Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Lumina and New Lumina
    Lumina and New Lumina
    Lumina and New Lumina
    Ebook81 pages2 hours

    Lumina and New Lumina

    By Adrienne von Speyr

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A beautiful little book of brief meditations on the love of God by the Swiss spiritual writer, mystic and medical doctor von Speyr. These short "insights" are fruits of Adrienne's contemplative prayer that reflect her constant quest for an ever deeper union with God, a union of divine and human love that is shown in her life by her great compassion for others as seen in her tireless devotion to her many medical patients. She knew that in order to best serve others she must first serve and love God with all her heart, and thus her life and writings reveal the combination of a deep spiritual and practical approach to the meaning of love as seen in these wonderful, uplifting reflections that echo the inmost mystery of Christianity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIgnatius Press
    Release dateApr 26, 2012
    ISBN9781681493190
    Lumina and New Lumina
    Author

    Adrienne von Speyr

    Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) was a Swiss medical doctor, a convert to Catholicism, a mystic, and an author of more than sixty books on spirituality and theology. She collaborated closely with theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, her confessor for twenty-seven years, and together they founded the Community of Saint John. Among her most important works are Handmaid of the Lord, Man before God, Confession, and her commentaries on the Gospel of Saint John.

    Read more from Adrienne Von Speyr

    Related to Lumina and New Lumina

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      A Pained Intuition and a Palpable Longing: Katie Ford on Theology, Poetry, and the Unknowable

      Sep 13, 2018

      If You Have to Go, the new collection of poems by Katie Ford, is a book that conjures powers of possession. I feel that way about all of her books: Her poems bring me to a mystical plane somewhere between language and life. I’m left shaken. Her willi

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Invoking Bodhicitta

      Mar 8, 2022

      Invoking Bodhicitta
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Prophet Of Catholic Conservatism

      Jan 26, 2023

      Prophet Of Catholic Conservatism
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      WHO’S In The NEWS?

      Jul 22, 2022

      We need the moving and operation of the Holy Spirit in our lives and churches like never before. It is critical for the harvest of souls to come in. Johan Brits – Gospel singer and member of worship duo, Frank and I – and his wife, Elzaan, are expec

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Love That Leaves No One Out

      Jun 22, 2021

      Maybe we’re feeling unloved or excluded – or treating others that way, unconsciously or otherwise. But recognizing that everyone is included in God’s love brings joy and healing to our hearts and to our interactions with others.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Radiance

      Dec 30, 2022

      Radiance
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A New Day Of Pentecost The Importance Of Prayer

      Oct 27, 2023

      Over the last few issues, I have shared four guiding principles that the early church lived by, in accordance with Acts 2:42. Apostolic doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer are listed as these four “quadrants”. They created a new c

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On Christmas

      Nov 30, 2021

      On Christmas
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Getting to Know God

      Mar 16, 2020

      Getting to Know God
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Should We Respond To Celebrities Coming To Christ?

      Dec 30, 2019

      If you’ve been following the news lately, you will have noticed a significant wave of celebrities who are turning to Christ. In what is referred to as a massive spiritual movement, the sinful city of Hollywood is turning more and more stars away from

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Jul 19, 2024

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Faith, Not Explanations

      Apr 10, 2020

      Faith, Not Explanations
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Faith, Not Explanations

      Apr 10, 2020

      Faith, Not Explanations
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In The Face Of Violence, Build On A Model Of Love

      Apr 24, 2019

      When today’s contributor was robbed and assaulted, the idea that God is all-powerful Love itself prompted him to forgive rather than to react in kind. The situation turned around completely, and his wallet was returned to him right then and there.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The 7 Churches Of Revelation

      Oct 2, 2020

      The 7 Churches Of Revelation
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      God & Me magic Mushrooms

      Oct 5, 2023

      God & Me magic Mushrooms
      22 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Lumina and New Lumina

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Lumina and New Lumina - Adrienne von Speyr

      Prefatory Note

      Christianity is either love of God, or it is nothing. As for everything else—do not even the pagans do that, too? Before telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ asks the scribe to recite the Great Commandment with which the Old Covenant stands and falls. You have answered rightly. Do this, and you will live. Elsewhere, in Matthew, Christ himself recites it in answer to the question of which is the weightiest commandment of the Law. That there is a second like it—to love your neighbor as yourself—is the consequence the New Testament draws from the Word of God, The creature embraces its Creator (who—once he lovingly elects the creature—becomes its covenant Lord) with the love of its whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind. And now my neighbor is included in that love. For God himself loves this neighbor as himself, and he became a neighbor, my neighbor, in order to prove it. The second commandment cannot be had without the first; it is what spills over when the first is fulfilled; if you invert the order, under whatever pretext, you are bound in good logic to give up Christianity.

      It is precisely when God becomes man that he also becomes recognizable as the archetypal Love, which is triune in its very nature. Being (reality, the primordial ground of all tilings) and love coincide; from now on, to exist in harmony with being means: to love. Not just by contemplating, like the Indians and Greeks, but with a burning need to love archetypal Love in return. With a burning need to love personally, and that means: by praying, just as Jesus prayed, with the prayers of the Old Covenant on his lips; and just as everyone whose life has shone with Christian fire has prayed in his footsteps for the last two thousand years. And to love personally also means: with one’s whole existence, stripped of self for Christian engagement, in mission to one’s fellowmen and to the world, in order that both may be changed according to God’s mind and spirit. Political theology, they say nowadays. Yes, of course, but not just with actions. Rather, beyond actions, with the engagement of one’s life, to the point of performing the supreme action (which makes sense only as a Christian gesture): substitutionary suffering. Passion does not replace action, because passion is God’s most active engagement on behalf of love. It does not replace action, because God uses it to initiate the Christian, who would do more for love if he could, into the mysteries of a reality whose overflowing efficacy lies beyond the Christian’s own capacities.

      Even as a small child, Adrienne von Speyr (1902-1967), daughter of an old Basel family, wanted to become a doctor to help her fellowmen. Though she faced both an extremely hard fight against familial resistance and a series of illnesses that threatened to bring her plans to nought, she finally did achieve her goal. From childhood, she knew instinctively that she could truly help her neighbor, both professionally and humanly, only if she was in full harmony with God, and she failed to find this harmony in her conventional Protestant environment. She was in search of the unreserved openness to God that—after her conversion in 1940—she found in the sacrament of confession; she was in search of the union with the incarnate Lord that she was to receive from the Holy Mass; above all, she was in search of the permission to disappear completely into the objectivity of mission and the self-dispossession attendant on it. This permission was the gift she received in the Church, both as institution and as Christ’s body and bride.

      After a number of years devoted to an exhausting professional practice, Adrienne faced decades during which illness increasingly prevented any outside work. In moments of leisure, she dictated meditations on the Bible, particularly on the Johannine corpus; between 1947 and the time of this writing, thirty-four volumes have appeared, and, contrary to the assertions of the occasional bookseller, they are by no means out of print. She spent her nights almost entirely in prayer and her afternoons quietly embroidering or (as she began to go blind) knitting. During such hours she would from time to time pull out a notebook and write down one of the thoughts that the reader will find in what follows; she then stuck the pages in the desk drawer where they were discovered after her death. In their artless concision, they offer distillations of the essence of her thinking, praying, and being.

      Why publish them? Because we rarely hear today their native echo of the inmost mystery of Christianity. Because the paradox of ardent sobriety that they display bears the mark of authenticity. Perhaps simply in order to show that such things still exist.¹

      Hans Urs von Balthasar

      On the Second Edition

      We add a second loose selection from the abundance of notes for unwritten books, aphorisms, and fragments left by Adrienne von Speyr. Like the first, it obeys no tight structure. Unlike the first, it begins with the personal, continues on through the objective, and finally issues in prayer.

      Hans

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1