Batz on Von Speyer's "Confession"

Confession,1780
Longhi ,Uffizi

Homesickness for God.
Adrienne Von Speyr’s
“Confession”

Georg Batzing

“Just as Christ in his Passion takes on himself all the sins of the world and confesses them in a world‑ encompassing act before the Father, so the sinner, following Christ, must ‘attempt’ to bring to light his sin (which is inseparable from the sin of the world) before the Church in personal confession.”

SOMETHING has remained intact in the Catholic Church that has been lost to modern society elsewhere, namely, sufficiently differentiated ways of expressing, and sympathizing with, unsuccessful lives, social pathologies, and miscarried plans. So said Jurgen Habermas at the beginning of this year on the occasion of a widely noted encounter with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger at the Catholic Academy of Bavaria. The threat posed by a disorienting modernization of society, Habermas went on to say, has created the need to salvage ideas with religious potential. By transposing originally religious meanings into a secular paradigm, as when the imago Dei is “translated” into the equal dignity of all humanity, a dignity to be accorded unconditional recognition, the Christian faith could fruitfully and constructively engage in a mutual learning process with secular society. Habermas stands squarely in the tradition of the Enlightenment and in line with the intention of Kant’s philosophy of religion: to transform the revealed religion of Christianity (for believers) into a religion of natural reason (for everyone). Of course, this project remains controversial, because there are good grounds for skepticism about how much of the authentic content of Christianity is actually preserved. The Christian faith, in the center of which stands the Incarnation of the Son of God in the man Jesus Christ, aims at a very concrete way of life, which dissolves when translated into an ahistorical abstraction. The reservations of modern man with regard to the offensive concreteness of the Christian worldview may certainly be traced back to the Enlightenment, with its bent toward abstraction, secularity, and subjectivity. Where Christian faith—especially Catholicism—comes too close to home: in the real Church with its requirements, in the papacy and the Magisterium, in celibacy and the Sunday obligation, such realities provoke resistance and objections in the name of enlightened freedom and modernity.

All this was already understood by Adrienne von Speyr when she dictated Confession, one of her central works, in 1960.1 With delicate psychological sensitivity, she uncovers the whole gamut of rationalizations and evasion human beings resort to in the face of personal guilt. While the sense of sin may be blunted, it cannot be entirely suppressed, and expresses itself in vague forms of disquiet, as well as in a need for purification, relief, and consolation. In order to attain healing—of this, Adrienne von Speyr, a practicing physician, was convinced—one ultimately needs to dare the onl^y concrete treatment, which unsparingly reveals the full measure of sin’s perils and leads to the unavoidably necessary therapy. “Only the creator of the soul can ultimately treat the human soul so as to make it become as he requires. Only he can heal it, employing means that only he knows and prescribes for healing” (14). And the means God has ordained for the baptized sinner is confession.

In this way, Adrienne intimates a change of perspective which characterizes her theological approach in general: “The absolute priority belongs to God” (35). This does not distract the individual from the realistic appraisal of his situation. On the contrary: it is sin that distracts him, rives him asunder, and shatters the wholeness desired for him by God. In its essence sin is “non-love” (73), an anxiety-ridden fall from the ground of existence (215), which taxes faith and narrows freedom. Hence, the “confessing Christian” is not “an immature, truncated human being, but is on the contrary one placed in a position of mature responsibility” (105), one who seeks “to pull himself together” (172) by leaving behind the guilt incurred by “dependence” (230) and “distraction” (173), by giving up his “Godforsakenness” (106), and by redirecting his vision toward God. As a sinner, the individual cannot really be certain of his own status. He cannot figure out his situation on the basis of his circumstances or psychological state of mind. What he needs is the liberating breakthrough to “God’s truth” (16); for this reason, the sacrament of confession is “not a psychological affair that is a matter of self-reflection and self-knowledge, but rather a matter of God’s closeness” (191ff). It places the person “before, and within, his divinely ordained destiny, within the ultimate and the definitive” (16).

This presupposes a readiness on the part of the confessing person for unreserved openness and transparency towards God and the Church, an undisguised, unreluctant, freely executed self-disclosure out of faith and love. Adrienne employs the phrase “being naked before God” (203) with predilection, a commonplace professional experience for her as a physician, and one certainly involving “humiliation” (17). While the sinner conceals himself, the Christian returning to God discloses himself in confession; he seeks to become aware that God sees everything, “but that he [does] so as a helper, an intercessor, a dispenser of grace” (222). Confession thus involves less active presentation and revelation of self than an abiding within God’s all-seeing grace—an abiding that expresses a contemplative attitude. Adrienne von Speyr coined the term “attitude of confession” (Beichthaltung)2 to denote this. This is one of her fundamental ideas, which not only formulates the attitude with which the sacrament of penance ought to be received, but also suggests a program for forming the Christian life in its entirety. In contrast to former times, in which the issue of being Christian as an ultimate (and all-embracing) disposition was less urgent and consciously thematic, it is thrust upon us today to such an extent “that one can no longer find any answer for it other than the one that gives this entire imperilled existence the meaning which Christ gave in an all-encompassing manner to his own” (164).

What we have said so far is an echo of the “central attitude of the Son” (164): his obedience, to which the Christian is called to conform himself in his life of faith. Anyone who wishes to learn how to confess must gaze into the life of the Son of God, in order to come to know what confession is, how confession is intended, and how confession operates. The incarnate Son of God—like us in all things except sin—is the “mirror . . . which God holds before us” (19). Therefore Adrienne recommends reading and meditating upon Holy Scripture as a practical preparation for confession, “because here the truth that stands before us becomes so much more concrete than in the schematic ‘confessional manuals’ [Beichtspiegeln], which merely catalogue possible sins” (212).

For this reason it is not absurd, but rather an interpretation of the Incarnation and Passion carried to its logical conclusion, that Adrienne should speak of a confession as a “mystery and possession of the Son” (60). This is true not merely insofar as Christ instituted confession at Easter (cf. Jn 20:22ff) in order to mediate something of the divine life to humanity. It is also true already in the trinitarian foundation of confession: the attitude of the eternal Son before the Father is the “archetype of confession” (21). Adrienne does not shrink from saying that this attitude is analogous to the attitude of confession: “For God it is bliss to disclose himself before God” (20). The Son becomes man in this attitude, and places himself on the Cross, in the “crossfire of confession” (32): Jesus Christ discloses to him [the Father] sin taken as a whole as well as individually, substituting himself for the world as a whole as well as for each individual sinner. He does this so that the Father may recognize us in his Son, forgive us our sin, and take us again into fellowship with himself.3

As such, the one who recognizes the truth of sin is also the one who confesses it in truth. Recognition and confession cannot be separated in the Son, because everything that he possesses and knows belongs to the Father. But because he, when he recognizes sin, bears its guilt . . . he suffers, though not in isolation from God, but rather in an openness that is of the same nature as the open verbal confession. (23)

In the mystery of Good Friday the Son “confesses” (60), as it were, the sin of the world by carrying it unto his death. On Holy Saturday he comes to know it from the side of the underworld in its ultimate and eternal hopelessness as “sin become anonymous” (61), as already detached from the subjectivity of the sinner—which of course takes away nothing of its monstrous horror. The Resurrection “is the sudden absolution” (62), and absolution is the plenary authority of the Risen One, who offers himself “as pure forgiveness” (61), and gives confession to the Church as a “gift of salvation” (160) for it to administer. Confession is the “fruit of the Cross” (160), and so also “the sacrament of the fruit of the Cross” (190), because it makes the event of salvation present in every life. At this point, one would expect a discussion of baptism, which should be the fundamental way of making the redemptive act present in the life of the Christian. Adrienne does not deal with the relationship between baptism and confession, however.4 She keeps her attention focused very much on confession, because (fully in line with the Catholic understanding of justification) she sees genuine human participation (through the willingness to confess, remorse, and acknowledgment of sin) as an integral dimension of confession. The human being, “together with his particular, unique situation,” is invited “to join in” (85).

The Cross—including the entire Incarnation of the Son—can be understood as the archetypal confession. Consequently, Christian-sacramental confession becomes “a duty that looks to the Cross. Because it derives from the Cross, it also leads back to the Cross. Therefore it requires and fosters an attitude that strives to emulate the attitude of the Lord” (223). The Son is the Way, “and he sets the sinner on this Way in confession” (83). For this reason, confession is a “training in following Christ” (136) in the strict sense of the term. Hans Urs von Balthasar referred to this connection between the christological foundation of confession and its interpretation as an event in the sequela Christi as a magnificent idea that, far from being a mere theological fancy, restores to confession its often overlooked theological amplitude:5 just as Christ in his Passion takes on himself all the sins of the world and—as the Crucified One—confesses them in a world-encompassing act before the Father, so the sinner, following Christ, must “attempt” to bring to light his sin (which is inseparable from the sin of the world) before the Church in personal confession, and so to obtain a personal share in the great absolution of Easter.

This will not succeed without effort. Although the “minimal effort of confession” corresponds merely to a tiny degree to the “infinite effort of the Lord,” who for the sake of our salvation took death upon himself, it does make us aware that the sacrament is “anything but automatic” (117), for the sinner submits himself to a genuine judgment. At the same time, he advances along a genuine path of grace, which “always” brings “something new” (186). No one who confesses need fear that sin will become a comfortable routine, even if he does not make noticeable progress from one confession to the next. As a fruit of the Cross of Christ, as a fruit of his life, the sacrament is “something alive, which also takes life in us” (160). Accordingly, the confessor demands action and a “vitality aimed at awakening new vitality” (69).

Confession and Christian mission go together. Probably no other sacrament makes “clearer the transparency man needs for his mission.” “The cinders that had stopped the flow are dissolved and swept aside, so that the mission may once again have freedom of circulation” (230). The treasure of regained freedom remains intact only “through squandering”; only by acting on behalf of others does love maintain its wonderful power, which was at work in absolution. Here we have another proof that confession is not about inculcating immature dependence, but rather about educating for the maturity of those “who, with increasingly sensitive obedience, also acquire an increasingly honed sensitivity to what is demanded of them” (230). Confession thus also offers a new way into the understanding of the Church and of ecclesial life. “I am a baptized individual, and the Church has a claim upon me” (101). Redemption, after all, does not mean that the redeemed are now free to shape their lives as they please. The redeemed are called “to step into a form determined by God—the Church” (72), in order to live according to God’s will therein. When I, as a sinner, am “freed from my impurity” through confession, then I also know that I am re-integrated. I was seized as an individual, but through confession I was returned to the fellowship of the Church. Perhaps I seemed to myself to be very lonely, very out of my element, during my confession. This was a mere appearance, however, for already at that point I stood within the community of the confessing, and however any sacramental community may be specifically structured, they all share in common the fact that they integrate one into the fellowship of the Church. And as he returns the member recognizes: I was always a child of this community, even when my sin dulled the vitality of the connection and of my sense for it. (101) Consequently, confession can promote the willingness to live one’s individual mission in the following of Christ, and to make oneself available to the Lord for the sake of the Church and its growth in faith and love. This concretizes the social—that is, the objectively ecclesial—dimension, to which Adrienne assigns the greatest significance, both with regard to the theological grounding of confession and with regard to its practice and effects.

The phrase “we are free” expresses in summary form Adrienne’s faith in the power of sacramental confession. By “we are -free” she means a “God-directed freedom, a freedom to be a better follower, to be a new man” (122). This enticing perspective alone could motivate laypeople and priests in our time, which has largely lost the benefit of confession, to take this book in hand and so find a way back to the sacrament of penance. Although written over four decades ago, Adrienne’s Confession is a time-transcending work of art.

In a precise fashion, Adrienne traces the crisis surrounding confession back to its fundamental roots in the relationship of modern man to God, on the one hand, and to the tension-laden polarity between the Church and the believing subject, on the other. Her analysis makes it clear that confession is above all an acknowledgment, “not merely of my own sins, but also of God and his ordinances and institutes, yes, even of his Church, with all its weakness and its easily misunderstood, scandalous aspects” (17). Adrienne also plumbs the depths of confession, down to its ultimate origin: in the essence of the trinitarian God and his redemptive concern for humanity, above all in the dying, death, and resurrection of the Son of God for the sake of our salvation. The confessing individual seeks to conform himself to the Son’s obedient attitude of open readiness to do the will of God. Finally, Adrienne contemplates the distribution of roles in confession with sensitivity and with the psychologically expert realism of a physician, suspicious of every one-sided spiritualization. The confessor as well as the confessing individual will find in Adrienne’s book a profoundly theological and thoroughly practical guide to confession that does not minimize possible obstacles and dangers, so that “the most precious things … develop” from confession. In everything Adrienne urges upon the confessor— “he ought to concentrate, gather, strengthen the personal, so that everyone may again lavish himself in love” (147).

Adrienne’s book is not a systematic treatise about confession. It stems from her holistic faith insight, in which existential experience and intellectual penetration mutually enhance each other. Although it requires some effort to understand, it is for all that theologically enlightening, spiritually helpful, and healing for all who experience “homesickness for God” (176).

1 Adrienne von Speyr, Die Beichte, 2^nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1982). In what follows, citations from this work will be noted parenthetically with the corresponding page numbers. For an English translation, see Confession, trans. Douglas W. Stott (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985).

2 Cf. ibid., 20-22, 211, 222, etc. The abundance of neologisms Adrienne forges around the term “confession” underscores its central position in her biography of faith. It is that which she “missed most painfully and searched for most persistently during her Protestant youth” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unser Auftrag. Bericht und Entwurf [Einsiedeln, 1984], 53. For an English translation, see Our Task, trans. John Saward [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994]). Cf. also B. Albrecht, Eine Theologie des Katholischen. Einfiihrung in das Werk Adrienne von Speyrs, vol. 2: Darstellung (Einsiedeln, 1973), 186-189; G. Cardinal Danneels, “Maria, Bereitschaft und Beichthaltung,” in Adrienne von Speyr und ihre kirchliche Sendung. Akten des Römischen Symposiums (September 1985), ed. H. U. von Balthasar, G. Chantraine, A. Scola (Einsiedeln, 1986), 90-105; G. Batzing, “Damit Gott im Menschen wachse. Der Gedanke der Lauterung bei Adrienne von Speyr” in Adrienne von Speyr und ihre spirituelle Theologie. Die Referate am Symposion zu ihrem 100. Geburtstag (September 2002), ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar Stiftung (Einsiedeln-Freiburg, 2002), 65-82. Further examples of linguistic creativity may be mentioned: confessional treasure, confessional humility, confessional openness (40), confessional hour (42), confessional mission (130), confessional fidelity (185), confessional humiliation (208), confessional responsibility (283).

5 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erster Blick auf Adrienne von Speyr (Einsiedeln, 1989), 49. For an English translation, see First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981).