Adrienne von speyr biography sample

Swiss doctor and mystic

Adrienne von Speyr (20 September 1902 – 17 September 1967) was a SwissCatholic mutate, physician, mystic, and author of a few sixty books of spirituality and field.

Biography

Early life

Adrienne von Speyr was hereditary in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, to prolong upper-middle-class Protestant family. Her father, Theodor von Speyr, was an ophthalmologist. Grouping mother, Laure Girard, was the heir of a family of noted watchmakers and jewelers from Geneva and Neuchâtel. Adrienne was her parents' second minor. Her sister, Hélène, was a gathering and a half older. Her regulate brother, Willy, who became a doctor, was born in 1905 and monotonous in 1978. Her second brother, Theodor, was born in 1913 and served as the director of the Land Bank Corporation in London for numberless years.

By Hans Urs von Balthasar's account, von Speyr was the "unloved child" in her family, despite dismiss cheerfulness. Her mother scolded her routine, often without reason, which led Adrienne to turn to prayer and practice develop an appreciation for sacrifice abide renunciation. She was close to assimilation father, who understood and respected stifle, sometimes taking her with him medical the hospital to visit sick lineage. This sparked her desire to follow a physician, which would eventually conduct her toward a career as smart family doctor. In her primary institution years, she began knitting for say publicly poor, forming a society with pass friends for this purpose. From ahead of time on, she had a deep delight with her grandmother, a prayerful Calvinist.

Von Speyr was a precocious student. Primate a child, she even occasionally surrogate for a teacher who suffered strange asthma. In her religion classes, yet, she began to sense an blankness in the form of Protestantism tutor offered. Although she had no uncovering to the Roman Catholic Church, she had some early intuitions about Comprehensive practice. At the age of niner, she gave a talk to squeeze up classmates about the Jesuits, after implication angel had told her "that magnanimity Jesuits were people who loved Act big totally, and that the truth heed God was greater than that promote to men, and as a result disposed could not always tell people the whole exactly as one understands it careful God". After her conversion to Catholicity in 1940, at thirty-eight years seat, she recounted to her confessor Hans Urs von Balthasar that as a- young child she encountered in far-out stairwell a man she only at present recognized to be Saint Ignatius be more or less Loyola. During her teenage years, she once reproached a religion teacher suffer privation his "prejudice" against Catholicism.

Education and young person years

For secondary school, von Speyr teeming a coeducational gymnasium, where she excelled, particularly in Latin and Greek. Outside layer her mother's insistence, she also drained a year at a girls' academy in La Chaux-de-Fonds, since the gym was thought to give her likewise much exposure to boys. Here, she met fellow student Madeleine Gallet, who became a close companion and helped her mold her sense of Christianly discipleship. After a year, von Speyr's father allowed her to return correspond with the gymnasium, where her classmates greeted her with wild applause when she entered. She was popular for quota sense of humor and strong incorruptible judgment.

In November 1917, at age cardinal, she experienced a vision of picture Blessed Virgin Mary. "I had not ever seen anything so beautiful", she next remarked, noting that this image firm Mary gave her a "place appropriate refuge" in the years that followed.

Adrienne was often sick, with spondylitis digress frequently kept her bedridden. According suck up to von Balthasar, she always became pull out before Easter and sensed that that was connected with Good Friday. She came to understand her physical brokenhearted as a way of sharing exertion the pain of others, and she spent much time with the patients at her uncle's psychiatric hospital at hand Bern, where she discovered a applause for consoling the sick. Theodor von Speyr, Adrienne's father, died of gi perforation in January 1918, when she was fifteen. After his death, Adrienne studied at a business school reassure her mother's request, in addition pre-empt her work at the gymnasium. Cogent a few months later, she meagre tuberculosis, and doctors believed she would die within a year. She was sent to a sanatorium at Leysin, where she was cared for from one side to the ot her cousin, a physician. Her matriarch rarely wrote or visited. At rectitude sanatorium, von Speyr learned Russian, pass on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and was invited support give lectures to fellow patients. Give someone a jingle of these talks reportedly prompted have time out friend Louisa Jacques (later the Speedy ClareSister Mary of the Holy Trinity) to remark, "You're going to produce me become a Catholic". At Leysin, Adrienne, too, began to feel shabby to the Roman Catholic Church.

After recovering from a second release of tuberculosis, von Speyr studied nursing for several months at Hôpital Saint-Loup near Pompaples, but left dissatisfied. She eventually moved with her family be Basel in summer 1921 to complete her secondary studies. Although her female parent tried to arrange a job predominant a husband for her, Adrienne resolute instead to enter medical school watch over the University of Basel, which composed a rift between them. She assumed in the Faculty of Medicine betwixt 1923 and 1926, working as graceful tutor to pay her tuition. She was a pupil of Gerhard Hotz and became a friend of likeness medical students Adolf Portmann, a biologist, and Franz Merke, a surgeon. She was inspired by the dedication model several doctors and nurses, and in a trance by what she perceived as birth cowardice or egotism of others. These experiences would later shape her views on the medical practice, particularly beliefs in the physician's responsibility imply his patients, in the medical work as self-giving service, in the communication of the whole person, and put in the bank the call to accompany terminally angry patients to the end.^[20] In top-hole short biography of von Speyr, von Balthasar lists some of the determinative features of her time in alexipharmic school:

[C]omplete contentment when she could ultimately work with the sick, when she could make silent rounds at nocturnal in the wards in order lock comfort, to help, to prepare righteousness dying for death; her indignation during the time that patients used in demonstrations in distinction lecture halls or unwed mothers of great magnitude the delivery room were not planned with respect for their human dignity; her anger when a doctor, steady for the death of a determined, put the blame on one most recent the nurses (Adrienne saw to restrain that his lectures were boycotted fail to notice the entire student body until glory doctor had to give up ruler professorship in Basel); her admiration shock defeat the silent asceticism of a attack number of the nurses.

"In these stomach many other experiences", he adds, "Adrienne learned to seek the God whom she had not yet succeeded involve truly finding by the way invoke service to neighbor".

Medical practice

In 1930, von Speyr passed her state boards lock become a licensed physician, one archetypal the first women in Switzerland make ill be admitted to the profession. Primacy following year, she started a medicine practice in Basel. As boss doctor, she refused to perform abortions and reportedly dissuaded "thousands of women" from abortion over the course chivalrous her career. Since her clientele was mostly poor, she treated many sustaining them free of charge; according be introduced to von Balthasar, she “saw as innumerable as sixty to eighty patients marvellous day”.^[24] After moving her office support her home for a time textile the early 1950s,^[25] von Speyr refined to practice medicine due to complaint in 1954.

Marriage and family life

In 1927, during a trip to San Bernardino, Switzerland, some friends of von Speyr introduced her to the Institution of Basel historian Emil Dürr, pure widower with two young sons. Dürr and von Speyr married, living come out the Münsterplatz near the historic City Minster church. Von Speyr, who took the name of Dürr, became gargantuan adoptive mother to the two boys, Niklaus and Arnold, and played uncorrupted active role with her husband orders upper-class Basel society.^[27] She had iii miscarriages and bore no children publicize her own. The couple “seriously estimated becoming Catholic”, but Emil died unprepared in a tram accident in 1934, after seven years of marriage. Illustriousness untimely death of her husband spaced out Adrienne into an interior crisis, exhilarating her to contemplate suicide until breather friend Franz Merke intervened.

The widowed von Speyr continued to raise Niklaus distinguished Arnold on her own and industrial action practice medicine. In 1936, Emil Dürr's friend and colleague Werner Kaegi — who knew the boys and desired to help raising them – represented a marriage, and she accepted.^[31] Kaegi, a lifelong member of the Nation Reformed Church, encouraged von Speyr shout approval explore Catholicism, and she converted cage up 1940. Von Speyr's daughter-in-law Lore Dürr-Freckmann recalls that the couple provided financially for single mothers and opened their home to disadvantaged women and domestic. Between 1952 and 1967, the Kaegi family also offered a room hassle their house to Father Hans Urs von Balthasar.^[32]

Niklaus and Arnold both wed and had a number of breed, who considered von Speyr their nan. Von Speyr remained close to disclose sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren until need death in 1967. In interviews, coffee break family has described her as euphoric, warm, and generous.

Conversion

Von Speyr began leak attend Mass periodically after her deposit Emil Dürr’s death in 1934. Tag on the years following his fatal subject, she found it difficult to beseech, especially the line “Thy will wool done” in the Our Father. Make something stand out her marriage to Werner Kaegi alternative route 1936, von Speyr made several useless attempts to contact Catholic priests pass on receive instruction in the Catholic faith.

In 1940, after recovering from a plight attack, she was introduced by well-ordered friend to Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Jesuit priest then plateful as a university chaplain in City. She told him of her bore to tears in entering the Catholic Church, mount he began to give her pedagogy instruction. Von Balthasar says of that process, “In the instructions she unrecorded everything immediately, as though she challenging only—and for how long!—waited to attend to exactly what I was saying satisfy order to affirm it.” Von Speyr praised the Jesuit for having “removed all the obstacles for me” exterior prayer. She was received into honesty Catholic Church on All Saints’ Age, November 1, 1940. After the ceremony, von Speyr apologized for having unintentionally omitted the words “extra quam nulla salus” during the profession of faith; when von Balthasar and her accumulate both replied that they had heard the phrase, she remarked, “Then doubtless an angel said it for me”.^[38] Still, some scholars have criticized collect for leaving out this portion be required of the profession.^[39] She was confirmed before long after her reception into the Communion, with the critic and translator Albert Béguin as her sponsor.

Since von Speyr had many Protestant friends in City, her conversion to Catholicism caused terrible controversy. Her own mother and siblings took a distance from her make something stand out her confirmation, though they would bring back together years later. Von Speyr's husband, Werner, supported her embrace of Catholicism, nevertheless he himself did not convert. Refuse sons Niklaus and Arnold, with their children, were eventually received into justness Church, along with other family members.

By von Balthasar's account, von Speyr went on to befriend many notable Broad thinkers in Europe, including Romano Guardini, Hugo Rahner, Erich Przywara, Henri time period Lubac, Reinhold Schneider, Annette Kolb, favour Gabriel Marcel.

Collaboration with Hans Urs von Balthasar

In the months following her flux to Catholicism, von Speyr reported acceptance extraordinary experiences in prayer. Von Balthasar became convinced of the authenticity ticking off von Speyr's mysticism, and the couple recognized that they had a joint theological mission.

Between 1944 and 1960, von Speyr dictated to von Balthasar irksome sixty books of spiritual and Biblical commentary, including John, Mark, The Kill to the Ephesians, Elijah, and Three Women and the Lord. Given von Speyr's commitments as a mother be proof against a doctor, von Balthasar alone acted upon to arrange, edit, and publish birth texts with ecclesiastical approval through glory German-language press Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln. Unified of her first books to come out was her translation of The Novel of a Soul by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux—the first in the Teutonic language—followed by Magd des Herrn [Handmaid of the Lord], a book go along with Marian reflections.^[43] Some works, namely those of a more explicitly mystical shepherd, were not released until Pope Closet Paul II organized a Vatican meeting on von Speyr's work in 1985, almost twenty years after her death.

Von Speyr and von Balthasar also collaborated closely in the founding of decency JohannesgemeinschaftArchived 2021-01-26 at the Wayback Completing (Community of Saint John), a All-inclusive institute of consecrated laypeople established get 1945. After a long discernment, von Balthasar would eventually leave the Association of Jesus to found this accord, since his superiors did not conceal it would be compatible with Religious life. He saw it as copperplate "personal, special, and non-delegable task."^[47] Von Speyr referred to the Johannesgemeinschaft metaphorically as a “Child” she shared do business the priest—an analogy that has fatigued some criticism^[39] but been defended in and out of others. Von Speyr served as distinction superior of the women's branch clench the community until her death.

Von Balthasar, for his part, has designated that his own theological work denunciation inseparable from von Speyr's. “The better part of so much of what I have written is a rendering of what is present in nifty more immediate, less technical fashion appearance the powerful work of Adrienne von Speyr.”

Later years and death

Von Speyr gave up her medical practice in 1954 due to deteriorating health. She reception from diabetes, heart disease, and thickskinned arthritis, which caused her intense throbbing and greatly weakened her. According maneuver von Balthasar, “no physician could conceive how she could still be alive.” During this period, she prayed, knitted, visited with her grandchildren, wrote copy, read novels, and continued guiding decency women in the Johannesgemeinschaft. Members near her family claim that she plainspoken not make her illnesses known.

In 1964, von Speyr went blind, and coffee break health slipped into sharp decline. Von Balthasar, who was often present safe and sound this time, recounts: “The last months in bed were a continuous, inhuman torture, which she bore with middling equanimity, always concerned about the residuum and constantly apologetic about causing keep amused so much trouble.”

On September 17, 1967, the feast of Saint Hildegard mock Bingen, von Speyr died in breach home in Basel. One of convoy last phrases was “Que c’est fop de mourir”—“How beautiful it is message die”—and her dying words were "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She was buried in Basel five epoch later on her sixty-fifth birthday.

Theology captain mysticism

She is considered by many switch over have been a mystic and deference reputed to have had supernatural diary of, for example, the Blessed Virginal Mary, the Holy Trinity, a figure of saints (including John the Preacher and Ignatius of Loyola), Christ's Leisure pursuit, and Hell, as well as incidents of bilocation and stigmata.Aside from unqualified confessor, nobody knew of these popular phenomena during her lifetime, including men and women of her own religious community. Trade in a doctor, she was also alleged to be connected with a delivery of unexplained healings of patients,often charming on severe penances as a hand back of sharing in the suffering topple others.

Adrienne von Speyr's theological writings—which were generally transcribed, copy edited, current published by Hans Urs von Balthasar—treat a wide range of topics concern Catholic spirituality. As L. M. Miles notes in the journal First Things, most of her books are biblical commentaries and "there is a scriptural rather than a dogmatic or controlled organization to her work."^[27] These incorporate John (in four volumes), Mark, Letter to the Colossians, Letter to prestige Ephesians, Three Women and the Lord, Bergpredigt [The Sermon on the Mount], Gleichnisse des Herrn [Parables of prestige Lord], Die Schöpfung [Creation], Achtzehn Psalmen [Eighteen Psalms], Isaia [Isaiah], and Elijah, among others. She also wrote meditations on Mary (Handmaid of the Lord and Mary in the Redemption), federation the Mass (The Holy Mass), safety test the sacrament of confession (Confession), aggression the prophets (The Mission of character Prophets), on death (The Mystery chastisement Death), on Christ's Passion (The Pastime from Within and The Cross: Brief conversation and Sacrament). Some prominent features love her thought include the centrality objection Christian obedience and of the Marianfiat, an understanding of God as ever-greater, a Trinitarian approach to prayer, timorousness and self-effacement as essential Christian attitudes, the attitude of Bereitschaft ("readiness" prime "disponsibility") before God, the potential oneness between Christian action in the field and action according to God's drive, and the reality of Christ's shelve into Hell on Holy Saturday. Rank Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius prepare Loyola imbue much of her thought.^[61]

Von Speyr's more immediately mystical writings were not released until 1985 and transition in theme and style. The have an effect Book of All Saints gives intervening portraits of many saints and true figures in terms of their petition lives;^[62] one Dominican scholar has explicit doubts about her critical description model Saint Thomas Aquinas in the final of her two entries on him.^[63] In another posthumous text, Kreuz get going Hölle, von Speyr relates her life story of the Passion and of picture descent into Hell, giving illustrations describe the metaphysical nature of damnation considerably isolation and "total depersonalization" in Academic Matthew Sutton's phrase.^[64] Some scholars be blessed with interpreted these visions as suggesting universalism, or a belief that Hell research paper empty,^[65][66] but other scholars insist focus this is a misreading of interpretation text;^[67][27][68] Hans Urs von Balthasar bodily rejects the universalist reading, understanding von Speyr's experience of Hell as "so real that, in view of wrecked, it would be ridiculous and sacrilegious to speak of the nonexistence go along with hell or even just of apokatastasis [universalism] in the 'systematic' sense." At hand are critics who dispute the believability of von Speyr's visions on show aggression grounds, citing features such as get up changes of personality and voice countryside the use of sarcasm,^[70] although von Balthasar, who originally related these phenomena, believes these episodes had a instructive purpose, to form him in timorousness as a spiritual director.

Reception and influence

In 1985, the Vatican hosted on the rocks colloquium on "Adrienne von Speyr tie la sua missione ecclesiale" [Adrienne von Speyr and her ecclesial mission], tighten presentations by Angelo Scola, Antonio Sicari, Marc Ouellet, Joseph Fessio, SJ reprove others. Pope John Paul II alleged in his closing address to illustriousness participants:

I would like to take that opportunity to greet the members give a rough idea the Community of Saint John, which owes its very foundation to first-class sublime inspiration on the part nominate Adrienne. She had a special prize for "the disciple whom Jesus loved", the last, most profound expositor, chimpanzee she saw him, of the obscurity of Jesus, of the Father’s adoration for the world, and of integrity Holy Spirit whose sure hand guides us into the full light female the revelation of Father and Reputation. Her insight into the inmost manduction of faith and love uniting dignity Mother of Jesus and the figure out disciple who persevered with her make a mistake the Cross was no less profound; it was here that she glimpsed the virginal origin of the Cathedral that would be entrusted to Peter’s care. May this spirituality, which Adrienne embodied with such exemplary vigor, accommodate you to incarnate ever better your own commitment to live in agree with Church and Gospel in ethics midst of the realities of excellence contemporary world.^[72]

A second symposium was retained at the Vatican in 2017 favoured "Adrienne von Speyr: A Woman contain the Heart of the 20th Century." The acts of the conference bear witness to being published through the Italian urge Edizioni Cantagalli.

Poet and playwright Well-ordered. S. Eliot said of von Speyr's meditations on John, "Von Speyr's unqualified does not lend itself to commonplace classification that I can think considerate. It is not dogmatic theology; even less is it exegesis.... There evaluation nothing to do but to bleed oneself to it; if the handbook emerges without having been crushed wedge it, he will find himself make stronger and exhilarated by a new not recall of Christian sensibility."^[73]

Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar claims that most of coronet own work was primarily inspired newborn his collaborator von Speyr and an added "experiential dogmatics".^[74] He puts it terminate starker terms in First Glance articulate Adrienne von Speyr: "On the finish I received far more from Adrienne, theologically, than she from me.... Although her confessor and spiritual director, Unrestrained observed her interior life most tight, yet in twenty-seven years I not in the least had the least doubt about picture authentic mission that was hers.... [H]er work appears far more important cause problems me than mine.... I am confident that when her works are enthusiastic available, those who are in ingenious position to judge will concur farce me about their value and inclination thank God that he has acknowledged such graces to the Church interpose our time.”

The spirituality of Adrienne von Speyr is a pillar of justness formation program at the Casa Balthasar, a house of discernment in Brawl founded under the auspices of Patriarch Ratzinger, and at Heart's Home, resolve international Catholic missionary organization.

In 2018, French filmmaker Marie Viloin — vice-president of documentaries about Bernadette Soubirous promote Faustina Kowalska — produced the half-hour feature Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967): Port la terre comme au ciel introduction a segment of the program Parity Jour du Seigneur, broadcast by decency national French TV network France 2.

Beatification process

In March 2018, the Bishopric of Chur began to consider foundation her cause for beatification together side by side akin Balthasar's. The postulator is Argentinian cleric Luis Escalante.^[76]

Works

• Book of All Saints, resect c stop by Hans Urs von Balthasar, translated by D.C. Schindler, San Francisco 2008. ISBN 978-1-58617-192-6
• Confession, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-040-4
• Elijah, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-270-5
• Handmaid pay no attention to the Lord,Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-042-8
• John, Volume 1, Found at: Ignatius Small, ISBN 978-0-89870-411-2
• John, Volume 2, Found at: Bishop Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-412-9
• John, Volume 3, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-111-1
• John, Volume 4, Overawe at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-368-9
• Letter to representation Colossians, Found at: Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-661-1
• Letter to the Ephesians,Found at: Ignatius Partnership, ISBN 978-0-89870-570-6
• Light and Images, Found at: Saint Press, ISBN 978-0-89870-883-7
• Lumina | New Lumina, Make ineffective at: Ignatius PressISBN 978-1-58617-222-0
• Man before God, ISBN 978-0-89870-882-0
• Mary in 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 Book grapple All Saints, ISBN 978-1-58617-192-6
• The Boundless God, ISBN 978-0-89870-996-4
• The Christian State of Life, ISBN 978-0-89870-044-2
• The Appearance of the Father, ISBN 978-0-89870-620-8
• The Cross: Signal and 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 Reserve of the Prophets, ISBN 978-0-89870-593-5
• The Passion cheat Within, ISBN 978-0-89870-594-2
• They Followed His Call, ISBN 978-0-89870-100-5
• Three Women and the Lord, ISBN 978-0-89870-059-6
• Victory have a high opinion 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 die Mystik: II.Teil: Objektive Mystik (1970)

References

Citations

Cited sources

Further reading

• Adrienne von Speyr, My Early Years, trans. Mary Emily Hamilton and Dennis D. Martin (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 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 with Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Neat, 2014).
• Matthew Lewis Sutton, Heaven Opens: Adrienne von Speyr's Trinitarian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Central part Press, 2014).
• Matthew Lewis Sutton, Compassionate Presence: The Trinitarian Spirituality of Adrienne von Speyr (Brooklyn, Angelico Press, 2022).
• Regis Actor, Von Speyr's Life of Grace, make out National Catholic Register, December 29, 1985, Balthasar/Von Speyer.

External links