“The Way of Perfection” – Part 8 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 33

St Teresa begins this chapter with her meditation on the words of the Our Father “give us this day our daily bread”. She connects these to the previous chapter in which she meditated on the line “your will be done”. The Son understands that we are weak and don’t always understand the Father’s will; yet, it is critical that we do his will since it would be to our detriment if we did not. So, the Son found a way to help us since “all our gain lies in giving this”. Here the gain she is referring to is perfect contemplation and not doing God’s will is an impediment to this, as she writes in previous chapter: “Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us He might do what conforms with His will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation …” Quoting from this chapter, she writes:

“He knows our weakness, that we often show we do not understand what the Lord’s will is. We are weak and He is merciful. He knows that a means was necessary. He saw it would not be in any way to our benefit if we failed to give what He gave, because all our gain lies in giving this. He saw that doing the Father’s will was difficult.”

So what is this way that the Son found to help us do the Father’s will so that we can come to perfect union with him? He asked the Father to give us “daily bread”, ie the Eucharist, ie Himself. Even after Chist’s death on the Cross, He asked to remain with us perpetually in the Eucharist to help us.

“Now then, once Jesus saw the need, He sought out a wonderful means by which to show the extreme of His love for us, and in His own name and in that of His brothers He made the following petition: “Give us this day, Lord, our daily bread.”

The Eucharist reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice. His love and courage awakens in us the desire to daily overcome our weakness which we have by nature. This is the grace of the Eucharist, the sacrament of God’s love for us. (Recall, that a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace.)

“… Jesus observed what He had given for us, how important it was that we in turn give this, and the great difficulty there is in our doing so, as was said, since we are the way we are: inclined to base things and with so little love and courage that it was necessary for us to see His love and courage in order to be awakened — and not just once but every day. After He saw all this, He must have resolved to remain with us here below.”

The Son, in his humility, desired that this be a gift from the Father, and so the Son asked the Father to make a gift of Himself to us: The Eucharist (ie Christ) is the Father’s gift to us at the request of the Son.

“Since to do this was something so serious and important, He desired that it come from the hand of the Eternal Father. For even though they are one … the humility of Jesus was such that He wanted, as it were, to ask permission.”

In the remainder of the Chapter, St Teresa breaks into a prayer of gratitude for their great love, and for the consent of the Father to give over His Son to sufferings for our sake, a suffering which continues even today every time the sacrament is abused:

“what great love from the Son and what great love from the Father! … But You, Eternal Father, how is it that You consented? Why do You desire to see Your Son every day in such wretched hands? … How can You in Your compassion now see Him insulted day after day? And how many insults will be committed today against this Most Blessed Sacrament! In how many enemies’ hands must the Father see Him! How much irreverence from these heretics!”

Yet the Son does not complain. As the perfect self-sacrifice is his a silent victim for our sins. This moves us “to speak for this most loving Lamb”, in other words, it moves us to be transformed in how we think, speak and act, so as to “speak” for Him and thus become like Him.

“Why must all our good come at His expense? Why does He remain silent before all and not know how to speak for Himself, but only for us? Well, shouldn’t there be someone to speak for this most loving Lamb?”

The Father gave us the Son historically on the Cross, but now the Son asks the Father not to take Him from us until the end of the world. The Eucharist is Christ’s remaining with us and suffering with us: “may this move your hearts,” that is, transform us be like Him “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

“first He says and asks the Father to give us this daily bread, and then repeats, ‘give it to us this day, Lord,’ invoking the Father again. It’s as though Jesus tells the Father that He is now ours since the Father has given Him to us to die for us; and asks that the Father not take Him from us until the end of the world; that He allow Him to serve each day. May this move your hearts, my daughters, to love your Spouse, for there is no slave who would willingly say he is a slave, and yet it seems that Jesus is honored to be one.”

The Son shares in our nature and in God’s nature. Since the Son belongs to the Father, the Father can give the Son to us in “our” daily bread — the word “our” shows the unity of the Son with us, unless we fail to give ourselves up for him. In this way we too belong to the Father. We come to the Father through the Son.

“… to buy Him, no price is sufficient. Since by sharing in our nature He has become one with us here below — and as Lord of His own will — He reminds the Father that because He belongs to Him the Father in turn can give Him to us. And so He says, “our bread.” He doesn’t make any difference between Himself and us, but we make one by not giving ourselves up each day for His Majesty.”

Chapter 34

St Teresa continues her meditation on the words “give us this day our daily bread” and on the Eucharist into this chapter. She focuses on the word “daily” and see in it the continuous struggle of this life leading up to the last things:

“In saying “this day,” it seems to me, He is referring to one day: that which lasts as long as the world and no longer. And one day indeed! With regard to the unfortunate ones who will be condemned … He doesn’t stop encouraging them until the battle is over … He asks again for no more than to be with us this day only, because it is a fact that He has given us this most sacred bread forever.”

Here St Teresa interprets the “sacred bread” as the spiritual food that brings us to “sublime contemplation” like our Lord, not actual bread. That’s what we should be asking for when we pray “give us this day our daily bread”, not something base that our Father in heaven already knows about. We should not be afraid to pray boldly.

“I don’t want to think the Lord had in mind the other bread that is used for our bodily needs and nourishment … The Lord was in the most sublime contemplation for whoever has reached such a stage has no more remembrance that he is in the world … He is teaching us to set our wills on heavenly things and to ask that we might begin enjoying Him from here below … we are such temperate people that we are satisfied by little and ask for little!”

“Ask the Father … to give you your Spouse “this day” … To temper such great happiness … He remain disguised in these accidents of bread and wine. This is torment enough for anyone who has no other love than Him … Beg Him not to fail you, and to give you the dispositions to receive Him worthily.”

St Teresa urges that, in prayer, you should “carefully avoid wasting your thoughts at any time on what you will eat”. There’s time enough for working for worldly bread and our prayer time should be focused on God, like a servant who first serves his master who in turn provides for his servant.

“Don’t worry about the other bread … I mean during these times of prayer when you should be dealing with more important things; there are other times for working and for earning your bread. Have no fear that you will be in want of bread if you are not wanting in what you have said about the surrender of yourselves to God’s will … Your attitude should be like that of a servant … his care is about pleasing his master … [and] the master is obliged to provide his servant”

“[So] let us ask the Eternal Father that we might merit to receive our heavenly bread in such a way that the Lord may reveal Himself to the eyes of our soul and make Himself thereby known since our bodily eyes cannot delight in beholding Him, because He is so hidden.”

Rather, we should fully benefit from the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Speaking of herself as “someone she knows”, she tells of the many benefits, both spiritual and natural, that come from being present in the Presence:
The Eucharist cures bodily illness:

“Do you think this heavenly food fails to provide sustenance, even for these bodies, that it is not a great medicine even for bodily ills? I know that it is. I know a person with serious illnesses, who often experiences great pain, who through this bread had them taken away.”

The Eucharist presents us with the Lord as He truely is, beyond what our imagination can present us:

“But the Lord had given her such living faith that when she heard some persons saying they would have liked to have lived at the time Christ our Good walked in the world, she used to laugh to herself. She wondered what more they wanted since in the most Blessed Sacrament they had Him just as truly present as He was then.”

“[W]hen she received Communion … [s]ince she believed that this Lord truly entered her poor home, she freed herself from all exterior things … to recollect the senses … that they would not impede the soul from recognizing it. She considered she was at His feet and wept with the Magdalene, no more nor less than if she were seeing Him with her bodily eyes in the house of the Pharisee.”

“Receiving Communion is not like picturing with the imagination … In Communion the event is happening now … There’s no reason to go looking for Him in some other place farther away.”

The accidents of the Eucharist merely hide the glory that we are incapable with our perceiving senses, but He does reveal Himself imperceptibly to the soul. We should not loose the opportunity of being with Him during the hour after communion.

“To see Him in His glorified state is different from seeing Him as He was when he walked through this world. On account of our natural weakness there is no person capable of enduring such a glorious sight … Beneath that bread He is easy to deal with. … Even though they fail to see Him with their bodily eyes, He has many methods of showing Himself to the soul, through great interior feelings and through other different ways. Be with Him willingly; don’t lose so good an occasion for conversing with Him as is the hour after having received Communion.”

Like with the imagination, looking at the Lord in an image is still inferior to the Eucharist where he is present in his totality. This is such a great blessing that we should not waste it.

“If you have to pray to Him by looking at His picture, it would seem to me foolish. You would be leaving the Person Himself in order to look at a picture of Him.”

“But after having received the Lord, since you have the Person Himself present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart … you can desire to see Him so much that He will reveal Himself to you entirely.”

St Teresa closes this chapter with a warning about what constitutes true friendship with our Lord: He gives us ample opportunity to see Him. Those who run off quickly after communion to worldly affairs show where their allegiance lies. Our Lord will not force them to be with Him as He well knows the kind of mistreatment the world gave Him when he was rejected on Calvary. Our friendship with Christ manifests itself in our desire to spend time with Him.

“Must He force us to see Him? … No, for they didn’t treat Him so well when He let Himself be seen openly by all … He doesn’t want to show Himself openly, communicate His grandeurs, and give His treasures except to those who He knows desire Him greatly; these are His true friends. I tell you that whoever is not His true friend and does not draw near to receive Him as such, by doing what lies in her power, will never trouble Him with requests that He reveal Himself. Such a person will hardly have fulfilled what the Church requires when she will leave and quickly forget what took place. Thus, such a person hurries on as soon as she can to other business affairs, occupations, and worldly impediments so that the Lord of the house may not occupy it.

Chapter 35

Continuing on the same theme as the previous chapter, St Teresa begins by emphasizing that recollecting oneself through the Eucharist is so beneficial that you should at least make a spiritual communion if you don’t receive the Eucharist during Mass. She compares this to approaching a fire and exposing oneself to it to get warm. She is speaking in the context of Mass, but spiritual communions can be extended to anytime during the day and can become a habit as a prelude to any prayer of recollection, along with an examination of conscience, act of contrition and sign of the cross as she suggests in Chapter 26.

“Spiritual communion is highly beneficial; through it you can recollect yourselves in the same way after Mass, for the love of this Lord is thereby deeply impressed on the soul. If we prepare ourselves to receive Him, He never fails to give in many ways which we do not understand. It is like approaching a fire … If the soul is disposed (I mean, if it wants to get warm), and if it remains there for a while, it will stay warm for many hours.”

We should persevere in this practice and never abandon it since it shows you love Him and follow Him in his trials. He suffered everything to find even one person who would receive Him, and receiving Him is our loving response. This is why the Father allows Him to remain with us in the Eucharist.

“… consider that if in the beginning you do not fare well … the devil will make you think you find more devotion in others things and less in this recollection after Communion. Do not abandon this practice; the Lord will see in it how much you love Him. Remember that there are few souls who accompany Him and follow Him in trials … And since He suffers and will suffer everything in order to find even one soul that will receive Him and lovingly keep Him within, let your desire be to do this. If there isn’t anyone who will do it, the Eternal Father will rightly refuse to let Him remain with us.”

St Teresa exhibits great insight in realizing that we will lose Christ-among-us in the Eucharist if there is no one to lovingly accept Him. She effectively elevates this to a duty of her Order and urges her sisters, “let us be the ones” to worthily accept Him and speak out for Him against abuse of the Eucharist.

“[T]here has to be someone … who will speak for Your Son since he never looks out for Himself. Let us be the ones … [that] He might in His compassion desire and be pleased to provide a remedy that His Son may not be this badly treated … [that] this precious gift may avail; that there’ll be no advance made in the very great evil and disrespect committed and shown in places where this most Blessed Sacrament is present among those Lutherans, where churches are destroyed, so many priests lost, and the sacraments taken away.”

This is of eschatalogical urgency for St Teresa and she prays the Father,

“Either bring the world to an end or provide a remedy for these very serious evils … Behold that Your Son is still in the world … He doesn’t deserve to be in a house where there are things of this sort … We don’t dare beseech You that He be not present with us; what would become of us? … Since some means must be had, my Lord, may Your Majesty provide it.”

Like all the saints before her, St Teresa does not focus her blame for these evils on others, but asks herself, what sins have I committed that might have brought them about. She resolves to offer back to the Father the Son which she receives in the Eucharist. This can be read as her willingness to do the Father’s will and suffer as Christ for the world’s sins.

“… perhaps I am the one who has angered You so that my sins have caused these many evils to come about. Well, what is there for me to do, my Creator, but offer this most blessed bread to You, and even though You have given it to us, return it to You and beg You through the merits of Your son to grant me this favor since in so many ways He has merited that You do so? Now, Lord; now; make the sea calm! May this ship, which is the Church, not always have to journey in a tempest like this. Save us, Lord, for we are perishing.”

Chapter 36

In this chapter, St Teresa turns to the next line of the Our Father, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” She begins by noting that, if we are already surrendered to the Father’s will and we have already asked for the daily bread to help us do it, we should already have forgiven those who have sinned against us. Only then can we dare to ask for forgiveness ourselves. That’s why the saints were pleased with persecution, because then they could forgive much. St Teresa herself felt that she deserved the mistreatment she received and so had little to pardon!

“We can thereby understand that whoever asks for a gift as great as the one last mentioned [“our daily bread”] and whoever has already surrendered his will to God’s will [“your will be done”] should have already forgiven. So, He says, ‘as we forgive.’ … You see here why the saints were pleased with the wrongs and persecutions they suffered; they then had something to offer the Lord when they prayed to Him.”

“If the world were to treat me very badly, such mistreatment would be just.”

St Teresa takes this opportunity to warn against false sin and revisits the dangers of human honor. We are to forgive the offenses we give one another, but how many of these offenses are mere human inventions of custom. The world and the devil love to create various honors which do not honor God! “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God” [John 5:44] Rather, we should look at the example of Christ who was humiliated onto death, and yet was raised up on high by God. Speaking of her own experience, St Teresa tells us that

“… I prized honor without understanding what it was. I was following the crowd through what I heard. Oh, by how many things was I offended! I am ashamed now … I didn’t consider or pay any heed to the honor that is beneficial; that is, the honor that benefits the soul.”

“O Lord, Lord! Are You our Model and Master? Yes, indeed! Well then, what did Your honor consist of, You who honored us? Didn’t you indeed lose it in being humiliated unto death? No, Lord, but You won it for all.”

Forgiving offenses stemming from honor is not some great accomplishment that then we can expect God’s pardon in return! We go to the Lord with empty hands and only obtain pardon through His mercy.

“And then we shall reach the point of thinking that we have done a great deal if we pardon one of these little things that was neither an offense, nor an injury, nor anything. Like someone who has accomplished something, we shall think that the Lord pardons us because we have pardoned others. Help us understand, my God, that we do not know ourselves and that we come to You with empty hands; and pardon us through Your mercy.”

St Teresa remarks that our Lord chose love of others as the virtue which merits us the Father’s forgiveness, not penance or prayer or fasting or even love for Him! Rather the love we show others in forgiving them.

“But yet, how the Lord must esteem this love we have for one another! Indeed, Jesus could have put other virtues first and said: forgive us, Lord, because we do a great deal of penance or because we pray much and fast or because we have left all for You and love You very much. He didn’t say forgive us because we would give up our lives for You, or, as I say, because of other possible things. But He said only, “forgive us because we forgive.”

The desire to pardon all injury, even grave injury, is a gift of perfect contemplation, and we should be suspicious of anyone’s prayer life who doesn’t experience it. A soul in union with God cannot experience personal insults and is, in fact, distressed when it receives wordly honors. It has learned by experience that there is much to be gain in suffering for God and welcomes it. They are completely self-forgetful and cannot believe what offends others.

“for when among the favors God grants in the prayer of perfect contemplation that I mentioned there doesn’t arise in the soul a very resolute desire to pardon any injury however grave it may be and to pardon it in deed when the occasion arises, do not trust much in that soul’s prayer.

“And I don’t refer to these nothings that they call injuries. For the soul God brings to Himself in so sublime a contemplation is not touched by these wrongs nor does it care at all whether it is esteemed or not … for it is much more afflicted by honor than by dishonor and by a lot of ease and rest than by trials. For when truly the Lord has given His kingdom here below, the soul no longer desires honor in this world.”

“it has already seen through experience the great gain and progress that comes to it by suffering for God. Very seldom does God give such great gifts, save to persons who have willingly undergone many trials for Him.

“Self-esteem is far removed from these persons … In what amounts to His greater service, they are already so forgetful of self that they can’t even believe that others feel some things and consider them an affront.”

This point is so important to St Teresa that she closes this chapter by repeating it. How can one be in union with God if you do not will with the will of God? Unity means precisely unity of the will, hence the words of the Our Father, “forgive us as we forgive”. Not forgiving one another is a dis-unity with the will of God which is to forgive. Thus, St Teresa concludes that if prayer doesn’t result in resolving to “suffer wrongs even if painful”, but only gives you a spiritually uplifting feeling, then its an illusion, the devil’s gift!

“But of the first effect, which is the resolve to suffer wrongs and suffer them even though this may be painful, I say that it will soon be possessed by anyone who has from the Lord this favor of the prayer of union. If one doesn’t experience these effects and come away from prayer fortified in them, one may believe that the favor was not from God but an illusion, or the devil’s gift bestowed so that we might consider ourselves more honored.”

“I cannot believe that a person who comes so close to Mercy itself … would fail to pardon his offender immediately … Such a person is mindful of the gift and favor granted by God, by which he saw signs of great love; and he rejoices that an opportunity is offered whereby he can show the Lord some love.”

Closing Remarks: Jesus understood that our wills and intellects are weakened by sin. We do not always understand the Father’s will, and even if we do, we don’t always have the strength to carry it out. This separates us from God and makes union with Him impossible. Yet, out of an over-abundance of love, the Son found a way to over come this by asking the Father to give Him to us — that is the meaning of the words “Give us this day our daily bread”. Historically, this is His sacrifice on Calvary. Perpetually, this is the Eucharist, the sacrament of God’s love for us and the means by which He stays with us. Since we are invited to be sons of the same Father and carry out His will, we must imitate the Son by sacrificing ourselves for our brothers and sisters. The daily inclination to overcome our lack of love and courage is awakened by daily seeing His love and courage in the Eucharist. In this way, the Eucharist is the grace to do the Father’s will. So important was this that the Son asked the Father to make a gift of Himself to us: The Eucharist is the Son as the Father’s gift to us at the request of the Son.

St Teresa’s prayer in Chapter 33 helps us appreciate just how much the Father and the Son love us. This was not something that happened “once upon a time” when the Father sent the Son into the world despite knowing what suffering this would mean for his Son, but daily in the Eucharist which is our sacrament of God’s love. Seeing the Eucharist, we are remind that the Son asked the Father to remain with us until the end of time, even though this meant continued suffering at the world’s hands even to this day. Meditating on the Son’s suffering for our sake is transformative: it makes us want to avoid sin, that is, to stop causing Him more suffering and even alleviating some of His burden.

Meditating on the line “give us this day our daily bread”, St Teresa interprets the words “this day” as the totality of creation’s temporal existence, and the request that the Father give us “our daily bread” as His gift of the Son to creation. This bread is sublime contemplation, not actual bread, and we should not be afraid to pray for it boldly. If we serve God in prayer, it is a waste of time asking for bread to eat since He will provide for us as any good master does for his servants. There are so many benefits from receiving Communion: we are presented with the Lord as he truely is beyond what we can imagine. The accidents of the bread and wine merely hide His glory that we cannot perceive, but He does reveal Himself imperceptibly to our soul.

The hour after Communion is a good time to be together with our Lord as friends. We should recollect ourselves in prayer through the Eucharist at mass if we can, or through a spiritual communion if we can’t. Even if we find recollection difficult, we should persevere in this practice since it shows our willingness to follow in His trials who suffered everything to find even one person who would receive Him. The Father only allows Him to remain with us in the Eucharist because there is someone to receive Him, so she urges her sisters “let us be the ones”. In the shadow of the Protestant Reformation and their abuses of the Eucharist, St Teresa prays the Father for the End: “Either bring the world to an end or provide a remedy for these very serious evils.” But St Teresa doesn’t aim her blame outwards and asks what sins she might have committed to have brought about these evils. As reparation, she offers back the Son in the Eucharist to the Father.

St Teresa next considers the line “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” By the time we reach this line in the Our Father, she reasons that we have already prayed “thy will be done”, so we have resigned ourselves to doing His will by forgiving, and we have prayed “give us this day our daily bread”, so He has given us the strength to forgive. We are now ready and able to forgive and can dare to ask the Father for forgiveness in return. In fact we should be pleased with mistreatment because we deserve it for our sins and it gives us the opportunity to forgive. But forgiveness must be done with humility. It is not some great act of magnanimity to forgive when our pride is offended. The world and the devil create many categories of offenses for our ego to indulge in. Since we deserve mistreatment for our sins, we always go to the Lord with empty hands and only obtain pardon through His mercy, not because we are self-justified by acts of magnanimity.

Of all the virtues, our Lord chose the love we show in forgiving as that which merits the Father’s forgiveness in return. It is a gift of perfect contemplation, and we should mistrust the prayer life of anyone who is lacking in the desire to forgive. A soul in union with God is completely self-forgetful. It cannot experience personal insults, cannot understand why others are offended in this way, and shuns wordly honors. It welcomes suffering for God because it understands the gain to be obtained. Unity means unity of the will, so not forgiving necessarily means disunity with the will of God which is to forgive. If prayer only results in an uplifting feeling, and not a firm resolve to suffer wrongs, then it is an illusion.