journal

community of st. john

2012-05-15T19:26:18Z

Hello, members of the Community of St. John. I'm writing this post in the hopes of reaching you. I often receive requests for information about the Johannesgemeinschaft (Community of St. John). I even receive requests about joining the community. I greatly admire the community founded by Balthasar and Speyr. The spirituality of it, which we find in Balthasar's important book Our Task, is deeply attractive.

Here's my request. Could someone from the Community of St. John please reach out to me so that I have a better way of directing inquires from this website about the Community of St. John?

I would be glad to point my readers who are interested in the community to you. Please reach out to me. Thank you.

For those interested in the Community of St. John, here's what I know about them so far:

The formal rule and spirituality of the community can be found in the book Our Task written by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

The community follows von Speyr's deep desire for the community to not be yet another "institution" within the institution of the Church. Von Speyr did not want this secular institute to be another obvious alternative structure within the already multifacted structure of the Church. The community desires to serve the church and world in a hidden, non-self-referential way. This desire is a beautiful call, but it can make it difficult to learn about or even join the community.

As far as I can tell the central hub of the community is located in Basel, Switzerland attached to the Archive of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr, which is run by members of the Community of St. John. Not too long ago, I had a blessed visit with members of the community at this archive. Right now, the best way to come into contact with the Community of St. John online would be through the "Contact" link on the Archive's website here.

If you are interested in experiencing the spirituality of Balthasar and Speyr, the Casa Balthasar is a beautiful community of vocational discernment in Rome. Their community life is gracious and profound. You can contact them here. I know that Rev. Jacques Servais, SJ, who leads the Casa, would be glad to speak with you.

Many religious communities have been touched by the spirituality of Balthasar and Speyr. One of them mentioned a few times on this website is called Points-Coeur, but there are others.

By the way, the Community of St. John (Johannesgemeinshaft), which was founded by Balthasar and Speyr, is different than the larger Dominican contemplative Community of St. John founded by Fr. Marie-Domonique Phillipe in 1975.

As always, I will continue to gather more information about the Community of St. John and present it here. Many people have been so impacted by Speyr's spirituality that they desire to commit to it in some formal, objective way. May God guide this desire in you. May we all be freely obedient to what God wants of us. Through the intercession of St. John, may we respond to love in love for love.

iconographer of adrienne von speyr

2012-05-02T03:22:20Z

The Catholic Iconographer, Fr. William McNichols, S.J., sent me the most beautiful hand-painted icon of Adrienne von Speyr. I hope you will visit his website www.fatherbill.org and consider purchasing one his glorious icons.

Here’s what I have learned about Adrienne von Speyr by praying with this icon.

* wisdom and light obtain a special maturity of radiance in Adrienne’s later years
* true joy comes from surrendering all out of compassion
* prayer includes others even when praying in solitude
* do not let go of the mission - there you will find your identity

More will come. This window into heaven has much to teach me. I hope you’ll visit the beautiful icons written by Fr. McNichols at www.fatherbill.org.

Thank you, Iconographer of Adrienne, for this generous gift. May God bless you and your work.

our faith is not our own

2012-04-26T17:53:47Z

Adrienne von Speyr has a quite profound understanding of faith that overcomes the usually traps. For Adrienne, our faith is not our own, but is God’s own vision of himself shared with humanity.

“The gift the triune God gives to man in the grace of faith may indeed have a similarity to the reciprocal vision of the three Persons in God and to the incarnate Son’s vision of the Father, but it is the sort of seeing that befalls man in his pilgrim state; it is a relationship that God establishes on his own terms and gives to man, and at the same time allows the believer to give in return.” Adrienne von Speyr, Light and Images, pg. 39

Faith is our entrance into the triune vision of God as God sees his triune self. In this participatory realm of vision, room is created for response. We could call this response assent or even works, but all faith is within the sovereignty of God’s grace. So the assent or work is already within the realm of saving faith, which is already within the realm of God’s own vision of himself.

To see as God sees himself … this is faith and this faith is not our own.

e-adrienne - digital editions of adrienne's works

2012-02-01T16:26:03Z

As you may not have realized, the digitial revolution has officially begun. The clear sign—Adrienne von Speyr’s books are now available on the Kindle. The texts available are Book of All Saints, Confession, The Boundless God, To the Heart of the Mystery of the Redemption, and The Christian State of Life. You can also find these e-books at Ignatius Press too. You will also find that Ignatius offers an audio book of Three Women and the Lord

NB: I receive no sponsorship from Amazon, Ignatius Press, or any other publisher of Adrienne von Speyr’s books. I intend to keep it that way. Mind you, no publisher has asked. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Happy e-reading your e-adrienne.

i submitted my book manuscript today

2011-12-27T21:20:12Z

I submitted my book manuscript today. It is a comprehensive interpretation of Adrienne von Speyr’s vision of the Trinity. I focused instensely on the one critical thing in Adrienne’s thought. This one critical thing, her trinitarian mysticism, must be at the center of receiving what is true, good, and beautiful about her writings.

I will let you know the progress of the book manuscript as it advances through the publishing stages. You will know first when the book is available. Like you, I hope it will be published soon, but so many factors and the hard work of good people go into the process. It can take some time. Still, I will be waiting in hope.

And as I wait, please look for more frequent postings here at the best place on the web to learn about Adrienne von Speyr.

a compelling trinitarian theology

2011-11-28T15:00:13Z

Happily my article “A Compelling Trinitarian Theology: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Trinitarian Inversion and Reversion” has just been published by the International Journal of Systematic Theology. If your institution gives you access to the journal’s articles, you can find it here.

The abstract of the article:

In trinitarian theology, the problematic place of the Holy Spirit in the taxonomy of the immanent Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) does not seem to correspond to what is revealed in the economy (Father, Holy Spirit and Son). Because of this pneumatological problem, some theologians have abandoned the traditional trinitarian taxonomy. This approach, however, does not provide a finally convincing answer that is consistent with both the biblical witness and the theological tradition. In this article, I argue that Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of the trinitarian inversion and reversion does provide a convincing answer to the trinitarian taxonomy problem. After supporting my thesis by first referencing the traditional trinitarian taxonomy offered in Augustine’s de Trinitate and then examining the possibility of abandoning the taxonomy given by Jürgen Moltmann and Leonardo Boff, I will offer von Balthasar’s solution as the most compelling trinitarian taxonomy, especially in light of the ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

This was first posted at my other website doctorsutton.net.

where can you write a dissertation on adrienne?

2011-10-25T01:21:35Z

If you would like to do a dissertation on Adrienne von Speyr, I wanted to let you know that Dr. Philip Zeigler at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland is very interested in advising research on Adrienne von Speyr. A scholar of twentieth-century Reformed theologians, Dr. Zeigler is well versed in Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar from his studies at the University of Toronto. He is also helping the University of Aberdeen library collect von Speyr’s complete works.

Scotland … a beautiful place for Adrienne von Speyr research.

Thanks to Ms. Lois Miles for this information.

adrienne von speyr on the meaning of suffering

2011-09-15T00:56:39Z

Recently, I spoke with the new international volunteers working with Heart’s Home to prepare them for their compassionate service to those who are suffering.

My thesis for the presentation is this:

“Things have meaning only to the extent that they lead to God, come from him and can be placed at his service” (Adrienne von Speyr, Mystery of Death, p. 47).

Two parts make up this presentation on Adrienne von Speyr and the meaning of suffering. The first part below is an overview of Adrienne’s life and thought especially as it relates the meaning of personhood and how suffering fits within her understanding of being a person in relation to God and others.

I hope you enjoyed that one. We go deeper yet.

The second part of the presentation below is a discussion of the chapter “Death as God’s Action” from Adrienne’s book The Mystery of Death.

I hope you enjoyed that one too.

For those interested in a tangent about how I’ve come to these insights about Adrienne on the meaning of suffering, please continue to read on.

I’ve been working on several major research projects on the meaning of suffering through the academic conference Making Sense of Suffering with the scholar community Inter-Disciplinary.Net. I presented at their Prague conference last year on Balthasar and the Meaning of Suffering. A version of the presentation is in the conference proceedings eBook Making Sense of Suffering: Theory, Practice, and Representation. I will be presenting at their next conference on Adrienne and the Meaning of Suffering, which I will post here when it becomes available. Additionally, if you are really interested in the postmodern debate on the meaning of suffering, I have recently co-edited a book on it, which is will be available in a few months.

Thank you for being such loyal readers of this website. I’m grateful for your comments and emails. Blessings to you all.

the meaning of suffering

2011-06-21T01:12:00Z

This Friday I will be speaking at Heart’s Home again to help prepare their international volunteers. I will be speaking about the meaning of suffering according to Adrienne von Speyr. I’ll post the audio of my talk soon afterward.

Thank you kindly for your reading and listening.

"service as compassionate confession" - audio presentation on adrienne von speyr

2011-02-26T20:00:27Z

Alfred Hitchcock’s “I, Confess”On October 23, 2010 and February 19, 2011, I presented (my best yet) orientation to Adrienne von Speyr and her theology of Confession. I was speaking to Heart’s Home international volunteers (more about them here). You may remember, I gave a presentation to them last summer on Adrienne’s understanding of finitude and infinitude.

Here’s the audio from my presentation: The Mission of Service as Compassionate Confession

Von Speyr’s theology of Confession from her book Confession places the sacrament within the divine relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I have never met a more profound, accessible, important theology of confession anywhere else.

I begin my discussion with this central quotation:

“There is no mission that is not determined decisively by one’s confessional attitude” (Confession, p. 208)

As you follow my discussion of the confessional attitude and how it relates to mission, you will also need these quotations below from Adrienne’s book Confession (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985).

1. “In all events which are not inevitable and in whose course freedom and inclination can intervene, a person usually searches for a solution or a way out and often for a reason or cause as well. … Only when this success fails to materialize according to his wish does he look for the causes behind the failure, and it is in this search that he first encounters the question concerning the state of his own life. … Yet it is precisely when he justifies himself and concludes that he is innocent that his deeper discomfort—the feeling of a hidden guilt—begins” (11).

2. “Ultimately, only the Creator of the human soul will be able to treat it so that it becomes the soul he needs. Only he can heal it, and he does this in ways that only he knows and discloses and prescribes for healing. … the decisive way of God—confession—is based on obedience: more specifically, on the obedience to God” (15).

3. “If a person … comprehends himself as standing before God, and if he knows that he, like Adam, was created by God and redeemed by Christ and that Christ opens for him the way to the Father and the doors of heaven, then … he will expect confession with a kind of necessity” (16).

4. “As long as a person is not confessing, he feels free to speak or keep silent about whatever he wishes. What he then hates in confession is not the humbling experience of revealing himself, and not the fact that he is a sinner—he already knows that somehow—but the necessity of capitulating before and within total confession, the fact that the freedom of selection has been withdrawn and that the only choice remaining is to reveal everything or nothing. He is sick as a whole person and must be healed as such, and not eclectically. That is the first humbling experience. The second is that he is only one of many and has to accept the same conditions as do the others … [he experiences] the elimination of all external differentiation … merely one penitent in the line of other sinners. The peculiarities of my particular ‘case’, which made it seem so interesting to me and which I would so gladly have explained to the listener, do not matter at all any more” (18).

5. “Whoever would learn how to confess must first look at the life of the Son of God” (20).

6. “God stands before God in the attitude that is fitting for God. Analogously, we can designate this as the attitude of confession, since it is the attitude in which God shows himself as he is. … When the Son institutes confession at Easter, he does so to bring this divine attitude closer to human beings, to mediate to them part of the trinitarian life” (21).

7. “One can say that the Lord lives on earth before the Father in the same condition in which the perfect penitent should live before his own confessor, before the Church and before God: in complete openness, concealing nothing, always ready in every moment to expect the intervention of the Holy Spirit, drawing security from the Father and his Spirit instead of from within himself. The Son lives in perpetual contact with the Father, and the expression of this contact is his word, ‘Not my will, but thy will be done’” (23).

8. “Anyone who has recognized, in confession and in the prayer belonging to it, the possibility not only of ridding himself of his own sins through the grace of the Lord but also of helping others at the same time will suddenly realize that there is a place where confession and mission encounter and permeate one another to the point of coincidence” (206).

9. “There is no mission that is not determined decisively by one’s confessional attitude” (208).

I hope that you enjoy this discussion. Please leave your comments below.

NB: If you want to read more, chapter eleven of Confession, which is on the confession of the saints, can be found here.