John: The Word Becomes Flesh

Religion & Spirituality

Von Speyr, Adrienne

Religious Studies

Ignatius Pr

A profound contemplation of the Seven Last Words of Our Lord on the Cross with specific application to the Seven Sacraments instituted by Christ.

Cross: Word and Sacrament

Christian Books & Bibles

The Swiss spiritual writer and mystic explores the various and wonderful "gates into eternal life" which God's grace has placed in our earthly life to help us get to Heaven. These "gates" include the Sacraments, the Church's calendar, Faith, Prayer and Holy Scripture. Adrienne's poetic and profound insights can reawaken our sense of the nearness of God, of his immense love and mercy, of his eternity and his great desire to bring to us to be with him there forever. "When the Son on the Cross promises paradise in his company to the good thief, when he promises the future feast in Heaven to the Apostles, when he speaks of the kingdom of the Father, he is always pointing toward eternity. However brief and close to the earth his words sound, they echo throughout infinite eternity and permeate the faith of his followers with their eternal content. He knows what he speaks of, what he brings with him and what he promises; and he can convey it to those who know it not. The very words he uses are designed to awaken in them a new sense: the sense of the eternal." -Adrienne von Speyr

The Gates of Eternal Life

Ignatius Press

Prayer was a way of life for Adrienne von Speyr, one of this last century's great Catholic mystics. In this major work on prayer, edited by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Adrienne discusses the many aspects and kinds of prayer, the vocation of every Christian.
The fundamental theme of this work is that prayer, like everything else that comes to man through God's self-revelation in Christ (such as grace; faith, hope and love; or the realtionship between Christ and the Church), is ultimately rooted in God himself and in his triune exchange of life.
Beyond all purely creaturely motives and needs, Christian prayer is a participation in the inner life of the Trinity, which is revealed, prepared and accomplished in the world by Jesus Christ our Lord. By him it is made available for us to take part in.
This book is much more than a manual on how to pray. It gives an in-depth description of prayer: first the prayer of the Trinity, then the prayer of Christ, then of the Blessed Virgin, and finally that of all Christians. In particular, the section on the prayer of Mary is a masterful description of the various stages of growing in prayer. Mary is the perfect model because of her intimate association with her Son.

The World of Prayer

The more popular, practical counterpart to Hans Urs von Balthasar's own book of the same title, this book plumbs the depths of what it means to be a Christian.

The Christian State of Life

Combining rich philosophical insight with the spiritual discernment of a true contemplative, Adrienne opens the reader to Our Lord's desire for our total surrender to His Love. As a remarkable contemporary woman teacher of the Church, she points out the many ways we flee from the demands of our vocation.

They Followed His Call: Vocation and Asceticism

Von Speyr addresses the perennial and ultimate human question--the question of death. This book is not only a synthesis of the Christian view of death. It is also an antidote to the insipid sociological sentimentalism of so many books written about death and dying today. Death is not just the last stage of growth or something we must cope with or accept, nor something we must help people do without any fear or feeling of guilt. None of the merely human answers can satisfy because death is a mystery that only God and his Revelation can begin to explain. "If God had not instituted death, man could have imagined that, each time he offended God, he could subsequently make it good, supply what he had failed to do, obliterate his turning away from God by turning toward Him. He would have felt that guilt and atonement were within his own power, that he could choose a punishment, a penance that would reconcile him with God if he persisted in it long enough. In other words he would have imagined that he was basically able to redeem himself. But by death and the finite time which leads up to it, God has shown man that his turning-away is far more serious than he thought, so grave that of himself he cannot make it good." - Adrienne von Speyr

The Mystery of Death

The mystic von Speyr provides profound and original meditations on each verse of St. Paul's rich summary of the meaning of the Christian faith. The eighth chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Romans, a radiant trumpet-call in the tremendous symphony of the Pauline writings, proclaims the ultimate victory of the love of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit in the faithful united as the Church. In our age, which has become focused on the darker side of man, von Speyr shows how the Christian needs nothing more urgently than the courage, inspiration and hope that God offers to us through these writings of St. Paul.

The Victory of Love: A Meditation on Romans 8

The fourth and final volume in von Speyr's meditations on the Gospel of St. John, concentrating on Peter and John and their roles in the church representing office and love.

The Birth of the Church: Meditations on John 18-21 (Volume 4)

The first of von Speyr's scriptural commentaries, focusing on her reflections on the first five chapters of John and the beginning of the public life of Our Lord. She shares moving meditations on such profound and dramatic scenes as the witness of John the Baptist, the call of the disciples, the wedding at Cana, the cleansing of the money-changers in the temple, the Samaritan woman, etc. The combination of the Scripture verses and her meditations provide rich nourishment for prayer and spiritual reading. This series is particularly important because the spirituality of St. John, the Apostle of Divine Love, was the central source of von Speyr's own inspiration and spiritual life.

John: The Word Become Flesh--Meditations on John 1-5 (Volume 1)

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