At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings

Here Henri de Lubac reflects on the circumstances that occasioned his writings. In 1976 Fr Hans Urs von Balthasar wanted to offer his "mentor and friend", Fr Henri de Lubac, on the occasion of his eighteith birthday, a little book that would bring out "the organic work of a life". He had finished it when, as he wrote in the preface, "Father de Lubac and a few other friends placed in my hand a large manuscript (provided, as one might expect, with numerous notes), in which he explains the genesis, meaning and fate of his books and situates them within the course of the various stages of his life, his studies, his meetings, his friendships as well as his legendary exiles and banishments. " In 1981 Cardinal de Lubac added a final chapter to the 1975 manuscript that Fr von Balthasar had known. For the purposes of publication, the author read through the text a final time with the publisher.