In this first volume of her Posthumous Works, which originally appeared in 1966, Adrienne von Speyr contemplates the attitude of prayer of numerous saints and other figures in the history of the Church. Concerning this contemplation, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who also edited the present work, writes the following in his introduction: “As her confessor, I was given the instruction and thus the authority to ‘transpose’ her into the spirit of many saints and other believers of the past, in order that she might understand from the inside how they prayed. In this, the object was in every case only the saint’s attitude of prayer (and often the attitude of confession that was connected with it), which can be quite distinct from his or her intellectual achievement.”

Further Reading

• Hans Urs von Balthasar. “General Introduction to the Posthumous Works.” The Book of All Saints: Part One, Ignatius Press, 2008, pp. 1–24
• Hans Urs von Balthasar. First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr.