The present article attempts to bring into focus some central features of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s understanding of secular institutes (instituta saecularia). The Weltgemeinschaften [“world communities”], as he preferred to call them,3 occupied the center of his mission, giving a unifying force to his life and work. They increasingly became the focal point of his interest, indeed, his very existential “source-point.” It was to the task of founding and promoting this incipient form of Christian life that he dedicated his personal gifts.4
By way of introduction, we can say that, for Balthasar, the importance of the secular institutes lies in their proposal of a new unity between “the worldly state and the state of God [Weltstand und Gottestand],” between the original impulse of the Gospel and the needs of today’s post-Christian world. The secular institutes are constituted by their integration of an exclusive service of God and the world as a form of Christian life. “Integration” is thus the key term on which Balthasar relies in order to characterize the being and the mission of the “world communities.” For the same reason, we will move, in what follows, within the wide precincts of this integration, in the attempt to unfold some of its central aspects.
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1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, vol. 4: Spirit and Institution (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 287–288.
2. Adrienne von Speyr, Erde und Himmel, vol. 3: Die Späten Jahre (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1975), 322.
3. Jean Beyer, S.J., ed., Die kirchlichen Urkunden für die Weltgemeinschaften (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1963), 8–9. This volume contains the most important pontifical documents concerning the secular institutes. It was also the first in a series (published by Balthasar) called, appropriately, “the new way” [Der neue Weg].
4. Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work in Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 47, 58.