Redemption

Adrienne von Speyr was a Swiss medical doctor, wife, mother, and mystic who died in 1967.  She is the author of over 60 books (dictated to her spiritual director) on theology, the spiritual life, and commentaries on Scripture.  She was given the great gift of being able to commune with the saints and of seeing them at prayer during their lifetimes; indeed, she was able to enter into their prayer and understand it.  Under obedience to her director, she dictated the visions and understandings she had, according to the mission revealed to her when she was six years old.  Although she was raised as a Protestant, in her adult life, she converted to Catholicism.  Her depths of understanding the spiritual gifts that are given to each one of us by God, with the same mathematical precision that He designed the stars and the universe, is amazing---we are each put in a certain place with a certain mission, not for ourselves but for the church as a whole, or for the world as a whole.  The entry on Mary Magdalen is a good example:

She has sinned; the Lord has raised her up again; but he actually took her sins into himself.  And this increases: the more she is liberated, the more he bears, and she is also aware of this. [My note:  until I read this I had not seen that the censure given to Jesus by the Pharisees was the same condemnation they had reserved for this "woman."  He aligned Himself with her as her ally and support in the face of their censure, and said in effect, "Condemn her; condemn Me."]

(continued) She grows into the Lord, as it were, because he has taken over everything she previously was, and he gives her everything she will be.  Thus, a peculiar humility comes about in her; she can no longer meet the Lord without at the same time meeting her sin in him, and her sin in him has merged with the guilt of all people.  For her, the Lord is now the one who bears her guilt, insofar as he at the same time bears the sin of the world.  She confessed one time, repented one time.  But there remains a fundamental confession in her: what belongs to her expands in love into something that concerns all people.  She will no longer be able to encounter the Lord without praying for all sinners.  Without being reminded that it is now her turn to forgive others. For he has shown her how one goes about bearing the sins of others.

And since everyone knows what the Lord has accomplished in her, she becomes a sort of apostle.  She is a living parable, a memorial. She now truly has to lead the life the Lord demands of her and that he has made possible by forgiving her sins.  The excess of grace has to be legible in her.  And it will be, because she does not for a moment ascribe anything to herself: she wants only to show what he is, what he can do.  Her inner attitude results from the fact that she is not asked whether she wants to follow the Lord.  In the moment when she is liberated from her sins, every problem comes to an end: now she has to follow.  What happened is so much a miracle that no other call is necessary.  The call is included in the Lord's deed.  Everyone in whom a miracle has been performed has received this sort of call. 
                                              from the Book of All Saints by von Speyr and von Balthasar