Balthasar: The Complete Man

A quote on the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth, even when He is considered simply as a Man:

Here is a man with an utterly free interior life under the most restricted and oppressive conditions, simply through prayer, as we see from the sovereign self-consciousness he displays in dialogue with his disciples and, even more, with his enemies.  Here is a man whose love is perfect, although he often makes of others the same inflexible demands he makes of himself.  Here is the complete man; not a man who fits in with all and sundry, but a strong and distinctive personality, utterly unforgettable, whose words an deeds are unique and inimitable, whose influence on history is supreme.  The perfect friend, the perfect leader, whose energy, however concentrated, never distorted his character, who always remained fresh and even childlike, with no false sophistication, loving children (a sure sign!) and commending their outlook on life to those who liked to think themselves "adult".  He never reacts in a banal, predictable way; all that he does is original and creative.  Indeed, the gospels and the whole New Testament pulsate with "spirit", in the literary sense as well as the philosophical and religious sense.  How empty and relatively poor in imagination, by contrast, are such writings as the Koran or the Speeches of Buddha - once one has the "feel" of them, one can make them up oneself!

-Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Prayer, pp 171-172

While fully embracing Jesus' fully divine nature, and even emphasizing it (e.g. It was God that went to the wedding and turned water into wine...), Balthasar urges his readers to meditate on Jesus' full humanity as well:

True holiness in the Church, with its influence on history, has always been connected with the straightforward endeavor to take the humanity of Christ seriously, and all the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from the failure to take it seriously. (pg 172)