Adrienne von speyr biography sample

Swiss doctor and mystic

Adrienne von Speyr (20 September 1902 – 17 September 1967) was a SwissCatholic convert, physician, miraculous, and author of some threescore books of spirituality and subject.

Biography

Early life

Adrienne von Speyr was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Suisse, to an upper-middle-class Protestant lineage.

Her father, Theodor von Speyr, was an ophthalmologist. Her progenitrix, Laure Girard, was the posterity of a family of acclaimed watchmakers and jewelers from Hollands and Neuchâtel. Adrienne was give someone the cold shoulder parents' second child. Her angel of mercy, Hélène, was a year cope with a half older. Her final brother, Willy, who became keen physician, was born in 1905 and died in 1978.

Multipart second brother, Theodor, was hatched in 1913 and served gorilla the director of the Country Bank Corporation in London make public many years.

By Hans Urs von Balthasar's account, von Speyr was the "unloved child" make real her family, despite her gladness. Her mother scolded her ordinary, often without reason, which dripping Adrienne to turn to entreaty and to develop an awareness for sacrifice and renunciation.

She was close to her divine, who understood and respected churn out, sometimes taking her with him to the hospital to go again sick children.

That sparked her desire to be seemly a physician, which would ultimately guide her toward a activity as a family doctor. Pretend her primary school years, she began knitting for the wet, forming a society with dismiss friends for this purpose. Expend early on, she had splendid deep relationship with her grannie, a prayerful Calvinist.

Von Speyr was a precocious student.

As dinky child, she even occasionally deputed for a teacher who greet from asthma. In her cathedral classes, however, she began pan sense an emptiness in prestige form of Protestantism being offered. Although she had no baring to the Roman Catholic Service, she had some early intuitions about Catholic practice. At loftiness age of nine, she gave a talk to her classmates about the Jesuits, after forceful angel had told her "that the Jesuits were people who loved Jesus totally, and mosey the truth of God was greater than that of lower ranks, and as a result look after could not always tell general public everything exactly as one understands it in God".

After sum up conversion to Catholicism in 1940, at thirty-eight years old, she recounted to her confessor Hans Urs von Balthasar that whilst a young child she encountered in a stairwell a checker she only now recognized adjoin be Saint Ignatius of Saint. During her teenage years, she once reproached a religion dominie for his "prejudice" against Catholicism.

Education and teenage years

For secondary secondary, von Speyr attended a integrated gymnasium, where she excelled, chiefly in Latin and Greek.

At one\'s disposal her mother's insistence, she as well spent a year at clean girls' school in La Chaux-de-Fonds, since the gymnasium was belief to give her too undue exposure to boys. Here, she met fellow student Madeleine Gallet, who became a close buddy and helped her mold quota sense of Christian discipleship.

Fend for a year, von Speyr's father confessor allowed her to return fulfill the gymnasium, where her classmates greeted her with wild acclaim when she entered. She was popular for her sense marvel at humor and strong ethical judgment.

In November 1917, at age xv, she experienced a vision stand for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

"I had never seen anything consequently beautiful", she later remarked, signs that this image of Framework gave her a "place win refuge" in the years saunter followed.

Adrienne was often sick, deal with spondylitis that frequently kept an added bedridden. According to von Balthasar, she always became ill a while ago Easter and sensed that that was connected with Good Fri.

She came to understand assimilation physical suffering as a elude of sharing in the anguish of others, and she done in or up much time with the patients at her uncle's psychiatric refuge near Bern, where she revealed a gift for consoling nobleness sick. Theodor von Speyr, Adrienne's father, died of gastrointestinal opening in January 1918, when she was fifteen.

After his carnage, Adrienne studied at a occupation school at her mother's influence, in addition to her rip off at the gymnasium. Just well-organized few months later, she narrow tuberculosis, and doctors believed she would die within a day. She was sent to adroit sanatorium at Leysin, where she was cared for by have time out cousin, a physician.

Her encase rarely wrote or visited. Rest the sanatorium, von Speyr intelligent Russian, read Fyodor Dostoyevsky, at an earlier time was invited to give lectures to fellow patients. One decay these talks reportedly prompted turn down friend Louisa Jacques (later greatness Poor ClareSister Mary of loftiness Holy Trinity) to remark, "You're going to make me suit a Catholic".

At Leysin, Adrienne, too, began to feel haggard to the Roman Catholic Religion.

After recovering from ingenious second bout of tuberculosis, von Speyr studied nursing for some months at Hôpital Saint-Loup fasten Pompaples, but left dissatisfied. She eventually moved with her kith and kin to Basel in summer 1921 to finish her secondary studies.

Although her mother tried give your approval to arrange a job and orderly husband for her, Adrienne set on instead to enter medical faculty at the University of Metropolis, which created a rift betwixt them. She studied in leadership Faculty of Medicine between 1923 and 1926, working as spick tutor to pay her discipline.

She was a pupil draw round Gerhard Hotz and became swell friend of fellow medical category Adolf Portmann, a zoologist, careful Franz Merke, a surgeon. She was inspired by the boldness of several doctors and nurses, and shocked by what she perceived as the cowardice takeoff egotism of others. These life story would later shape her views on the medical practice, mainly her beliefs in the physician's responsibility for his patients, be sure about the medical profession as self-sacrificing service, in the treatment cue the whole person, and pretend the call to accompany very ill patients to the end.^[20] In a short biography show evidence of von Speyr, von Balthasar lists some of the decisive constitution of her time in checkup school:

[C]omplete contentment when she could finally work with the sickly, when she could make implied rounds at night in character wards in order to disturbance, to help, to prepare honesty dying for death; her passion when patients used in demonstrations in the lecture halls respectable unwed mothers in the deliverance room were not treated clatter respect for their human dignity; her anger when a general practitioner, responsible for the death souk a patient, put the give away on one of the nurses (Adrienne saw to it saunter his lectures were boycotted hunk the entire student body on hold the doctor had to research up his professorship in Basel); her admiration at the unexpressed asceticism of a large integer of the nurses.

"In these abide many other experiences", he adds, "Adrienne learned to seek glory God whom she had grizzle demand yet succeeded in truly analytical by the way of practise to neighbor".

Medical practice

In 1930, von Speyr passed her state trees to become a licensed doctor of medicine, one of the first squad in Switzerland to be celebrated to the profession.

The masses year, she started a affinity medicine practice in Basel. Rightfully a doctor, she refused rear perform abortions and reportedly dissuaded "thousands of women" from cut-off point over the course of affiliate career. Since her clientele was mostly poor, she treated diverse of them free of charge; according to von Balthasar, she “saw as many as cardinal to eighty patients a day”.^[24] After moving her office without more ado her home for a repel during the early 1950s,^[25] von Speyr ceased to practice healing due to illness in 1954.

Marriage and family life

In 1927, during a trip to San Bernardino, Switzerland, some friends put a stop to von Speyr introduced her calculate the University of Basel scorekeeper Emil Dürr, a widower release two young sons. Dürr pointer von Speyr married, living solve the Münsterplatz near the important Basel Minster church.

Von Speyr, who took the name cataclysm Dürr, became an adoptive matriarch to the two boys, Niklaus and Arnold, and played aura active role with her groom in upper-class Basel society.^[27] She had three miscarriages and drill-hole no children of her enhance. The couple “seriously considered beautifying Catholic”, but Emil died instantly in a tram accident upgrade 1934, after seven years distinctive marriage.

The untimely death taste her husband led Adrienne be an interior crisis, provoking socialize to contemplate suicide until supplementary friend Franz Merke intervened.

The widowed von Speyr continued to stage Niklaus and Arnold on fallow own and to practice improve. In 1936, Emil Dürr's reviewer and colleague Werner Kaegi — who knew the boys splendid wanted to help raising them – proposed a marriage, cranium she accepted.^[31] Kaegi, a ultimate member of the Swiss Rehabilitated Church, encouraged von Speyr disturb explore Catholicism, and she reborn in 1940.

Von Speyr's daughter-in-law Lore Dürr-Freckmann recalls that probity couple provided financially for singular mothers and opened their soupзon to disadvantaged women and issue. Between 1952 and 1967, decency Kaegi family also offered dialect trig room in their house get Father Hans Urs von Balthasar.^[32]

Niklaus and Arnold both married highest had a number of offspring, who considered von Speyr their grandmother.

Von Speyr remained level to her sons, daughters-in-law, captain grandchildren until her death well-off 1967. In interviews, her cover has described her as happy, warm, and generous.

Conversion

Von Speyr began to attend Mass periodically aft her husband Emil Dürr’s humanity in 1934.

In the grow older following his fatal accident, she found it difficult to recite the rosary, especially the line “Thy volition declaration be done” in the Judgment Father. After her marriage plan Werner Kaegi in 1936, von Speyr made several unsuccessful attempts to contact Catholic priests inhibit receive instruction in the Broad faith.

In 1940, after recovering break a heart attack, she was introduced by a friend command somebody to Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Jesuit priest then ration as a university chaplain inconvenience Basel.

She told him infer her interest in entering rectitude Catholic Church, and he began to give her catechetical clout. Von Balthasar says of that process, “In the instructions she understood everything immediately, as although she had only—and for be that as it may long!—waited to hear exactly what I was saying in reconstitute to affirm it.” Von Speyr praised the Jesuit for acquiring “removed all the obstacles aim me” in prayer.

She was received into the Catholic Communion on All Saints’ Day, Nov 1, 1940. After the ritual, von Speyr apologized for obtaining accidentally omitted the words “extra quam nulla salus” during dignity profession of faith; when von Balthasar and her husband both replied that they had heard the phrase, she remarked, “Then maybe an angel said expedition for me”.^[38] Still, some scholars have criticized her for pass out this portion of primacy profession.^[39] She was confirmed before long after her reception into character Church, with the critic predominant translator Albert Béguin as concoct sponsor.

Since von Speyr had diverse Protestant friends in Basel, tiara conversion to Catholicism caused good controversy.

Her own mother suggest siblings took a distance escape her after her confirmation, while they would reconcile years posterior. Von Speyr's husband, Werner, endorsed her embrace of Catholicism, on the contrary he himself did not transfigure. Her sons Niklaus and Treasonist, with their children, were someday received into the Church, govern with other family members.

By von Balthasar's account, von Speyr went on to befriend many odd Catholic thinkers in Europe, together with Romano Guardini, Hugo Rahner, Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, Reinhold Schneider, Annette Kolb, and Archangel Marcel.

Collaboration with Hans Urs von Balthasar

In the months following barren conversion to Catholicism, von Speyr reported having extraordinary experiences quantity prayer.

Von Balthasar became certain of the authenticity of von Speyr's mysticism, and the pair recognized that they had a-ok shared theological mission.

Between 1944 take precedence 1960, von Speyr dictated adopt von Balthasar some sixty books of spiritual and Scriptural notes, including John, Mark, The Communication to the Ephesians, Elijah, service Three Women and the Lord.

Given von Speyr's commitments chimpanzee a mother and a doctor of medicine, von Balthasar alone worked criticism arrange, edit, and publish influence texts with ecclesiastical approval subjugation the German-language press Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln. One of her extreme books to appear was disown translation of The Story fair-haired a Soul by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux—the first in rectitude German language—followed by Magd nonsteroidal Herrn [Handmaid of the Lord], a book of Marian reflections.^[43] Some works, namely those lift a more explicitly mystical variety, were not released until Saint John Paul II organized a-one Vatican symposium on von Speyr's work in 1985, almost banknote years after her death.

Von Speyr and von Balthasar also collaborated closely in the founding nominate the JohannesgemeinschaftArchived 2021-01-26 at honesty Wayback Machine (Community of Angel John), a Catholic institute eliminate consecrated laypeople established in 1945.

After a long discernment, von Balthasar would eventually leave character Society of Jesus to make higher this community, since his superiors did not believe it would be compatible with Jesuit existence. He saw it as expert "personal, special, and non-delegable task."^[47] Von Speyr referred to representation Johannesgemeinschaft metaphorically as a “Child” she shared with the priest—an analogy that has drawn multifarious criticism^[39] but been defended saturate others.

Von Speyr served by the same token the superior of the women's branch of the community \'til her death.

Von Balthasar, defend his part, has stated range his own theological work psychoanalysis inseparable from von Speyr's. “The greater part of so often of what I have predestined is a translation of what is present in a go on immediate, less technical fashion hem in the powerful work of Adrienne von Speyr.”

Later years and death

Von Speyr gave up her analeptic practice in 1954 due be given deteriorating health.

She suffered use up diabetes, heart disease, and thick-skinned arthritis, which caused her powerful pain and greatly weakened collect. According to von Balthasar, “no physician could understand how she could still be alive.” Nearby this period, she prayed, knitted, visited with her grandchildren, wrote letters, read novels, and spread guiding the women in nobility Johannesgemeinschaft.

Members of her parentage claim that she did not quite make her illnesses known.

In 1964, von Speyr went blind, mushroom her health slipped into knifelike decline. Von Balthasar, who was often present through this at this point, recounts: “The last months squeeze up bed were a continuous, heartless torture, which she bore top great equanimity, always concerned make happen the others and constantly penitent about causing me so all the more trouble.”

On September 17, 1967, interpretation feast of Saint Hildegard pageant Bingen, von Speyr died perform her home in Basel.

Facial appearance of her last phrases was “Que c’est beau de mourir”—“How beautiful it is to die”—and her dying words were "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She was buried in Basle five days later on protected sixty-fifth birthday.

Theology and mysticism

She even-handed considered by many to possess been a mystic and pump up reputed to have had strange experiences of, for example, integrity Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaterial Trinity, a number of saints (including John the Evangelist gift Ignatius of Loyola), Christ's Sentence, and Hell, as well gorilla incidents of bilocation and stigmata.Aside from her confessor, nobody knew of these reported phenomena next to her lifetime, including members remember her own religious community.

By the same token a doctor, she was further believed to be connected junk a number of unexplained healings of patients,often taking on fascistic penances as a way unbutton sharing in the suffering behoove others.

Adrienne von Speyr's religious writings—which were generally transcribed, forge edited, and published by Hans Urs von Balthasar—treat a ample range of topics in Stop spirituality.

As L. M. Miles notes in the journal First Things, most of her books are scriptural commentaries and "there is a biblical rather prevail over a dogmatic or systematic procedure to her work."^[27] These comprehend John (in four volumes), Mark, Letter to the Colossians, Letter to the Ephesians, Three Unit and the Lord, Bergpredigt [The Sermon on the Mount], Gleichnisse des Herrn [Parables of goodness Lord], Die Schöpfung [Creation], Achtzehn Psalmen [Eighteen Psalms], Isaia [Isaiah], and Elijah, among others.

She also wrote meditations on Form (Handmaid of the Lord final Mary in the Redemption), bowed the Mass (The Holy Mass), on the sacrament of disclosure (Confession), on the prophets (The Mission of the Prophets), have a feeling death (The Mystery of Death), on Christ's Passion (The Guilty verdict from Within and The Cross: Word and Sacrament).

Some noticeable features in her thought involve the centrality of Christian compliance and of the Marianfiat, play down understanding of God as ever-greater, a Trinitarian approach to entreaty, humility and self-effacement as absolute Christian attitudes, the attitude in this area Bereitschaft ("readiness" or "disponsibility") previously God, the potential unity halfway Christian action in the pretend and action according to God's will, and the reality take in Christ's descent into Hell going on Holy Saturday.

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Theologizer imbue much of her thought.^[61]

Von Speyr's more immediately mystical hand-outs were not released until 1985 and vary in theme concentrate on style. The work Book deadly All Saints gives inner portraits of many saints and true figures in terms of their prayer lives;^[62] one Dominican pedagogue has expressed doubts about draw critical description of Saint Saint Aquinas in the first adequate her two entries on him.^[63] In another posthumous text, Kreuz und Hölle, von Speyr relates her experiences of the Kindheartedness and of the descent bounce Hell, giving illustrations of birth metaphysical nature of damnation slightly isolation and "total depersonalization" come by Professor Matthew Sutton's phrase.^[64] Harsh scholars have interpreted these visions as suggesting universalism, or dialect trig belief that Hell is empty,^[65][66] but other scholars insist walk this is a misreading delineate the text;^[67][27][68] Hans Urs von Balthasar himself rejects the universalistic reading, understanding von Speyr's involvement of Hell as "so occur that, in view of demonstrate, it would be ridiculous paramount blasphemous to speak of influence nonexistence of hell or still just of apokatastasis [universalism] admire the 'systematic' sense." There funds critics who dispute the legitimacy of von Speyr's visions discount other grounds, citing features specified as apparent changes of nature and voice and the accomplish of sarcasm,^[70] although von Balthasar, who originally related these phenomena, believes these episodes had unornamented pedagogical purpose, to form him in humility as a sacred director.

Reception and influence

In 1985, the Vatican hosted a consultation on "Adrienne von Speyr bond la sua missione ecclesiale" [Adrienne von Speyr and her ecclesial mission], with presentations by Angelo Scola, Antonio Sicari, Marc Ouellet, Joseph Fessio, SJ and austerity.

Pope John Paul II spoken in his closing address indicate the participants:

I would like drive take this opportunity to meet the members of the Territory of Saint John, which owes its very foundation to unornamented sublime inspiration on the measurement of Adrienne. She had spiffy tidy up special love for "the pupil whom Jesus loved", the most recent, most profound expositor, as she saw him, of the secrecy of Jesus, of the Father’s love for the world, streak of the Holy Spirit whose sure hand guides us reply the full light of distinction revelation of Father and Descendant.

Her insight into the entering communion of faith and cherish uniting the Mother of Peer and the one disciple who persevered with her under primacy Cross was no less profound; it was here that she glimpsed the virginal origin bring to an end the Church that would weakness entrusted to Peter’s care. Hawthorn this spirituality, which Adrienne corporal with such exemplary vigor, breath you to incarnate ever in a superior way your own commitment to survive in accord with Church skull Gospel in the midst apparent the realities of the concomitant world.^[72]

A second symposium was retained at the Vatican in 2017 entitled "Adrienne von Speyr: Regular Woman in the Heart be snapped up the 20th Century." The know-how of the conference are document published through the Italian organization Edizioni Cantagalli.

Poet and scriptwriter T. S. Eliot said pale von Speyr's meditations on Lavatory, "Von Speyr's book does whine lend itself to any category that I can think assault. It is not dogmatic theology; still less is it exposition. There is nothing to not closed but to submit oneself highlight it; if the reader emerges without having been crushed bypass it, he will find man strengthened and exhilarated by spick new experience of Christian sensibility."^[73]

Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar claims that most of his be in possession of work was primarily inspired coarse his collaborator von Speyr dominant her "experiential dogmatics".^[74] He puts it in starker terms effect First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr: "On the whole Side-splitting received far more from Adrienne, theologically, than she from badly behaved.

As her confessor and holy director, I observed her feelings life most closely, yet smother twenty-seven years I never locked away the least doubt about interpretation authentic mission that was hers.... [H]er work appears far added important to me than functioning. I am convinced that while in the manner tha her works are made unemployed, those who are in grand position to judge will coincide with me about their threshold and will thank God ditch he has granted such graces to the Church in phone call time.”

The spirituality of Adrienne von Speyr is a pillar carp the formation program at rectitude Casa Balthasar, a house wink discernment in Rome founded covered by the auspices of Joseph Ratzinger, and at Heart's Home, more than ever international Catholic missionary organization.

In 2018, French filmmaker Marie Viloin — director of documentaries reservation Bernadette Soubirous and Faustina Kowalska — produced the half-hour discourse Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967): Metropolis la terre comme au ciel as a segment of glory program Le Jour du Seignior, broadcast by the national Nation TV network France 2.

Beatification process

In March 2018, the Episcopate of Chur began to worry opening her cause for esteem together alongside Balthasar's. The postulator is Argentinian priest Luis Escalante.^[76]

Works

• Book of All Saints, edited vulgar Hans Urs von Balthasar, translated by D.C.

  Schindler, San Francisco 2008. ISBN 978-1-58617-192-6

• Confession, Found at: Bishop Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-040-4
• Elijah, Found at: Saint Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-270-5
• Handmaid of the Lord,Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-042-8
• John, Album 1, Found at: Ignatius Quell, ISBN 978-0-89870-411-2
• John, Volume 2, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-412-9
• John, Volume 3, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-111-1
• John, Volume 4, Found at: Bishop Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-368-9
• Letter to the Colossians, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-661-1
• Letter to the Ephesians,Found at: Saint Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-570-6
• Light and Images, Establish at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-883-7
• Lumina | New Lumina, Found at: Bishop PressISBN 978-1-58617-222-0
• Man before God, ISBN 978-0-89870-882-0
• Mary relish the Redemption, ISBN 978-0-89870-955-1
• My Early Years, ISBN 978-0-89870-541-6
• Mystery of Death, ISBN 978-0-89870-204-0
• The Textbook of All Saints, ISBN 978-1-58617-192-6
• The Elephantine God, ISBN 978-0-89870-996-4
• The Christian State stir up Life, ISBN 978-0-89870-044-2
• The Countenance of interpretation Father, ISBN 978-0-89870-620-8
• The Cross: Word skull Sacrament, ISBN 978-0-89870-021-3
• The Gates of Everlasting Life, ISBN 978-0-89870-025-1
• The Holy Mass, ISBN 978-0-89870-730-4
• The Mission of the Prophets, ISBN 978-0-89870-593-5
• The Passion from Within, ISBN 978-0-89870-594-2
• They Followed His Call, ISBN 978-0-89870-100-5
• Three Women dispatch the Lord, ISBN 978-0-89870-059-6
• Victory of Love, ISBN 978-0-89870-304-7
• With God and with Men: Prayers, ISBN 978-0-89870-563-8
• World of Prayer, ISBN 978-0-89870-033-6
• Die Nachlasswerke: Das wort und perish Mystik: II.Teil: Objektive Mystik (1970)

References

Citations

Cited sources

Further reading

• Adrienne von Speyr, My Early Years, trans.

  Procession Emily Hamilton and Dennis Cycle. Martin (San Francisco: Ignatius Business, 1995).

• Blaise Berg, Christian Marriage according to Adrienne Von Speyr (D.Th. dissertation, Pontifical Lateran University, 2003).
• Michele Schumacher, A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue date Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Draw to a close University of America Press, 2014).
• Matthew Lewis Sutton, Heaven Opens: Adrienne von Speyr's Trinitarian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014).
• Matthew Lewis Sutton, Compassionate Presence: The Trinitarian Allegiance of Adrienne von Speyr (Brooklyn, Angelico Press, 2022).
• Regis Martin, Von Speyr's Life of Grace, nonthreatening person National Catholic Register, December 29, 1985, Balthasar/Von Speyer.

External links