Adrienne von Speyr

This compact book, one of Adrienne von Speyr's last works, dives into the mystery of Christian obedience, thus bringing the reader into the heart of authentic Christian love. Profoundly misunderstood in our time, obedience is not just a vow for monks and nuns. Nor does it mean domination, an automatic response of a slave or puppet. Rather, it is the free, creative, and open-hearted response of a perceptive child of God. Obedience flows through the very core of reality in all its breadth: heaven and earth, God and creation, Christ and man. It colors the life of the family, the life of man in the world, the life of the Christian before God, and even the life of God himself, because obedience means, above all, listening. Only in obedience does joy, indeed life, become possible. Von Speyr, with a marvelous clarity, precision, and practicality, reveals at once the widest expanses and the subtlest shades of Christian obedience, uncovering for the reader a new path to prayer and to Triune love. And this is a path for all, lay and consecrated alike.

This small and simple spiritual gem offers a profound contemplation of the Seven Last Words of Christ, with specific application to the seven sacraments he instituted. Adrienne von Speyr leads us to the foot of the Cross, where she gazes upon the crucified Christ and listens deeply as he cries out in suffering and opens the portals of divine grace. The Cross: Word and Sacrament will challenge and encourage the reader to participate more deeply in the Paschal Mystery through a greater appreciation and understanding of the sacraments and their source in the Cross. The words Jesus utters in his agony, as recorded in the Gospels, contain not only the gifts experienced in the sacraments of the Church but also questions: Do you truly understand what is being offered to you? Will you accept these gifts? Will you suffer the mystery contained in such love? In short, this book calls the reader to conversion, which is a continual process of turning toward the Son, who leads us, in union with the Holy Spirit, into an ever-deepening relationship with the Father. Thus is the reader invited to enter the very life of the Trinity, that communion of love without end.

Adrienne von Speyr, a renowned mystic and spiritual writer from Switzerland, was received into the Catholic Church at the age of 38 on the Feast of All Saints, 1940, by one of the theological giants of the 20th century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar. He became her spiritual director and confessor until her death in 1967 during which time Adrienne was favored with many gifts of authentic mystical prayer. Balthasar considered one of the central characteristics of Adrienne's prayer to be her transparency to the inspirations she received from God, along with a deep personal communion with the saints. Over a period of many years, Adrienne would see the saints (and other devout people) at prayer, and she would dictate what she saw to Fr.von Balthasar - while she was in a state of mystical prayer. Through a unique charism, she was able to put herself in the place of various individuals to see and describe their prayer, their whole attitude before God. Not all of her subjects are saints in the strict sense of the word, but all struggled, with varying degrees of success, to place their lives at the disposal of their Creator. This book presents these unique mystical insights into the prayer lives of many saints taken from Adrienne's direct visions of them in prayer. Among the long list of saints in this book are St. John the Apostle, St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. John Bosco, St. Bernadette, St. Dominic, St. Edith Stein and many, many more. In this powerful spiritual work, the reader is able to participate in the devotional and spiritual life of the Church throughout the centuries by learning how numerous saints and devout people prayed, thus reflecting on the timelessness and beauty of the prayer of the Church.

In this second edition of her profound book on confession, which theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar calls "one of her most central works", Adrienne von Speyr discusses the moral and practical aspects of this sacrament in great depth. The most complete spiritual treatise on confession ever written, the book covers conversion, scruples, contrition, spiritual direction, laxity, frequency of confession, confessions of religious and lay people, and even confessions of saints. The most intriguing element in von Speyr's understanding of confession, fully developed in this volume, is its trinitarian and christological basis. The Cross is the archetypal confession, and Christian sacramental confession is thus an imitation of Christ in the strict sense. Confession examines the enormous fruitfulness of this dogmatic basis from many perspectives, giving a wealth of suggestions that both the theological expert and the layman will find very helpful. Its practical applicability to one's own confession emerges from every page.

In this profound book on the mystery of Mary, Adrienne von Speyr reflects on the life, attitude, and prayer of the Mother of God. She shows how Mary's assent to God's will--her Fiat: "Let it be done to me according to thy word"--is what defines and sanctifies every aspect of her life. She gives new insights into Mary's holiness, suffering, prayer, and role of spiritual motherhood for all mankind. Handmaid of the Lord is not a biography detailing the daily life of the Mother of Jesus, filled with the sights and the sounds found in the holy imagination of a saintly visionary. Rather, it responds to our desire to know Mary in a penetrating and personal way, opening us to the mystery of her inner life, which can be revealed only by the Word himself and pondered in the heart, just as Our Lady herself did. Humility, obedience, availability, joy, suffering, and transparency before God are some of the key spiritual attributes of Our Lady found in this timeless work. As with her other books, von Speyr helps us to savor and to appreciate each word of Sacred Scripture as self-revelation from the Father through the heart of the Church, the Bride of the Son, in a loving exchange of the Spirit. In this way, the Word may be absorbed into the very core of our being, as it was for Mary, the Mother of God.

A beautiful little book of brief meditations on the love of God by the Swiss spiritual writer, mystic and medical doctor von Speyr. These short "insights" are fruits of Adrienne's contemplative prayer that reflect her constant quest for an ever deeper union with God, a union of divine and human love that is shown in her life by her great compassion for others as seen in her tireless devotion to her many medical patients. She knew that in order to best serve others she must first serve and love God with all her heart, and thus her life and writings reveal the combination of a deep spiritual and practical approach to the meaning of love as seen in these wonderful, uplifting reflections that echo the inmost mystery of Christianity.