St. Teresa of Ávila (after Edward Leen)
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
We’re told in the book of wisdom, “Think of the Lord in goodness and seek him in simplicity of heart” (Wis. 1:1).
The life of Jesus is a force. The life of his saints is an inspiration. When the church raises a servant of God to the honor of her altars, she wishes us to understand that the sanctity that she thus honors is meant not only to win beatitude for the saint, but also to offer light and guidance to others.
The life of each hero and heroine of sanctity is a manifestation of a particular aspect of the inexhaustible human and divine perfection of Jesus. Such a life should be studied, not out of idle curiosity or for its historical interest, but in a desire to gain a deeper understanding of God made man.
Objects and drawings are used to convey abstract truth to the minds of children. The ideals and actions revealed in a well-written saint’s life bear to the ideals and actions of the savior as portrayed in the gospels, somewhat of the same relation that the object lesson bears to the thought the teacher wishes to bring to birth in the minds of young pupils.
There’s a difference, of course. The life of the saint is not a mere symbol of the life of Christ. It is a living sign which is vital with the vitality derived from that which it signifies.
It may be said with truth, the life of every saint is a message from God to us, and a message suited to the particular needs of the age in which we live. It is a great loss if the import of this message is missed. But it is at once particular and universal. In answering the requirements of any given time, it loses none of its appeal to souls of all times.
Unlike the utterances of human wisdom which lose somewhat of their force and applicability with the passage of years and the changes in the conditions of things, the spiritual lessons taught us by God through the lives of the saints never lose their actuality.
Any work of great art is seen to express the spirit of the period which gave it birth. Yet it endures for all ages and never ceases to strike secret chords of sympathy in the depth of men’s souls. The life of a saint is a work of divine art. Like all that comes from the hand of God, the sanctifier, it transcends the conditions of time and space, and is new with the newness of eternity and ever fresh with the freshness of immortality.
So it is with the great Saint of Avila. A true child of her epoch, strongly marked with the characteristics of her race and her epoch, yet she speaks in accents as familiar to us as if she were of yesterday. As we turn over the pages of her writings, we find nothing outmoded in thought or, even what is stranger still, in expression. She lays bare the secret aspirations of every soul that aspires to spirituality, and gently but inexorably forces on the consciousness the spiritual possibilities such souls catch occasional glimpses of in themselves.
As year by year, the liturgical cycle brings around the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila, the church stresses for the faithful the great lesson of her life. It’s a lesson that is old, but ever new. The worthy celebration of her feast demands that we should bring a profound faith to the consideration of the great saint’s life and utilize for the practical direction of our conduct such lessons as may be drawn from it.
It would be a mistake to think that because of the mystical heights which she reached in her spiritual ascension, she is a saint only for the select few. She was 40 years of age before she fully surrendered to divine grace. And for 20 years of that time, she battled with the difficulties that beset the path of all those who give themselves earnestly to the practice of mental prayer.
The vicissitudes of those years, with their alternations of fervor and tepidity, find a parallel in the experiences of ordinary souls. Her final triumph is an encouragement for the lowly as for the great, for the poorly endowed as for the gifted.
This saint seems to have been chosen by God to disclose to men the wonders that are wrought in the human soul when it yields to the action of grace, to inspire them with an ardent desire for the union with God which renders such wonders possible, and to call them to the practice of mental prayer, which is the normal road to such union.
It is not in vain that God used her marvelous talents of description and analysis to give such expression as is humanly possible to the higher mystical states. It is true that what she speaks of needs experience for its proper comprehension. Nevertheless, these passages of her writings are not meant exclusively for the eyes of those who are called to make the ascent of Mount Carmel. But through them, even the ordinary reader may glimpse something of the glorious destiny that awaits himself when the seed of sanctifying grace in his soul finally blossoms into the glory of the beatific vision.
The ecstatic happiness that filled the soul of Saint Teresa when rapt in God was but a resultant of the development of the possibilities latent in divine grace. For her readers, those experiences open vistas on the bliss which “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (1 Cor. 2:9). Saint Teresa’s ecstasies give one a more satisfying notion of the joys of heaven than do the learning of theologians and the eloquence of preachers.
God, who is the undisputed and irresistible master of created minds and hearts, might, if he so willed, produce by his own direct action all that he desires to effect in souls. But it appears to be a law of his providence to take instruments from among men to carry out his divine purposes. But even in doing this, he unfailingly manifests his mastery over all things, by making it abundantly clear that there is no proportion between the native capacity of the instrument he chooses and the great effects he secures through them.
Saint Paul declares this to be a principle of the divine action. “The foolish things of the world has God chosen that he may confound the wise, and the weak things of the world has God chosen that he may confound the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).
Yet while thus safeguarding the attribution to himself of the principal role in all enterprises for the salvation and sanctification of men, God is not unmindful of the order and harmony that are characteristic of his inward being and his outward actions. In all, he has a studied attention to the fitness of things.
In the chosen of God, there are in all cases found certain qualities which adapt them admirably to the undertakings which they are to be instrumental in bringing to a successful issue. This is seen in the organizing talent of a Saint Ignatius, the romantic temperament of a Saint Francis of Assisi, and in the quick and flexible intelligence of a Saint Catherine of Siena.
Saint Teresa’s natural endowment lay in a clear and penetrating mind, a warm heart, and a will in which force and tenderness were admirably blended. Many an eminent and learned person that had occasion to discuss with her matters charged with spiritual or temporal import, left her presence filled with admiration for the masculine quality of her intellect.
It was true that in her power of grasping principles, in going straight to the very heart of a question, in seizing the point at issue in a problem, in her independence of the concrete, and in her power to rise superior to personal considerations, there was much of what belongs to a man’s mental processes in the workings of her mind.
Yet with all this, she was in no sense a masculine type. She was utterly womanly and had all the greatness, distinction, and grace that are signified by that term. She had all a woman’s quick intuition and a good deal of a woman’s incapacity for discernment of character. The logical processes of discursive reasoning were as distasteful to her as they are to the average member of her sex.
She had a woman’s quick sensibility and responsiveness to all that is attractively noble. She had, too, a woman’s unselfish impetuosity in giving herself, regardless of the cost in terms of pain and hardship, to whatever captured her.
Intellectual images came more easily to her than imaginative ones. She confesses that her efforts in prayer to form concrete images of spiritual realities were, as a rule, very ineffectual. Her will without struggle embraced with ardor the good presented to her by the intelligence. Unhesitatingly, she flung herself into the prosecution of the project that seemed right to her to compass.
Her life combined the highest contemplation with the most active labors in the service of his majesty, as she affectionately styled the Lord Jesus. The natural elevation and chivalry of her spirit disposed her to cleave with intense loyalty to Jesus, once she had experienced his generosity in her regard. The quick decision of her will and the keen discernment of her intelligence impelled her towards a life of arduous labor for the salvation of souls, as the most fitting way of giving expression to the ardent loyalty that burned within her.
During the last 20 years of her life, at the time that her natural and supernatural qualities had attained their highest development, all Saint Teresa’s energies were consecrated to her great commission: the reform of the order of Mount Carmel. As soon as she had established on a firm basis the convents of the strict observance, she set herself with indomitable courage to the formation of monasteries for men who desired to forgo the amenities of the mitigated rule and take up a life of primitive austerity.
The first house of the strict observance for men was opened at Duruelo in the year 1568. From that date until her death, the sufferings, trials, opposition, and contradictions of all kinds that she was called to undergo for the cause of the reform forged her soul to an eminent degree of perfection.
Seeing that the undertaking of this reform was laid upon her by the express orders of her divine master, seeing that it called upon all the quick resources of her sanctity to bring it to a happy termination, and seeing that the most fruitful years of her life and her last days upon earth were wholly devoted to it, one might be tempted to think that this was the great purpose of her life, determined from all eternity.
It might seem therefore that the message of her life was meant by God to convey to us is that, arming ourselves with confidence in him, we should never allow discouragement to paralyze our efforts when confronted by the difficulties that invariably confront those who undertake some great work for the divine glory and the salvation of souls.
There’s no doubt that her life is a stirring trumpet call to contemplative souls in the middle of the world to be actively apostolic by prayer and penance. One cannot read the life history of the great saint without being deeply impressed by the example she has set of undaunted heroism and supernatural doing, and without being moved to admiration of a career devoted to the active service of Jesus Christ.
Yet, in spite of all this, neither the founding of her convents nor the reform of the friars was the ultimate goal of her earthly labors. The reform looked to something beyond, which was Teresa’s great preoccupation. The reform was not the end of her strivings, and this would be incredible for us had we not the assurance of her own words for it.
What was the great purpose that she ever had in mind in all that she did and attempted? It was to recall to men the basic truth of Christianity. This is that the soul of every Christian is called to engage in the closest ties of intimacy with God through Jesus Christ.
Saint Teresa’s great contribution to human Christian culture was to reveal the immense possibilities of growth in the divine which may be found in the gift of sanctifying grace. Describing its marvelous effects on her own soul, she shows what it can develop into when its action is not impeded.
She has nothing so much at heart as to persuade men that all without exception are by grace called to taste the intoxicating bliss that is experienced by the soul in intimate intercourse with its creator. Having herself found, after painful tentatives, the way to this intimacy, her ambition is to share her knowledge with all others. She makes herself the apostle of mental prayer. Prayer, she explains, releases all the latent possibilities of sanctifying grace. Her writings are a passionate appeal to men to rise from the natural to the supernatural, which has become theirs by virtue of their divine adoption.
She reformed Mount Carmel in order that there might be a society, the life of whose members should be a constant evidence to the world that on this earth there can be a real foretaste of the life experience of heaven. The Carmelites, according to her design, were to arouse in man a longing for the supernatural experience that promised such great happiness, and then to initiate those in whom such longings should be aroused into the ways of interior life.
Saint Teresa is the heaven-sent advocate of the interior life. Realizing that it is not the function of women to teach, she called to her aid friars who, being men of prayer themselves and versed in mystical theology, should be capable guides for consecrated souls in the cloister and for souls in the world seeking union with God.
Saint Teresa’s voice was raised at a critical moment in history. The Protestant revolt had taken place, and few men, scarcely any men, realized the far-reaching consequences with which that revolt was pregnant. Even the great theologians were too close to it to discern in it anything other than matters for theological dispute.
Saint Teresa’s intuitions penetrate deeper than the profound reasonings of the scholars. Did she in some measure divine that it was the very notion of the supernatural itself that was at stake? Did she discern that the perversion of the true notion of the supernatural by the heretics contained in the germ the religious aberration that would ultimately substitute something human in the place of God as object of man’s worship and man’s loyalty?
An instinctive sense of what was really at stake moved her to devote her powers as a writer and a saint to a searching analysis of the supernatural. She calls on her own experience as well as on the teachings of theology to prove that it is no external and merely logical imputation of justice, but an inner spiritual force transforming the soul to its very depths and in its faculties, and fertile in vital phenomena that reflects the inner life of God himself.
God on his side seconded his faithful and zealous servant. He guided her pen, stimulated her memory, and by inward illuminations helped her to apt expression and enlightening illustration of her thought.
The inner life of Teresa was a victorious refutation of the naturalism that breathed through and in the new religion. God set her in the sublimity of her ecstasies and in the serene grandeur of her perfected soul over against the miserable human culture to which the rebels to his authority summoned their misguided dupes.
The appeal of Saint Teresa’s life had great actuality in the times in which she lived. The appeal of that life is even more actual today, when we are living in the almost complete eclipse of the supernatural that was the inevitable outcome of the so-called reform.
The darkness of the eclipse lies over the world that has wandered from the orbit of true faith. Its painful shadow has in some way or another fallen even on souls that belong to the true fold. In too many Catholics, there is but an extremely vague notion of the supernatural, and what is worse, a strong reluctance to dissipate that vagueness and give greater precision to their knowledge of God’s dealings with the human soul.
They’re content to make their religion consist in an arid and grudging and sometimes sullen effort to shape their conduct to the moral law. They have no ambition to be enlightened regarding the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit in the interior of the devout soul. If there be excepted those who consecrated themselves to God in religion, how few there are who aspire to pass beyond the practice of vocal prayer and to venture on the ways of mental prayer.
Jesus has said, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). They hear these words and they give no heed to the invitation implied in them. They prefer that their relations with the savior should remain formal and respectfully distant.
The close intimacy springing from the loving commerce which Saint Teresa taught is something which stirs a vague uneasiness in them rather than makes a strong appeal to them. By a fear, the causes of which escape their consciousness, they dread enlightenment. They do not want to know too much about their religion. A secret instinct warns them that to know much is to commit oneself too much, and that close proximity to God has to be paid for by sacrifice.
Saint Teresa is unwearied in her efforts to dispel these cowardly fears. She acknowledges that the cultivation of mental prayer and the interior life involves suffering and self-sacrifice. But she is careful to point out, using her own experience as proof, that the reward of perseverance more than repays the effort in this life. The glory, a favorite word of hers, to which the interior soul is occasionally admitted, reduces to insignificance the pains by which it is purchased.
She assures her readers that the happiness which she herself enjoyed and which she depicted in such an appealing language was within the reach of all who should give themselves to mastering the art of prayer. The strength of her conviction in this matter was what impelled her to the laborious composition of those great works which have immortalized her name. She wrote under incredible difficulties, amidst continuous interruptions, and harassed with the unceasing cares caused by her foundations. It’s difficult to read her autobiography and the treatises on prayer she composed expressly for her nuns without being moved to take the path to which she pointed.
It has been truly said that it is in terms of the heart that a man is great. This means that grandeur of soul is marked by the nobility of the objects to which the affections of the soul are given. But the warmth of heart and power of affection do not ennoble of themselves alone. They can do the very opposite. There is need of a strong, cultivated intelligence if the noble and first-rate are to be sharply distinguished from the commonplace and the second-rate.
Nobility of affection is dependent on loftiness of view. The will has to wait on the intelligence. If one is to live highly, one must see truly and grandly.
The great Saint of Avila was endowed by nature with a very fine and clear intelligence. The presence of this gift revealed itself from her earliest years. Born in easy circumstances, she was brought up in the midst of a refinement and culture that made life fair and attractive.
So, we could ask Our Lady that contemplating the life of St. Teresa, we may increase our own personal desires for holiness and correspond better to our Christian vocation.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW