St. Teresa of Avila

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.

Saint Teresa of Avila was born in Spain on March 28, 1515, and joined the Carmelite order at the age of 18.

In response to the extraordinary graces she received from Our Lord, she undertook the reform of her order with the assistance of Saint John of the Cross. In carrying out her work, she met all sorts of setbacks with noble spirit and had to overcome many obstacles in Our Lord’s service. Her writings are a sure guide for reaching union with God. She died in Avila on October 4, 1582, and Saint Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Church on September 17, 1970.

Saint Teresa was certain that through prayer, we can achieve all God asked of us, including what seems impossible through our own effort alone. Several times throughout her life, she heard Our Lord’s words, “What is it that you fear?” Though she was old, sick, and tired, God gave her strength to carry out her resolutions by way of her constant union with him.

After prayer, the foundress could return to her work and apostolate, ready to overcome any obstacle.

One day after communion, when her body was offering resistance to setting up even more new convents, she heard Jesus from within say, “What is it you fear? When have I failed to help you? I am the same now as before. Don’t hold back from setting up those two foundations.” He said, referring to the new convents to be set up in Burgos and Palencia.

Saint Teresa exclaimed, “Almighty God, how different are your words from those of men. I was then so determined,” she said, “and encouraged, that the whole world could not stand in the way.”

Years later, she wrote of what must have been a difficult foundation in Palencia. “All is going so smoothly, I don’t know how long it can go on like this.” In another letter, she went on to say, “Each day it is more obvious how right it was to establish a foundation here.”

She would say the same about the new one in the other city too. “In Burgos, there are so many who want to join, it’s a pity not to have enough room.”

All her confidence from God filled her with joy and cheerfulness in spite of the difficulties of the situation. “For me to go to Burgos with so many ailments, when it was so cold outside, did not seem at all feasible.”

However, Our Lord never left her on her own.

Through prayer, we gain energy to carry out whatever Our Lord is asking of us. This is as true for the priest or the mother of a family as it is for the religious or the student.

The devil, therefore, makes a concerted effort to get us to omit our daily prayer or to do it in a perfunctory way. The tempter knows that the soul who perseveres in prayer and through the goodness of God advances in his service after every fall, is lost to him.

Souls who have always been close to Our Lord speak to us of the primary importance of prayer in the Christian life.

The Curé of Ars taught, “It’s not surprising the devil does everything in his power to get us to lessen the time of our personal dialogue with Our Lord or to do it poorly.”

Prayer is the foundation of faithful perseverance in Our Lord’s service.

And Saint Teresa teaches, “A person who does not stop going forward will eventually arrive, though perhaps late. There is no greater cause for straying from the path of faithful perseverance than letting up in prayer.”

Therefore, we have to prepare carefully for prayer beforehand and bring to it the clear realization that we pray in the presence of the living and glorious Christ.

He sees and hears us with the same affection as he had for those who drew near him during his life on earth.

How wonderfully well the day goes when we take care of our daily conversation with God with calm and attention. How joyful we should be to enjoy the presence of Christ.

In The Forge, we’re told, “Look at that senseless set of reasons the enemy gives you for abandoning your prayer. I have no time, when you’re constantly wasting it. This is not for me. My heart is dry. Prayer is not a question of what you say or feel, but of love. And you love when you try hard to say something to Our Lord, even though you might not actually say anything.”

We should make a resolution, never to slacken in our devotion to prayer. May we always dedicate the best time and place to it, in front of the Tabernacle as often as we can.

Our prayer will be easier if, together with the decisive effort not to give in to voluntary distractions, we try to have dealings with the most sacred humanity of Jesus, an inexhaustible source of love. This practice will greatly facilitate our fulfilling the divine will.

Saint Teresa tells us of the capital impact on her soul of a passing occurrence. It left an indelible impression on her.

She wrote, “Going into the oratory one day, I saw an image the workers had brought in to be put into storage. It depicted the wounded Christ and was so true a rendering of the unspeakable horror of what took place for our sake that it moved me to visualize him that way from that moment on. I felt so ungrateful for those wounds that my heart seemed to split in half within me. I threw myself down near him, weeping bitter tears, and begged him to strengthen me once and for all so that I might not offend him again.”

This great outpouring was not provoked by sentimentality, but by contrite love for Christ who loves us so much. He suffers for us as a most convincing proof of his love.

How natural it is for Saint Teresa to long to behold an image of the one dearest to her. She later added, “How deprived are they who have no conception of the look of Our Lord. It would seem their love were small, since if it were not, they would long to see his face. Even here on earth, it makes me happy to see whoever it is we love a great deal.”

We can’t let our relationship with Jesus be distant and impersonal.

It’s often helpful to make use of our imagination in order to represent Our Lord at different moments during his life. He is born in Bethlehem. The Christ child is subject to Mary and Joseph. Later, the young worker Jesus learns his trade.

We can remember Mary being hard-pressed during the flight into Egypt, and her pain at the summit of Calvary.

Sometimes we may draw near the group of disciples to whom Jesus is explaining a parable. We can join him too on his long journeys from city to city and from town to town.

We might decide to simply remain at his side and enter the house of his close friends from Bethany. There we can contemplate the affection those close friends must have shown him.

No matter what particular occasion we consider, Jesus is our closest friend, one we can always rely on.

In front of the Tabernacle, we can continually learn to refine our dealings with Our Lord.

We pray so that we may encounter the living Christ who is awaiting us.

Teresa had no time for books that propose contemplation as a nebulous immersion in the divinity or as not thinking about anything. She perceived the danger of self-absorption and of getting separated from Jesus, the source of all that is good.

Thus her loud cry, “To go off from Christ, I couldn’t bear it.” This exclamation is valid in our own day in the face of certain methods of prayer that are not inspired by the gospel.

St. John Paul says, “These approaches tend to do without Christ in favor of a mental emptiness far removed from Christianity.”

Many of our difficulties in prayer disappear when we pause to consider that we are in the presence of God. We need to focus our attention on the preparatory prayer that we may be in the habit of saying. “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.”

If we realize that he is as much at our side as he was with the ones who heard him in Nazareth or Bethany, we’re already praying. We look at him and he looks at us. Perhaps we formulate a petition.

At times, we may identify with the particular reading or pause at a given point to make a resolution to improve somehow in our ordinary life. Perhaps we see a way to attend to our family better.

We could smile more though when we’re tired or when we’re frustrated in trying to resolve certain challenging problems.

Maybe we need to struggle to work with more intensity and greater presence of God.

Maybe we could arrange to speak with a friend about going to confession.

Given our effort and the grace of God, we will share the experience encountered by Teresa and by all those who try to pray well. She confides, “I would habitually finish my prayer with consolation and renewed energy.”

The most serious difficulty that militates against perseverance in our daily prayer is discouragement. We shouldn’t get disheartened if, in spite of every effort, we still experience distractions or the time spent seems fruitless.

Prayer requires work on our part.

Saint Teresa said, “For many years, I kept wishing the time would be over. I had more in mind the clock striking twelve than other good things. Often I would have preferred some serious penance to becoming recollected in prayer.”

As many spiritual authors point out, if we try to reject distracting thoughts and are firmly decided to seek more the Lord of consolation than the consolation of the Lord, our prayer will always be fruitful.

Besides, it will often be beneficial for us not to have sensible consolations. This way, we seek Jesus with greater rectitude of intention and thus unite ourselves more intimately to him.

At times, the aridity we experience is not a trial sent or permitted by God so much as a lack of real interest on our part in speaking to him. We may not have prepared sufficiently well beforehand and perhaps we’re lacking the necessary generosity to control our imagination. We need continually to relearn how to focus our attention with real generosity.

For whoever is seriously trying to pray well, the time will come when prayer seems like wandering in the desert because in spite of all our efforts, nothing is felt.

These trials are not spared anyone who takes prayer seriously. We should be aware that the experience is common to all Christians who pray. We should not immediately identify this fairly common experience with the dark night of the soul described in mystical theology.

In any case, however, we should make a firm effort to continue praying during such periods, though it seems artificial. The exact opposite is the case.

Precisely at this juncture, prayer represents a true expression of our fidelity to God. We want to remain in his presence despite not having any sensible consolations.

When this moment arrives, the time has come for proving that our love for God is real.

Now, as in the day of Saint Teresa, there’s a great necessity for prayer, since there are so many needs. The church, society, families, and the health of all souls, including our own, stand to profit from it.

Prayer allows us to make progress in the face of every difficulty. It unites us to Jesus, who awaits us each day in our work, in our family duties, and in a particular way during the time of prayer that we dedicate to him alone.

Interior life is a life which seeks God in everything. A life of prayer and the practice of living in the presence of God. It connotes intimate, friendly conversation with him and a determined focus on internal prayer as opposed to external actions, while these latter are transformed into means of prayer.

John Paul II said Our Lord’s statement that “without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5) is a truth that constantly reminds us of the primacy of Christ and in union with him, the primacy of interior life and of holiness.

In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict emphasized that man cannot always give, he must always also receive. He pointed to the urgency and importance of experiencing in prayer that God is love. He taught that Christians’ dialogue with God allows God to work. God is the only one who can make the world both good and happy.

Our Lord was at prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The kingdom of God, he said, is within you. Turn then to God with all your heart, forsake this wretched world and your soul shall find rest. Learn to despise external things, to devote yourself to those that are within, and you will see the kingdom of God come upon you. That kingdom which is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, gifts not given to the impious.

Christ will come to you offering his consolation if you prepare a fit dwelling for him in your heart, whose beauty and glory, wherein he takes delight, are all from within.

His visits with the inward man are frequent, his communion sweet and full of consolation, his peace great, and his intimacy wonderful indeed.

Therefore, O faithful soul, prepare your heart for this bridegroom that he may come and dwell within you. He himself says, “If any man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).

We imitate Jesus. “After having fed the crowds, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone” (Matt. 14:22–23).

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished” (Matt. 4:1–2).

The invitation that Our Lord addressed to the apostles, “Put out into the deep,” is extended to all of us. “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4).

To fulfill such a rigorous mission, one needs constant interior growth nourished by prayer.

Saint Josemaria was a master of the practice of prayer, which he considered to be an extraordinary weapon to redeem the world. He always recommended in the first place, prayer; then, expiation; in the third place, but very much in the third place, action.

It’s not a paradox, but a perennial truth. The fruitfulness of the apostolate lies above all in prayer and in intense and constant sacramental life. This in essence is the secret of the holiness and the true success of the saints.

The sanctification of work and society is achieved by converting this work into prayer, by offering the work done with professional competence and a spirit of excellence, both technical and ethical, practicing virtues such as honesty, integrity, magnanimity, justice.

Then with presence of God and rectitude of intention, living a life of grace, initiated at baptism and renewed through the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist.

This presence of God is sustained through the recitation of short prayers or aspirations during the day and at work, such as “Jesus, I love you,” “All glory to God,” “Queen of Apostles, pray for us.”

Sanctification of one’s work is also enabled by other regular daily practices of prayer: praying the Rosary, time spent in meditation, reading the Holy Gospel and some spiritual book.

Christian life means dealing with and having union with the Blessed Trinity. Christ is the way and the truth and the life. Through the Trinity on earth we go to the Trinity in heaven.

We’re told in The Way, “When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height. And with it, perspective, weight, and volume.” It’s a gift from God, fruit of his love for men. We may call it in different ways: spiritual life, interior life, or supernatural life. This fourth life also requires attention and good nourishment. Either it grows or it dies, as it happens with the animal and vegetative lives.

The highest end of the supernatural, Christian life that God wants growing and maturing in us while we live on earth is salvation, eternal happiness in heaven. He wants us to be saints.

Fulton Sheen says, “No one ever fell away from God without neglecting their prayer.”

Our supernatural life is nothing else but the life of grace in the soul. Through sanctifying grace, we participate in the divine nature. This is done by way of a new birth, of a supernatural order, by which we are capable of living God’s life. It’s not a transient gift but a habit. A stable disposition rooted in the very essence of the soul and lost only through mortal sin. It’s also called habitual grace, and is different from actual graces, which are God’s assistance to fulfill any good action, no matter how small it may be.

Let us ask Saint Teresa of Avila today that she might help us grow in our interior lives, that we might reach that identification with Christ through grace, learning how to sanctify all the realities of our day.

In The Way we’re told, “You write, ‘To pray is to talk with God.’ But about what? About him, about yourself, joys, sorrows, successes and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses, and acts of thanksgiving and petitions, and love and reparation. In a word, to get to know him and to get to know yourself, to get acquainted.”

Let us ask Our Lady, teacher of prayer, that she might help us to grow along that pathway of interior life, the sort of interior life which Saint Teresa had, and which will lead us to greater union with God throughout each day.

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