What that unreserved “yes” continues to tell us today

Adrienne Von Speyr, L’Ancella del Signore - Maria
[The Handmaid of the Lord – Mary], Jaca Book

I have always been fascinated by the woman who managed in her human experience to reconcile her profession as a doctor (the first woman in Switzerland) with that of mother and wife, transfiguring it into a mystical experience (accepted after a path of conversion from Protestantism) singular in the female theological panorama of the 20th century. Everyone knows the profound influence of Adrienne Von Speyr on the great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. In this book from 1948, which traces the stages of Mary’s life, each time showing the “Handmaid’s” adaptation to the Lord’s will, a Mariological insight is worth exploring. Von Speyr wants to show how with her “yes” Mary renounced forever to plan her life and that of her Son’s. The “fiat” she pronounces represents the perfect synthesis of obedience and charity, since it manifests the will to be solely at God's service. I was interested to discover that the Von Speyr’s conception of mysticism lies precisely here, where a mission for the Church, whose inner form is Mary’s “yes”, in self-forgetfulness, to make room for God’s word. A challenging but luminous and transparent book.