On Obedience

This compact book, one of Adrienne von Speyr’s last works, dives into the mystery of Christian obedience, thus bringing the reader into the heart of authentic Christian love.

Profoundly misunderstood in our time, obedience is not just a vow for monks and nuns. Nor does it mean domination, an automatic response of a slave or puppet. Rather, it is the free, creative, and open-hearted response of a perceptive child of God.

Obedience flows through the very core of reality in all its breadth: heaven and earth, God and creation, Christ and man. It colors the life of the family, the life of man in the world, the life of the Christian before God, and even the life of God himself, because obedience means, above all, listening. Only in obedience does joy, indeed life, become possible.

Von Speyr, with a marvelous clarity, precision, and practicality, reveals at once the widest expanses and the subtlest shades of Christian obedience, uncovering for the reader a new path to prayer and to Triune love. And this is a path for all, lay and consecrated alike.