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Spowiedź
To książka jednocześnie prosta i głęboka. Prosta być może dlatego, nie napisana przez teologa, nie obciążona teologiczną terminologią.
Można się pokusić o stwierdzenie, że "Spowiedź" jest dziełem z zakresu teologii mistycznej, o treści wzniosłej, ważnej, trudnej, głębokiej, ale nie bójmy się nie jest to książka tylko dla teologa. Jest napisana językiem jasnym i precyzyjnym. Układ materiału jest przejrzysty i łatwy do zrozumienia dla każdego. To powoduje, że możemy tę książkę określić jako: prostą (w najlepszym tego słowa znaczeniu).
Można się pokusić o stwierdzenie, że "Spowiedź" jest dziełem z zakresu teologii mistycznej, o treści wzniosłej, ważnej, trudnej, głębokiej, ale nie bójmy się nie jest to książka tylko dla teologa. Jest napisana językiem jasnym i precyzyjnym. Układ materiału jest przejrzysty i łatwy do zrozumienia dla każdego. To powoduje, że możemy tę książkę określić jako: prostą (w najlepszym tego słowa znaczeniu).
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
24 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne von Speyr
138 books42 followersAdrienne von Speyr was a Swiss medical doctor and the author of over 60 books on spirituality and theology.
Von Speyr was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Her father, Theodor von Speyr, was an ophthalmologist. Her mother, Laure Girard, was the descendant of a family of noted watchmakers and jewelers from Geneva and Neuenburg. Speyr was her parents' second child.
Speyr's mother scolded her daily and this led her to form a strong trust and devotion to God, as well as a recognition of the meaning of sacrifice and renunciation. She formed a deep relationship with her grandmother, a holy and pious woman. She also had a devotion to her father, who treated her with mutual respect and understanding, often taking her with him to the hospital to visit sick children. In her primary school years she began working with the poor and even formed a society with her friends for those living in poverty.
Speyr became a Roman Catholic on 1 November 1940, the Feast of All Saints, when she was 38, under the spiritual direction of the prominent priest and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.
She is considered by many to have been a mystic and is reputed to have had mystical experiences of the Trinity and the saints.
While in a state of contemplative, mystical prayer, she dictated to Balthasar over 60 books, including commentaries on the Bible and various theological topics. With Balthasar she co-founded a secular institute, the Johannesgemeinschaft (Community of St. John). Her reputed mystical experiences grew in frequency until her death in Basel, Switzerland, on 17 September 1967.
Von Speyr was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Her father, Theodor von Speyr, was an ophthalmologist. Her mother, Laure Girard, was the descendant of a family of noted watchmakers and jewelers from Geneva and Neuenburg. Speyr was her parents' second child.
Speyr's mother scolded her daily and this led her to form a strong trust and devotion to God, as well as a recognition of the meaning of sacrifice and renunciation. She formed a deep relationship with her grandmother, a holy and pious woman. She also had a devotion to her father, who treated her with mutual respect and understanding, often taking her with him to the hospital to visit sick children. In her primary school years she began working with the poor and even formed a society with her friends for those living in poverty.
Speyr became a Roman Catholic on 1 November 1940, the Feast of All Saints, when she was 38, under the spiritual direction of the prominent priest and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.
She is considered by many to have been a mystic and is reputed to have had mystical experiences of the Trinity and the saints.
While in a state of contemplative, mystical prayer, she dictated to Balthasar over 60 books, including commentaries on the Bible and various theological topics. With Balthasar she co-founded a secular institute, the Johannesgemeinschaft (Community of St. John). Her reputed mystical experiences grew in frequency until her death in Basel, Switzerland, on 17 September 1967.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 21, 2014
This book is very good. It goes to the spiritual and theological depths of the Sacrament of Penance. If I were to describe the book in one word, it would be transparency. Confession is where we are transparent before the Lord just as the Son is totally transparent to the Father.
This was the first of Von Speyr's books I've read. The book was a bit long, and I wish I'd read it in a shorter period of time. I kept putting it down. But all in all a very profound book on confession.
This was the first of Von Speyr's books I've read. The book was a bit long, and I wish I'd read it in a shorter period of time. I kept putting it down. But all in all a very profound book on confession.
Read
April 4, 2009Jesus is totally transparent to the father. We are too. Confession is nothing more than being transparent with God. What a gift - He already sees us as we are, so we are the ones holding back. A beautiful mystical book. One of my favorites.
Want to read
May 14, 2018Deep and profoundly stirring, this book is much more than I expected, in a wonderful way.
March 16, 2017
In doing a paper on penance I came across this book. Pages 171-185 gives a great summary of how Penance as a virtue and as a Sacrament should inform the Catholic's life.
July 31, 2021
My first foray with Adrienne von Speyr, her unique voice and mysticism is immediately clear. I don’t have much to say as she plunders the topic of confession (extrapolating the term to broader conditions than “just” the Sacrament); she’s synthesized what I assume were many hours of contemplation to produce something like a stream of consciousness. Paragraph indentations don’t come into play as often as I’d like (goldfish brain) and so what she puts forward is rich and hearty. The first section on The Temptation quite clinched things for me. Bolded emphasis is mine.
---
“Dominus sit in corde tuo are the two words spoken before the penitent begins. The Lord is to rule; the entire confession is his gift and possession. He is acting in what is his most intensely personal concern.”
“[The Son] does not intend to become a man only for a few moments at a time, and in the meantime to be a god...He requires something of this same totality of those who want to follow him, and he grants something of it to those who stay with him...this is why he does not half-release them from their sin so that they must drag them around like chains. He steps between sinner and sin, severs the bond connecting them and alters the present reality according to his sovereign benevolence.”
The Temptation
"During the temptation in the desert the Lord knows full well that he could overcome the devil by showing him how much more powerful God is than he. In a more profound sense, however he knows that he can overcome him only if he lets himself be tempted and does not succumb to the evil one in the slightest, but on the contrary proves to the tempter his origin from the Father and his obedience to his mission. To exemplify untainted obedience, even when it is certain that the devil cannot be converted and that both temptation and tempter will persist, is an attitude before and in the Father; it is loyalty to the mission of the Father, a mission that in a fashion only has significant in relationship to the Father. From a human perspective this obedience seems like a waste of energy. If the Lord would yield to the temptation even a little, he could really open the devil's eyes. But this too would be meaningless, indeed doubly meaningless, since one cannot teach the devil anything. The Lord thus chooses the weakness that is strength in the Father. Yet the Father himself does not need this demonstration of the Son's weakness, since he knows the Son will always remain obedient, even unto death. Nonetheless, he will acknowledge this demonstration of obedience, not in order to strengthen the Son’s obedience or to secure the mission, but rather so that the Son may become familiar with a certain futility within obedience, so that he may feel at home in it and from this perspective see and bear the will of the Father unwaveringly all the way to the Cross - and so that we who come later, in our own small and smallest temptations, seek strength not in ourselves but in the Son, and not only in the Son but the Father as well, through the Holy Spirit of divine obedience.
The supporting background of this obedience lies entirely with the Father; at best we can sense it. When we find this divine obedience exemplified in the Gospel, however, we also know that the Son does not simply keep it for himself, but rather has infused some of it into his confession. One can stop short of sin as one stands before God; one can behold the coming path in a vision that derives its point of departure, its comfort and its appeasement from this overcoming of the devil. It is not a victory on the basis of power or might, but rather a calm No spoken equally to the Father and to the tempter. The portion spoken entirely to the Father, however, is taken up into the grace that the Father wishes to offer to humanity in the form of the Cross. This grace is almost completely concealed and veiled, but it nonetheless generates the unity of life within itself. The Father gives the Son his Spirit so that he can accompany him in the Spirit. On the Cross the Son breathes his Spirit back to the Father, but the Spirit remains as if in the background; he is the companion who creates unity.
Before the Lord transmits to his disciples the full authority to bind and loose, he lives through the depth and breadth of temptation and experiences for himself what it costs human beings to persevere in quiet obedience. With his experience he has laid up a reserve for humanity to which everyone can have recourse in hours of weakness. He knows in particular that every person traversing the path of confession - a path that is primarily that of the Cross - will be summoned to pause and reflect before God, and that this reflection in its turn will be able to draw from the reserve of the Lord’s temptation. For the sinner must withstand the temptation to sin further, and this cessation and break in sinning is the beginning of the reflection and conversion leading to confession. Only at this point can the sinner be taken up anew into grace; and the path from this point to the grace of absolution leads through the inexpressible experience the Son has before the Father and in the Holy Spirit, between desert and Cross. It is inexpressible because the Father’s accompaniment is so discreet and yet so effective and because the Son’s obedience passes through every point fixed in the Old Covenant, fulfilling them all, point by point, in the constancy and imperturbability characteristic of his obedience up to death on the Cross, until the Father resurrects him and thus fulfills the promise for his own part. The constancy of obedience, shunning nothing and desiring to experience everything all the way to death on the Cross, will be the cup he will drink to the dregs, even and especially at the point at which he asks that the cup pass from him. It is the cup encompassing every experience of bitterness, because its form is that of obedience, a vessel whose form accommodates itself to fit all the sins of the world. These sins are where, in the end, God wants them: in a position to be consumed by the Son. The Son’s own condition is a reflection of communion. He lets his body die of those sins, so that all who were sinners receive a share in him and in his new life. So that sinners may traverse his path, however, he must know the locus of temptation in order to find the strength for his own life within the weakness of the one tempted - the strength of a plea that becomes the path to confession.”
---
“Dominus sit in corde tuo are the two words spoken before the penitent begins. The Lord is to rule; the entire confession is his gift and possession. He is acting in what is his most intensely personal concern.”
“[The Son] does not intend to become a man only for a few moments at a time, and in the meantime to be a god...He requires something of this same totality of those who want to follow him, and he grants something of it to those who stay with him...this is why he does not half-release them from their sin so that they must drag them around like chains. He steps between sinner and sin, severs the bond connecting them and alters the present reality according to his sovereign benevolence.”
The Temptation
"During the temptation in the desert the Lord knows full well that he could overcome the devil by showing him how much more powerful God is than he. In a more profound sense, however he knows that he can overcome him only if he lets himself be tempted and does not succumb to the evil one in the slightest, but on the contrary proves to the tempter his origin from the Father and his obedience to his mission. To exemplify untainted obedience, even when it is certain that the devil cannot be converted and that both temptation and tempter will persist, is an attitude before and in the Father; it is loyalty to the mission of the Father, a mission that in a fashion only has significant in relationship to the Father. From a human perspective this obedience seems like a waste of energy. If the Lord would yield to the temptation even a little, he could really open the devil's eyes. But this too would be meaningless, indeed doubly meaningless, since one cannot teach the devil anything. The Lord thus chooses the weakness that is strength in the Father. Yet the Father himself does not need this demonstration of the Son's weakness, since he knows the Son will always remain obedient, even unto death. Nonetheless, he will acknowledge this demonstration of obedience, not in order to strengthen the Son’s obedience or to secure the mission, but rather so that the Son may become familiar with a certain futility within obedience, so that he may feel at home in it and from this perspective see and bear the will of the Father unwaveringly all the way to the Cross - and so that we who come later, in our own small and smallest temptations, seek strength not in ourselves but in the Son, and not only in the Son but the Father as well, through the Holy Spirit of divine obedience.
The supporting background of this obedience lies entirely with the Father; at best we can sense it. When we find this divine obedience exemplified in the Gospel, however, we also know that the Son does not simply keep it for himself, but rather has infused some of it into his confession. One can stop short of sin as one stands before God; one can behold the coming path in a vision that derives its point of departure, its comfort and its appeasement from this overcoming of the devil. It is not a victory on the basis of power or might, but rather a calm No spoken equally to the Father and to the tempter. The portion spoken entirely to the Father, however, is taken up into the grace that the Father wishes to offer to humanity in the form of the Cross. This grace is almost completely concealed and veiled, but it nonetheless generates the unity of life within itself. The Father gives the Son his Spirit so that he can accompany him in the Spirit. On the Cross the Son breathes his Spirit back to the Father, but the Spirit remains as if in the background; he is the companion who creates unity.
Before the Lord transmits to his disciples the full authority to bind and loose, he lives through the depth and breadth of temptation and experiences for himself what it costs human beings to persevere in quiet obedience. With his experience he has laid up a reserve for humanity to which everyone can have recourse in hours of weakness. He knows in particular that every person traversing the path of confession - a path that is primarily that of the Cross - will be summoned to pause and reflect before God, and that this reflection in its turn will be able to draw from the reserve of the Lord’s temptation. For the sinner must withstand the temptation to sin further, and this cessation and break in sinning is the beginning of the reflection and conversion leading to confession. Only at this point can the sinner be taken up anew into grace; and the path from this point to the grace of absolution leads through the inexpressible experience the Son has before the Father and in the Holy Spirit, between desert and Cross. It is inexpressible because the Father’s accompaniment is so discreet and yet so effective and because the Son’s obedience passes through every point fixed in the Old Covenant, fulfilling them all, point by point, in the constancy and imperturbability characteristic of his obedience up to death on the Cross, until the Father resurrects him and thus fulfills the promise for his own part. The constancy of obedience, shunning nothing and desiring to experience everything all the way to death on the Cross, will be the cup he will drink to the dregs, even and especially at the point at which he asks that the cup pass from him. It is the cup encompassing every experience of bitterness, because its form is that of obedience, a vessel whose form accommodates itself to fit all the sins of the world. These sins are where, in the end, God wants them: in a position to be consumed by the Son. The Son’s own condition is a reflection of communion. He lets his body die of those sins, so that all who were sinners receive a share in him and in his new life. So that sinners may traverse his path, however, he must know the locus of temptation in order to find the strength for his own life within the weakness of the one tempted - the strength of a plea that becomes the path to confession.”
September 23, 2019
The empty room
She has left us an in depth revelation of confessing our sin in the Church to a priest. As the Church marches on ever more deeply into her decline, the confessionals remain empty. A few of them have a priest within.
She has left us an in depth revelation of confessing our sin in the Church to a priest. As the Church marches on ever more deeply into her decline, the confessionals remain empty. A few of them have a priest within.
January 3, 2021
Very insightful book, probably the deepest theological examination of the sacrament I have read. Von Speyr was a mystic and sometimes says things with a lot of confidence which are by nature speculative. I am not always comfortable with that. If I were, I'd give the book 5 stars.
July 11, 2021
Excellent book! A must read for every seminarian preparing to be a confessor and I would say every baptized Catholic. VonSpeyr has some wonderful insights into priestly spirituality and how the priest should love in relation to his office as confessor. A book that must be examined again and again.
October 10, 2024
How beautiful it is that our Holy Mother embodies the perfect attitude of Confession yet seeks no absolution.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews