One of Adrienne von Speyr's most cherished concerns was to rekindle Christians' desire for contemplation and thus to renew the Church's prayer. Light and Images stands next to The World of Prayer as the most important of her works on the subject. In this striking book, Adrienne sets forth the deepest theological foundations of contemplative prayer according to the reciprocal relationship between "light" and "images". The light of God's revelation is truth and love; it embraces both Christ's "objective" manifestation in Scripture and tradition, and the Spirit's "subjective" illumination in the believer's heart through faith, hope, and love. To contemplate is to dwell as intimately as possible in this light, which includes some share as well in the darkness of the Son's suffering of the Cross. This light in turn illuminates the concrete "images" that make up Christian existence: not only the words and figures of Scripture and the Church's sacraments, but also the apparently ordinary things of daily life. From within the realm of contemplation, there is nothing in the world that does not speak of heaven, nothing that does not offer a glimpse into God's inner life.

Adrienne von Speyr (1902-1967) was a Swiss medical doctor, convert to Catholicism, a mystic, wife and author of over 60 books on spirituality and theology. She collaborated closely with the renowned theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, her confessor for 27 years, and they co-founded the Community of Saint John. Her numerous writings, published by Ignatius Press, are recognized by leading theologians and writers as a major contribution to the mystical and spiritual writings of the Church. Among her most important works are Book of All Saints, Confession, The World of Prayer, Handmaid of the Lord, and The Passion from Within.

Introduction, by Hans Urs von Balthasar

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1. The Idea in God

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God's infinite life and vision is opened to man. Man and world are ontologically ordered to the Son and must be interpreted accordingly. The center of the world: the Cross, wherein God's entire love, and man's entire disobedience and entire obedience, is revealed. Contemplation must be catholic: both universal and personal. Its community-building function.

2. Perceiving God's Will

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The loss of a sense for God and for his will because of sin. The Son, as man, re-establishes this sense. The Our Father as inserting the believer into obedience to God. Active love as knowing God and God's will. The incorporation of those who love into the objective love of the Church and the Son.

3. Light

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The grace of faith as the most living life and at the same time as that which comprehends all of life's movement. Faith as light, which envelopes everything that is illuminated. Light as gift and as appropriated responsibility. Christ as light and as illuminated by faith. Light as the "with", as participation. Integration of one's entire everyday life into light.

4. Shadow

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The Yes without shadows; every Yes stems from prayer. The sinner's being carried in prayer through others' powers of love, so that he can be freed from the shadows of his sin. The shadows that are eliminated, those that remain, and those that arc newly formed. The Cross overshadows prayer. Anonymity and the inseparability of the good from the bad shadows. Discrepancy between the fulfilled meaning of the words of prayer and their emptiness and void. Reservations in "suffering-with", and their being overcome in love.

5. The Night

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The night of creation, of sin, and of the Cross: their interpenetration. The Lord distributes his night, but it remains something suffered in him. It is present as a mystery in every faith, and therefore concerns everyone. Analogy between the night of the Cross and Christian existence. The prayer of the day in relation to the night. The prayer of the night made out of the night: out of the Lord's night and into the night of the Church and of faith. The necessity of hearing the cry of abandonment. Dying to one's own life in the contemplation of the Cross in order to live on through love.

6. Awakening from the Night

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The Church guides one's contemplation; her guidance continues to the threshold at which God's guidance takes over. In what sense the confessor retains a certain supervision even in the contemplation guided by God. In the night of the obstructed day. Awakening from the night, the repeated awakening that continues to be characterized by the night: at the end of the night, and in a relative sense within the period of night.

7. Drawing Near

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Reading Scripture and attaching oneself to God in prayer; both of these together make up contemplation. Contemplation as the attempt to gaze upon the incarnate Word: in himself, in his relationship to the world, and in his relationship to the Father. How a person contemplates an esteemed fellow human being. Word and sacrament in mutual fecundation. The Lord's counsels as paths to understanding. His presence in law and commandment; in contemplation, God's Word as commandment and as historical existence in the flesh come together in unity. Christian existence out of the contemplation of the Word, who includes us in his circular journey. Human word as image and basis, the "ever-greater" of the divine Word. The power of God's Word in heaven. Contemplation as responding to the Word; inclusion and distance. The unity of being and act in the Son, the unity of contemplation and action in the one contemplating.

8. Images of the World

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For us, the world consists of images, and these must be interpreted in view of the Son. The uniqueness of all images of the world; their value for God. Jesus' image of the world is open and accessible to the believer. Distance and proximity to things in faith. God-willed joy in the world, but a joy ordered to Christ. The beauty of things, Christian art. The eternal dimension of images, their relationship with God's Word. Images in the sphere and on the margins of contemplation. Prayer and constant everyday interchange of image and frame.

9. Images of Heaven

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The Son as image of the Father. The concreteness of heaven in revelation. The images of the apocalypse; the same eyes of the visionary see both heaven and earth. "Today you will be with me in paradise"; "I see heaven opened up": the image-transcending presence of heaven. The transference of earthly reality into the kingdom of heaven. Objectivity as the precondition for such a transposition: both in the Incarnation (heaven coming to earth) and for the eschatological promise (earth entering into heaven). Preserving on earth the images of heaven. Contemplation of heaven possible only within the concreteness of revelation. Earthly and heavenly contemplation complement one another. Christ, as the God-man, is the measure for faith's contemplation.

10. The Lord's Parables

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The uncloseable gap in the contemplation of the Lord's miracle and his essence as God made man. In the parables, there is at first a continuity between the earthly and the divine, but then the chasm appears. The parables are simple and yet contain an in-exhaustible mystery. The Son's capacity to create images of the kingdom of heaven and to fill them with eternal life.

11. Images of the Trinity

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The world that can be divided up numerically as the revelation of the one God. Man, woman, and child as image. The holy family as a higher image. Jesus' human nature as the manifestation of the entire triune life of God. Number and number series as an image. The entire economy of salvation as rooted in the trinitarian God. The Our Father and the images that the Son places in it. Man as image. The Son in his fulness as the recapitulation and unity of the world, as the comprehensive image.

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Light And Images Elements Of Contemplation

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