“The Way of Perfection” – Part 6 of 10

Let’s read St Teresa of Avila’s “The Way of Perfection”.
Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD.
A Study Edition Prepared by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD.
ICS Publications, ISBN 978-0-935216-70-7

Chapter 25

This short chapter is a nice summary of what St Teresa understands by vocal, mental and contemplative prayer, and the relationship between them.

Vocal prayer is a simple reciting of any formal prayer:

“To recite the Our Father or the Hail Mary or whatever prayer you wish is vocal prayer.”

Mental prayer, on the other hand, is praying with our attention focused on God:

“Mental prayer consists of what was explained: being aware and knowing that we are speaking, with whom we are speaking, and who we ourselves are who dare to speak so much with so great a Lord. To think about this and other similar things, of how little we have served Him and how much we are obliged to serve Him, is mental prayer.”

Finally, contemplative prayer is God speaking directly to our souls. He suspends our faculties so they won’t get in the way as he silently teaches and transforms us.

“And it is His grandeur that speaks to the soul, suspending one’s intellect, binding one’s imagination, and, as they say, taking the words from one’s mouth; for even though the soul may want to do so, it cannot speak unless with great difficulty. The soul understands that without the noise of words this divine Master is teaching it by suspending its faculties, for if they were to be at work they would do harm rather than bring benefit.”

Unlike vocal and mental prayer, where we make the effort in reaching out to God, in contemplative prayer, all the work is on God’s part. The soul is enkindled in love while the understanding is suspended. Only afterwards can it understand that the good the soul just received was not of its own efforts.

“They are enjoying without understanding how they are enjoying. The soul is being enkindled in love, and it doesn’t understand how it loves. It knows that it enjoys what it loves, but it doesn’t know how. It clearly understands that this joy is not a joy the intellect obtains merely through desire. The will is enkindled without understanding how. But as soon as it can understand something, it sees that this good cannot be merited or gained through all the trials one can suffer on earth. This good is a gift from the Lord of earth and heaven, who, in sum, gives according to who He is. What I have described, daughters, is perfect contemplation.”

St Teresa also summarizes the relationship between the different categories of prayer. Its not like one form is better or worse than the other, but all three are interrelated. In summary:
Vocal prayer can and should be joined to mental prayer
Mental prayer can be performed without vocal prayer, as long as you are meditating on God or his mysteries
Both vocal and mental prayer are our efforts to reach God.
Perfect contemplation is God communicating to our soul without any effort on our part

“To keep you from thinking that little is gained through a perfect recitation of vocal prayer, I tell you that it is very possible that while you are reciting the Our Father or some other vocal prayer, the Lord may raise you to perfect contemplation. By these means His Majesty shows that He listens to the one who speaks to Him.”

“To recite the Our Father or the Hail Mary or whatever prayer you wish is vocal prayer. But behold what poor music you produce when you do this without mental prayer. Even the words will be poorly pronounced at times. In these two kinds of prayer we can do something ourselves, with the help of God. In the contemplation I now mentioned, we can do nothing; His Majesty is the one who does everything, for it is His work and above our nature.”

Chapter 26

In the chapters leading up to this one, St Teresa goes to lengths to distinguish vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. Much of this was to address her critics as well as to clarify what is necessary for prayer to be authentic. She never really touched on techniques for prayer, simple step by step instructions that one should habituate so that we make authentic prayer second nature. In this and the following chapters, she begins to address this, culminating in chapt 28 with what she calls the “prayer of recollection”.
Prayer should have a clear beginning. You should first examine yourself to see if you are carrying any offenses against God before approaching him. You can then begin your prayer with the sign of the cross and enter the Lord’s presence.

“… the examination of conscience, the act of contrition, and the sign of the cross must come first. Then, daughters, since you are alone, strive to find a companion. Well what better companion than the Master Himself who taught you this prayer? Represent the Lord Himself as close to you and behold how lovingly and humbly He is teaching you.”

St Teresa wants us to habituate having him present at our side in prayer. He will then never fail us in trials and be with us everywhere. She recognizes how difficult this may be for those who are easily distracted, but she consoles us that we can acquire the habit as she did. God will help.

“If you grow accustomed to having Him present at your side, and He sees that you do so with love and that you go about striving to please Him, you will not be able — as they say — to get away from Him; He will never fail you; He will help you in all your trials; you will find Him everywhere. Do you think it’s some small matter to have a friend like this at your side?”

“O Sisters, those of you who cannot engage in much discursive reflection with the intellect or keep your mind from distraction, get used to this practice! Get used to it! See, I know that you can do this; for I suffered many years from the trial — and it is a very great one — of not being able to quiet the mind in anything. But I know that the Lord does not leave us so abandoned …”

It is not important that we strain our intellect with subtle reflections. Its just important that we look at him. Like a wife who sympathizes with her husband, so too does our Lord sympathize with us. He took on our humanity to experience our humanity, so we can see him joyful when we are joyful or sorrowful when we are in sorrow.

“I’m not asking you now that you think about Him or that you draw out a lot of concepts or make long and subtle reflections with your intellect. I’m not asking you to do anything more than look at Him … He has suffered your committing a thousand ugly offenses and abominations against Him, and this suffering wasn’t enough for Him to cease looking at you. Is it too much to ask you to turn your eyes from these exterior things in order to look at Him sometimes?”

“They say that for a woman to be a good wife toward her husband she must be sad when he is sad, and joyful when he is joyful, even though she may not be so … The Lord, without deception, truly acts in such a way with us. He is the one who submits … If you are joyful, look at Him as risen.”

“If you are experiencing trials or are sad, behold Him on the way to the garden … Or behold Him bound to the column … left so alone that you can console each other. Or behold Him burdened with the cross …”

At this point, St Teresa breaks into prayer. She gives us an example of the kind of prayer we say to this Lord as he is present to us, with an explanatory parenthesis to her readers. Here is paragraph six in its entirety:

“O Lord of the world, my true Spouse! (You can say this to Him if He has moved your heart to pity at seeing Him thus, for not only will you desire to look at Him but you will also delight in speaking with Him, not with ready-made prayers but with those that come from the sorrow of your own heart, for He esteems them highly.) Are You so in need, my Lord and my Love, that You would want to receive such poor company as mine, for I see by Your expression that You have been consoled by me? Well then, how is it Lord that the angels leave You and that even Your Father doesn’t console You? If it’s true, Lord, that You want to endure everything for me, what is this that I suffer for You? Of what am I complaining? I am already ashamed, since I have seen You in such a condition. I desire to suffer, Lord, all the trials that come to me and esteem them as a great good enabling me to imitate You in something. Let us walk together, Lord. Wherever You go, I will go; whatever you suffer, I will suffer.”

Her prayer leads St Teresa to return to the question of our representation of the Lord to ourselves during prayer, and remarks that his presence means not only that he sympathizes with us, but that we sympathize with him on the cross. Our trials and sufferings are laughable by comparison, and thus we are consoled.

“Take up that cross, daughters … in falling with your Spouse, do not withdraw from the cross or abandon it. Consider carefully the fatigue with which He walks and how much greater His trials are than those trials you suffer, however great you may want to paint them and no matter how much you grieve over them. You will come out consoled because you will see that they are something to be laughed at when compared to those of the Lord.”

St Teresa is sensitive to the criticism that representing the Lord to ourselves is not the same as having been present to him in real life, and that if we had witnessed his passion we would have found it easy to sympathize. But St Teresa inverts this and asks, if you are unable look upon the passion from a distance, would you have been able to look at it up close? Either way, you have to see Christ through the eyes of faith, as an innocent victim suffering because of our sins, otherwise even if you were physically present, all you would have seen is another criminal crucified by the Romans.

“You will ask, Sisters, how you can do this, saying that if you had seen His Majesty with your bodily eyes at the time He walked in this world that you would have looked at Him very willingly and done so always. Don’t believe it. Whoever doesn’t want to use a little effort now to recollect at least the sense of sight and look at this Lord within herself … would have been much less able to stay at the foot of the cross with the Magdalene, who saw His death with her own eyes … So, Sister, don’t think you are capable of such great trials if you are not capable of such little ones.”

St Teresa closes this chapter with some simple aids to help us in representing the Lord to ourselves in prayer. She suggests an icon or a devotional book. The important thing is that we speak with God often as we would a close friend; otherwise, you become caught up in your own life and become estranged from your friend.

“What you can do as a help in this matter is try to carry about an image or painting of this Lord that is to your liking, not so as to carry it about on your heart and never look at it but so as to speak often with Him; for He will inspire you with what to say … Otherwise, the failure to communicate with a person causes both estrangement and a failure to know how to speak with him.”

“It is also a great help to take a good book written in the vernacular in order to recollect one’s thoughts and pray well vocally, and little by little accustom the soul with coaxing and skill not to grow discouraged. Imagine that many years have passed since the soul left the house of its Spouse and that until it returns to this house there’s a great need that it know how to deal with Him. For so we sinners are: our soul and our thoughts are so accustomed to wandering about at their own pleasure — or grief, to put it better — that the poor soul doesn’t understand itself.”

Chapter 27

In chapter 21, St Teresa promised that she was going to “mention some thoughts on the words of the Our Father” as an excellent vocal prayer to which mental prayer can be joined. While at times St Teresa seems disorganized, she does return to her earlier points after a digression, usually at the beginning of a new chapter. So, in this chapter, she begins teaching us how to pray with the Lord’s prayer, and concentrates on the words “Our Father”.
We are reminded that this is the prayer that the Son himself says to the Father, and by giving it to us, he invites us to join in. We are thus called by the Son to approach his Father as our Father, making us his children and Christ’s siblings. Even from the first words, the path to contemplation is laid open to us since we are presented with so overwhelming a gift from God that it could “occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word”. As we say “Our Father”, God says back to us “My Child”, and we are drawn into the life of God — “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20)

“Our Father who art in heaven. O my Lord, how You do show Yourself to be the Father of such a Son; and how Your Son does show Himself to be the Son of such a Father! May You be blessed forever and ever! This favor would not be so great, Lord, if it came at the end of the prayer. But at the beginning, You fill our hands and give a reward so large that it would easily fill the intellect and thus occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word … Oh, daughters, how readily should perfect contemplation come at this point!”

“Since You humble Yourself to such an extreme in joining with us in prayer and making Yourself the Brother of creatures so lowly and wretched, how is it that You give us in the name of Your Father everything that can be given? For You desire that He consider us His children …”

“O good Jesus! How clearly You have shown that You are one with Him, and that Your will is His and His, Yours!”

While the Our Father is a vocal prayer, St Teresa argues that it immediately inspires us to mental prayer because our intellects and affections are drawn to the Father because of his overflowing goodness.

“Well, daughters, doesn’t it seem to you that this Master is a good one, since in order to make us grow fond of learning what He teaches us He begins by granting us so wonderful a favor? Does it seem right to you now that even though we recite these first words vocally we should fail to let our intellects understand and our hearts break in pieces at seeing such love? What son is there in the world who doesn’t strive to learn who his father is when he knows he has such a good one with so much majesty and power?”

The Our Father is also a remedy for any arrogance we might garner from a noble lineage, a problem St Teresa has addressed numerous times throughout the work. Since our heavenly Father is so good, we have no need to speak of the nobility of our earthly father.

“But the one who is from nobler lineage should be the one to speak least about her [earthly] father … You have a good [heavenly] Father, for He gives you the good Jesus. Let no one in this house speak of any other father but Him.”

St Teresa closes the chapter by inviting us to continue her reflection, confident that the Holy Spirit, the bond of Love between the Father and the Son, will enkindle and bind our will in prayer.

“How much there is in these words to give you consolation. So as not to enlarge any more on this matter, I want to leave it to your own reflection. For no matter how unruly one’s mind may be, the truth is — leaving aside our gain in having so good a Father — that the Holy Spirit must be present between such a Son and such a Father, and He will enkindle your will and bind it with a very great love.”

Chapter 28

This chapter follows chapter 26 in which St Teresa taught us that, in mental prayer, we should represent the Lord to ourselves, look upon him in his sorrow or joy and join ourselves to him in sympathy. Having explored the first line of the Our Father in chapter 27, she now turns to the next line, “Who art in heaven”, as a springboard to develop what she calls the “prayer of recollection”.
She begins by considering that God is in heaven, which is to be found within us as St Augustine discovered. There is no need to go searching for him outside of ourselves; all we need do is turn our faculties inward and we will find him there. It is important that we not only believe this, but experience it, since that will settle our wandering minds. The indwelling of God in our souls is a wonderful gift that we should humbly accept and delight in, abiding there with him in intimacy.

“Who art in heaven. Do you think it’s of little importance to know what heaven is and where you must seek your most sacred Father? Well, I tell you that for wandering minds it is very important not only to believe these truths but to strive to understand them by experience. Doing this is one of the ways of greatly slowing down the mind and recollecting the soul.”

“Consider what St. Augustine says, that he sought Him in many places but found Him ultimately within himself. Do you think it matters little for a soul with a wandering mind to understand this truth and see that there is no need to go to heaven in order to speak with one’s Eternal Father or find delight in Him? Nor is there any need to shout. However softly we speak, He is near enough to hear us. Neither is there any need for wings to go to find Him. All one need do is go into solitude and look at Him within oneself …”

“You see, humility doesn’t consist in refusing a favor the King offers you … but in … being delighted with it … I have the Emperor of heaven and earth in my house (for He comes to it in order to favor me and be happy with me) … speak with Him as with a father, or a brother, or a lord, or as with a spouse; sometimes in one way, at other times in another; He will teach you what you must do in order to please Him.”

St Teresa defines the prayer of recollection as praying with your faculties drawn inward and away from the world outside. There one can freely, and with little effort, meditate on Christ.

“This prayer is called “recollection,” because the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God. And its divine Master comes more quickly to teach it and give it the prayer of quiet than He would through any other method it might use. For centered there within itself, it can think about the Passion and represent the Son and offer Him to the Father and not tire the intellect by going to look for Him on Mount Calvary or in the garden or at the pillar.”

“Those who by such a method can enclose themselves within this little heaven of our soul … grow accustomed to refusing to be where the exterior senses in their distraction have gone … they will not fail to drink water from the fount”

St Teresa employs a couple of metaphors to describe the effects of recollection. She likens it to being out at sea while not necessarily away from land, and to rising from a table after winning a game and seeing “what the things of the world are”. She is implying here that the prayer is heading towards contemplation and even if it doesn’t end in contemplation (which is ultimately God’s choice), after praying one better sees the difference between the Eternal and his transient creatures. This echoes back to chapter 6 where St Teresa discusses pure spiritual love, a love centered on God, which leads to a certain spiritual knowledge: “This clear knowledge is about the nature of the world, that there is another world, about the difference between the one and the other, that the one is eternal and the other a dream; or about the nature of loving the Creator and loving the creature” (chapter 6, paragraph 3).

“Those who know how to recollect themselves are already out to sea, as they say. For even though they may not have got completely away from land, they do what they can during that time to get free from it by recollecting their senses within. If the recollection is true, it is felt very clearly; for it produces some effect in the soul. I don’t know how to explain it. Whoever has experienced it will understand; the soul is like one who gets up from the table after winning a game, for it already sees what the things of the world are.”

“So, anyone who walks by this path keeps his eyes closed almost as often as he prays … It is a striving so as not to look at things here below. This striving comes at the beginning; afterward, there’s no need to strive; a greater effort is needed to open the eyes while praying.”

The prayer of recollection may be a pathway to contemplation, but it isn’t contemplation because it requires effort on our part, although the practice can be habituated. The senses can then be recollected effortlessly and do not become unruly when they turn outwards again.

“the soul should get used to this recollection; although in the beginning the body causes difficulty … If we make the effort, practice this recollection for some days, and get used to it, the gain will be clearly seen … And this recollection will be effected without our effort … When the soul does no more than give a sign that it wishes to be recollected, the senses obey it and become recollected. Even though they go out again afterward, their having already surrendered is a great thing; for they go out as captives and subjects and do not cause the harm they did previously. And when the will calls them back again, they come more quickly, until after many of these entries the Lord wills that they rest entirely in perfect contemplation.”

Once practiced in the prayer of recollection, it is easy for the intellect (the faculty representing the Lord to itself) to enkindle divine love (bind the faculty of the will to God). After all, there is nothing else for the will to bind to when the soul is alone inside with God.

“These souls are safer from many occasions. The fire of divine love is more quickly enkindled when they blow a little with their intellects. Since they are close to the fire, a little spark will ignite and set everything ablaze. Because there is no impediment from outside, the soul is alone with its God; it is well prepared for this enkindling.”

Since the prayer of recollection entails drawing its faculties inward to be with God “within this little heaven of our soul”, St Teresa closes the chapter with some words about the soul. She uses another extended metaphor in which she compares it to a palace whose beauty is the virtues which we furnish it with. Since God is to dwell there, enthrone at its center (the heart), it only makes sense that St Teresa spent about 1/3 of her text discussing the virtues necessary to prepare the soul for God’s indwelling so we can meet him there in the prayer of recollection.

“Well, let us imagine that within us is an extremely rich palace, built entirely of gold and precious stones; in sum, built for a lord such as this. Imagine, too, as is indeed so, that you have a part to play in order for the palace to be so beautiful; for there is no edifice as beautiful as is a soul pure and full of virtues. The greater the virtues the more resplendent the jewels. Imagine, also, that in this palace dwells this mighty King who has been gracious enough to become your Father; and that He is seated upon an extremely valuable throne, which is your heart.”

Knowing that God dwells in our souls draws are attention inward and away from worldly things. Conversely, if we are draw to the vanities of this world, we will pay less attention to God who dwells within us. So, we are encouraged to keep our souls in a state worthy of such a Guest and empty it so he can expand it and place whatever he wants there. Of course, he doesn’t force us, so we should give ourselves to him with complete determination.

“I consider it impossible for us to pay so much attention to worldly things if we take the care to remember we have a Guest such as this within us, for we then see how lowly these things are next to what we possess within ourselves.”

“I understood well that I had a soul. But what this soul deserved and who dwelt within it I did not understand because I had covered my eyes with the vanities of the world … if I had understood as I do now that in this little palace of my soul dwelt so great a King, I would not have left Him alone so often. I would have remained with Him at times and striven more so as not to be so unclean.”

“So that the soul won’t be disturbed in the beginning by seeing that it is too small to have something so great within itself, the Lord doesn’t give it this knowledge until He enlarges it little by little and it has the capacity to receive what He will place within it. For this reason I say He is free to do what He wants since He has the power to make this palace a large one. The whole point is that we should give ourselves to Him with complete determination, and we should empty the soul in such a way that He can store things there or take them away as though it were His own property … And since He doesn’t force our will, He takes what we give Him; but He doesn’t give Himself completely until we give ourselves completely.”

St Teresa only discusses the Our Father as a springboard for mental prayer, but does mention that the Hail Mary is also a good vocal prayer to join mental prayer to. However, the Hail Mary does not address God directly, but his mother, so one might wonder how this would work because it is God who dwells within the soul. St Teresa explains that, where God is, there heaven is also with all his court attendants, ie the saints in communion with him. So one does not only find God within, but his mother and all the saints who can intercede on our behalf. While St Teresa doesn’t explicitly say so, when we recollect and turn our faculties inward to “this little heaven of our soul” we are in God’s court and can speak with any of his attendants.

“Do you think, daughters, that He comes alone? Don’t you see that His Son says, ‘who art in heaven’? Well, since He is such a King, certainly His court attendants would never leave Him alone, but they will always be with Him; and they beseech Him on our behalf since they are full of charity.”

Closing Remarks: There are three different modes of prayer: vocal, mental and contemplative. Vocal prayer is the reciting of any formal prayer (eg the Our Father), mental prayer is praying with our attention focused on God, and contemplative prayer is where God suspends our faculties and silently communicates directly to our souls. However, these are not mutually exclusive. Vocal and mental prayer should always be joined, else we are just speaking mindless gibberish. These two modes represent an effort on our part to reach God and are active. Contemplative prayer, on the other hand, is passive since it is God who reaches back to us. The soul is enkindled in love while the understanding is suspended, and only after the understanding returns does the soul see that the prayer was not due to its own efforts. Mental prayer can lead to contemplative prayer, but since the latter is purely God’s action, it is a gift and not something we can initiate ourselves.

Prayer should have a clear beginning. You should examine yourself before approaching God, make any necessary act of contrition, and then make the sign of the cross and enter his presence. You should establish the habit of representing him at your side in prayer, and resist distractions but not be too hard on yourself and trust that God will help you to focus. You don’t want to strive for some deep reflection, just look at him and sympathize with him as he sympathizes with you. If you are undergoing trials, you will be consoled by sympathizing with his passion that was so much greater by comparison. You shouldn’t think that representing the Lord to yourself is any less than if you were with him in real life. Even if you had seen him hanging on the cross you would still have had to look on him with the eyes of faith to see who he is, and not just another victim of Roman crucifixion. If you have difficulties representing him to yourself, don’t be afraid to use an icon or a good devotional book to help.

The Our Father is a good vocal prayer to join to mental prayer by meditating on each line: When you say “Our Father” you are invited by the Son to join in his prayer to the Father as his adopted child. The prayer immediately opens the path to contemplation since, from the first line, it presents you with so great a gift that it will “occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word”. By continuing in these reflections, the Holy Spirit, the bond of love between the Father and the Son, will enkindle our hearts and bind our will to theirs in prayer.

The next line, “Who art in heaven”, should remind you of where heaven is — not somewhere out there, but inside yourself, in your soul as St Augustine discovered. The indwelling of God is a wonderful gift, and you should accept this gift humbly when praying by turning your faculties inward to be with God in intimacy. St Teresa calls this the “prayer of recollection” because “the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself”. The prayer takes some effort, but with practice it can become second nature and will help you grow spiritually: your senses will be less unruly when they turn outward again and you will better see the difference between the eternal things of God and the transient things of this world. You are now prepared for contemplation because, when the faculties are turned inward and alone with God, there is nothing else for your will to bind to except God. Since the locus of this prayer is your soul, you should do your part and furnish it appropriately by adorning it with virtue. God, for his part, will further expand and furnish “this little heaven of our soul” where he can dwell with all his court attendants (the saints).