this same love.”24 She believes that for Christian couples and religious men and women who live their
virginity in accord with the profound meaning of their sexuality, there is, “a fresh and unsuspected
richness, with all possible transformations and ways of complimenting and corresponding to one
another, which are an expression of the 'greater-than' of supernatural love.”25
Dietrich von Hildebrand in his study on man and woman confirms that, “spousal love tends in a
unique way to the I-thou communion.”26 Whether in the married state or espoused to the divine person
of Christ, the fruit comes from the love a woman perceives in the Eucharist. Schumacher referring to
Speyr as the “Mystic of Basel” identifies the same I-Thou communion in the Eucharist quoting Speyr
in Das Wort und die Mystik, “The Eucharist models the giving and receiving and giving back of the
body as the consecration of love - as, that is to say, the 'I' finding itself in the 'Thou' - and as 'apostolic
fruitfulness in the child.'"27 Gazing in love upon the Eucharist opens the eyes of a woman to the source
of all truth in God's safekeeping, because contained in the Eucharist is the divine person, Jesus Christ in
unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Receptivity is most clearly evidenced in the actual receiving
of His body and blood surrendered in communion.
Far from sterile, the celibate woman is fruitful and reveals the source of all life itself.
Schumacher explains that Balthasar and Speyr hold “the human - and thus also the corporal and the
sexual - reveals the divine, but only because the human itself is patterned after and predestined to union
with the divine in the person of Christ, who incorporates all of humanity into his filial relation with the
24
25
26
27
Michele M. Schumacher, A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne Von Speyr & Hans Urs Von Balthasar in Dialogue with
Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 307.
Ibid.
Hildebrand, Dietrich von, Man and Woman: Love and the Meaning of Intimacy (Manchester New Hampshire: Sophia
Institute Press, 1966), 39.
Schumacher, A Trinitarian Anthropology, 302.
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