Our Task

"[Adrienne von Speyr] was marked by humour and enterprise. She was like the boy in the fairy tale who sets off to experience fear. At her mother's instigation she had to leave high school but secretly studied Greek at night by the light of a candle, so she could keep up with the others. In Leysin she learned Russian. After her transfer to the high school in Basel, she quickly learned German and at the same time took a crash course in English to catch up with the rest of the class. As I said, she paid for her medical studies by tutoring. Then there is her courageous readiness to stand up for justice. When a teacher struck a boy in the face with a ruler, she rushed forward, turned the teacher to the face the class, and shouted: "Do you want to see a coward? Here's one!" On one occasion in the lecture theatre an intern gave an injection to a patient which promptly killed him. The intern falsely blamed it on the nurse and was defended by the professor. Adrienne got her fellow students to boycott the professor's lectures for so long that he had to move to another university. It was precisely this courage, maintained in the face of the most extreme physical pain, which enabled her after her conversion to take on, for decade after decade, every kind of spiritual and bodily suffering, especially participation in the agony of Christ in Gethsemane and on the Cross. Indeed, when she realised its significance for the reconciliation of the world, she constantly asked for it."