"...About the fall of 1940 (I began serving as student chaplain in Basel at the beginning of that year), when Adrienne had returned from the hospital after a severe heart attack, we were on the terrace overlooking the Rhine, speaking about the Catholic poets Claudel and Peguy whom I was then translating. A mutual acquaintance of ours had arranged the meeting. She gathered up enough courage to tell me that she, too, would like to become a Catholic. Before long we were speaking about her prayer, when I showed her that our saying, "Thy will be done" does not mean we offer God what we are able to do of ourselves, but rather that we offer him our willingness to let what he does take over our lives and move us anywhere at will, it was as though I had inadvertently touched a light switch that at one flick turned on all the lights in the hall. Adrienne semed to be freed from chains of restraint and was carried away on a flood of prayer as though a dam had burst...."
Hans Urs von Balthasar
"...And you have the feeling that the experience is practical; what you say is experienced with the spirit or with the body, with faith, with hope, and love. You pay the price with your person. Everything you say is always connected with what has been received directly as a gift and has been experienced; with that for which you are willing to risk your life. It is always personal. Thus the result is a strange mixture of the subjective and objective. Everything you say as answer to a mission under obedience is indeed given to you objectively, but must nevertheless, be received and assimilated subjectively. And then suddenly there is a small fruit...."
Adrienne von Speyr
