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1 Encountering Adrienne Von Speyr As Adrienne von Speyr was driving home from her medical practice in Basel, Switzerland, one day in 1942, she suddenly saw a bright light in front of her car.1 Someone shouted from the sidewalk, “Is something burning in that car?” At that moment in the car, she heard a voice say to her, “Tu vivras au ciel et sur la terre [You will live in heaven and on earth].”2 For the rest of her life, von Speyr had a flood of mystical experiences from the open heaven. The heavenly world of the Trinity rushed into her earthly life. At the same time, she devoted herself to living in the professional world as a doctor and in the intimacy of her family life as a wife and mother. These words from heaven spoken to her summarize in a sentence her life and mission. As both a doctor and mystic, she truly lived in heaven and on earth. The twentieth-century pontiff John Paul II (1920–2005) saw in von Speyr this double life of being in heaven and on earth. Speaking at the scholarly conference in honor of her, John Paul II said that von Speyr was someone who rooted her social-professional vocation in her life in God.3 He thought she was an example of the teaching that “the only thing that God urgently wants from you is to go out of yourself and to let God be God in you.”4 John 1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Our Task: A Report and a Plan, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 183–84. 2. Ibid., 183. 3. John Paul II, “Ansprache des Heiligen Vaters,” in Adrienne von Speyr und Ihre Kirchliche Sendung: Akten des Römischen Symposiums 27.–29. September 1985, ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Georges Chantraine, and Angelo Scola (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1986), 181–82. After her death, John Paul II made a request to Hans Urs von Balthasar that there needed to be a scholarly conference in honor of von Speyr. Von Balthasar carried this out, and the Holy Father addressed the conference, which was attended by several hundred people. On this, see von Balthasar’s presentation at the conference, “Einleitung,” in Kirchliche Sendung, 12–16. See also Georges Chantraine, “Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia: Jubilee Volume, The Wojtyła Years, ed. Peter Gareffa (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 256–57. 1 Paul II reflected, “One could think that the mystic separates himself from the created world and thereby forsakes his brother.”5 On the contrary, John Paul II continued, “the mystic is completely near him, namely there, in God, where he can truly reach him.”6 By being immersed in heaven, the Christian can be more available to others on earth. The twentieth-century poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was fascinated by one of von Speyr’s written works. He said of her commentary on the prologue to the Gospel of John, “Adrienne von Speyr’s book does not lend itself to any classification that I can think of.”7 It is not a book of dogmatic theology or scholarly exegesis; it is not a book of skeptical theology or strict meditation. It is beyond classification, and thus, when one reads von Speyr, “there is nothing to do but to submit oneself to it; if the reader emerges without having been crushed by it, he will find himself strengthened and exhilarated by a new experience of Christian sensibility.”8 We can only assume that Eliot had this strengthening, exhilarating experience of reading her mysticism. Another twentieth-century figure who was deeply influenced by von Speyr is the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988). Of his twentyseven years of close collaboration with von Speyr as her confessor and spiritual director, he said, “On the whole I received far more from her, theologically, than she from me.”9 While it would be impossible to assess the exact proportions of how much von Balthasar and von Speyr influenced each other, he was convinced that those in a position to judge will agree with him about the value of her works and “thank God with me that he has granted such graces to the Church in our time.”10 However, during von Speyr’s life, there was general indifference to her work. Only now, thanks to the work of von Balthasar and many others, readers of Christian spirituality are learning more about this...

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