Hans Urs von Balthasar

Collaboration with Adrienne von Speyr

During his first months in Basel, he met the physician Adrienne von Speyr through a mutual friend. A mother in her late thirties, and a somewhat prominent figure in Basel society, she was married to the historian Werner Kaegi, with two children from her first marriage to Emil Dürr, who had died suddenly in 1934. She was a Protestant, but interested in becoming Catholic. Balthasar began to offer her catechetical instruction and later said of this process, "In the instructions she understood everything immediately, as though she had only—and for how long!—waited to hear exactly what I was saying in order to affirm it."

Shortly following her reception into the Catholic Church on 1 November 1940—at a liturgy celebrated by Balthasar—Speyr began reporting intense experiences in prayer, including visions of Christ's Passion and encounters with various saints. In Balthasar's words, "A veritable cataract of mystical graces poured over Adrienne in a seemingly chaotic storm that whirled her in all directions at once." He began to accompany her as a spiritual director, in order to help evaluate the experiences. After he became convinced of the authenticity of Speyr's mysticism, Balthasar and Speyr both began to believe that they had a shared theological mission.

Between 1944 and 1960, Speyr dictated to Balthasar some 60 books of spiritual and Scriptural commentary. Given Speyr's responsibilities as a mother and a practicing doctor, Balthasar alone worked to arrange, edit, and publish the texts. In 1947, he founded a publishing house, Johannes Verlag, in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, where he began to print and distribute her works with ecclesiastical imprimatur. Some of Speyr's works, namely those of a more explicitly mystical character, were not released until Pope John Paul II organized a Vatican symposium on her thought in 1985, almost 20 years after her death. In an interview with Angelo Scola in 1986, Balthasar gave a portrait of his relationship with the "extensive theology" of von Speyr:All I attempted to do was gather it up and embed it in a space, such as the theology of the Fathers, that of the Middle Ages and the modern age, with which I was fairly familiar. My contribution consisted in providing a comprehensive theological horizon, so that all that was new and valid in her thought would not be watered down or falsified, but be given space to unfold. With a mere textbook-theology one could not have captured Adrienne's work; it required a knowledge of the great tradition to realize that her original propositions in no way contradicted it.Von Speyr and von Balthasar also collaborated closely in the founding of the Johannesgemeinschaft Archived 2021-01-26 at the Wayback Machine (Community of Saint John), a Catholic institute of consecrated laypeople established in 1945, with a mission to work for the sanctification of the world from within the world. It became more widely known three years later when Balthasar produced a theology for secular institutes in his work Der Laie und der Ordenstand, the first book to be published by Johannes Verlag. After a long discernment, Balthasar would eventually leave the Society of Jesus to found this community, since his superiors did not believe it would be compatible with Jesuit life. He saw it as a "personal, special, and non-delegable task." Speyr referred to the Johannesgemeinschaft metaphorically as a “Child” she shared with the priest—an analogy that has drawn some criticism but been defended by others. Speyr served as the superior of the women's branch of the community until her death.

Departure from the Jesuits

Beginning in 1945, the year in which he published Das Herz der Welt (Heart of the World), Balthasar met a series of difficulties. He was scheduled to give a Christmas sermon on Swiss public radio, but this was cancelled at the last moment because of the ongoing national constitutional ban on Jesuit activity. The event caused some controversy. In June 1946, his father died, followed not long after by his godmother. In May 1946, Robert Rast, a Jesuit novice who had been his friend and collaborator in the Schulungsgemeinschaft, died of tuberculosis.

That same year, his Jesuit superiors informed him that the Society of Jesus could not be answerable for the Community of Saint John, the secular institute he had begun to organize with Adrienne von Speyr. Feeling that he "was being called by God to certain definite tasks in the Church", he made a 30-day retreat at the request of Father General Jean-Baptiste Janssens, where the director confirmed that Balthasar, while remaining a priest, should leave the Jesuit order to work with the Community of Saint John. Balthasar considered this a "very grave" step, but in 1950, he officially left the Society of Jesus. He renewed his religious vows a few months later. Shortly before his exit from the society, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München offered him a professorship, as a successor to Romano Guardini, but he declined. He remained without a ministerial role in the church until, in 1956, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Chur as a diocesan priest.

Lectures, writing, and publishing (1950–1967)

Balthasar's exit from the Jesuits left him "literally on the street", as biographer Peter Henrici notes, and he took up lecture tours across Germany, which helped him provide for himself and fund the Johannes Verlag publishing house. He also continued giving retreats to young people. Between 1950 and 1956, he authored a number of books and articles, including Therese von Lisieux (Thérèse of Lisieux) (1950), Schleifung der Bastionen (Razing the Bastions) (1952), Das betrachtende Gebet (Prayer) (1955), and Die Gottesfrage des heutigen Menschen (The God Question and Modern Man) (1956), as well as monograph studies of Georges Bernanos, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Schneider. Much of his work during this period—written after the release of Pope Pius XII's apostolic constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia, which gave an ecclesiastical blessing to secular institutes—confronts the question of how Christian discipleship might be lived from within the world.

After he was welcomed into the Diocese of Chur, he settled in the city of Basel, hosted by his married friends Werner Kaegi and Adrienne von Speyr, in whose home he remained until 1967. During this period—although he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1958—Balthasar wrote prolifically, most notably the seven-volume work Herrlichkeit (The Glory of the Lord) (1961–1967), which was to serve as the first part of a theological trilogy on the three classical transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth. He also translated and edited for Johannes Verlag, with an emphasis on the writing of his collaborator Speyr. Balthasar was not invited to take part in the Second Vatican Council, which took place during this time, but after the release of Herrlichkeit, his theological reputation would grow significantly.

Adrienne von Speyr, who had been seriously ill since the mid-1950s, died on September 17, 1967, and Balthasar assumed responsibility for the Community of Saint John.

Later years: Communio and ecclesiastical honors

Moving to another house in Basel, Balthasar continued to write, edit, and translate extensively.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI appointed him to the International Theological Commission. He worked as a theological secretary at the Second Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 1971, penning the synod document on priestly spirituality, and he also received the Romano Guardini Prize from the Catholic Academy of Bavaria.

With Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, he founded the international theological journal Communio in 1971, with collaboration from members of the Italian Communion and Liberation movement, including Angelo Scola. The journal was conceived as a more traditionally minded alternative to the progressive Concilium, and Balthasar described its mission in terms of courage: "[T]his truth we believe in strips us bare. Like lambs among wolves. It is not a matter of bravado, but of Christian courage, to expose oneself to risk." Karol Wojtyła became the editor of the Polish edition of the review.

Later in the 1970s, he was given fellowships at the British Academy and the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, in addition to prizes for translation. In 1984 John Paul II awarded him the first Paul VI International Prize for his contributions to theology. The following year saw an official Vatican symposium on the life and work of Adrienne von Speyr, which closed with a laudatory closing address by the pope.

Death

From the low point of being banned from teaching as a result of his leaving the Society of Jesus, Balthasar's reputation had risen to the extent that John Paul II announced plans to make him a cardinal on 29 May 1988. He died, however, in his home in Basel on 26 June 1988, two days before the ceremony which would have granted him that rank. He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Leodegar im Hof (Hofkirche) in Lucerne.