Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967)
While you were away (I was absent for ten days due to a course), the topic almost every night was: solitude (1). Nobody wants to follow (the Lord) into suffering, there is no longer any service (2) regarding suffering, no complete dedication of one's whole life. Thus, solitude grows with the approaching cross.
Peter, the first of the disciples, betrays; a great vacuum forms around the Lord. There would be a number of people who like the Lord and also somewhat believe, but they are afraid of participating in the suffering of the Olive Garden, of participating in the cross. They feel engaged in what is mediocre and vague, and beyond that, their interest does not extend. Perhaps they would be interested if someone had told them earlier, but now they have firm plans for their lives. They are content to continue "vegetating" on the right path.
The Lord is bound to the cross. The limitations that are necessarily linked to human life remain true until the end. He endures the failures and indifference of those around him as a man fulfilling the will of the Father. He, the Son of God, does not want to betray his promise to be human to the very end.
This year, I see the tragedy of the cross significantly in connection with today's world and today's church: everything one hears or reads points in the same direction: fundamentally, people are no longer interested in what is happening in the suffering of the Lord. Yet when I seek reasons why the world is like this today, I cannot help but see my own complicity: I do not want it to be different either. I neither want it nor do I allow myself to be flattened by others. And thus the catastrophe of the cross is made real also due to my—not even that significant—egoism.
Where real battles are fought, one might be sufficiently stirred to engage, but where only these bitter, trivial matters are at play, they let them run free. Perhaps a few days ago I had some good idea; today I say to myself: it’s not worth it, one cannot do anything effective anyway.
For the Lord, however, there is no moment—until the very end there is none!—when he would say: really nothing can be done. In his cross is concentrated everything that humanly has not yet been experienced. Thirst, pain beyond measure, and endless abandonment. From eternity he gave everything, but in specifics, he did not know (3) what the content of his gift was.
(1) Adrienne shares these experiences with Hans Urs von Balthasar on Maundy Thursday 1964 and he writes them down.
(2) Literally: diaconate.
(3) In the sense of: did not experience.
(Adrienne von Speyr, Kreuz und Hölle I., Einsiedeln 1966; translated by: Norbert Žuška, OCarm.)
