtues we are about to examine is meant not so much to reflect the process of the transformation in Christ, as to manifest the abundance of life implicit in that process of transformation.
Again and again we shall encounter