Carmelite Spirituality – Page 3 – The Journal of a Secular Discalced Carmelite

“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.

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 7 of 10

Chapter 29

In this chapter, St Teresa continues her discussion of mental prayer and emphasizes the importance of developing it as a habit. But first she makes an unexpected detour in which she urges her nuns not to worry about whether or not they enjoy the Bishop’s favor. This digressions seems like it is only distantly related to her discussion so far; but, her advice is important at this point because she reminds us that the fruits of a contemplative life are not always appreciated. This should not disturb us because we should always focus on what is lasting, not transient opinions. In fact, we should even go so far as to be unappreciated, looking inwardly for our reward from our Lord who will favor us to the degree we are despised by the world. These earthly favors, like being appreciated, divert the soul and are a lie.

“… Let each nun strive to do what she ought; if the bishop doesn’t show gratitude for what she does, she can be sure that the Lord will … Let us always direct our thoughts to what is lasting and pay no attention to things here below … Today the bishop will favor one Sister, and tomorrow he will favor you … Give no room to these thoughts … Cut them off with the thought that your kingdom is not here below and of how quickly all things come to an end.”

“But even this kind of remedy is a lowly one and not indicative of great perfection. It is better that this disfavor of your superior continue, that you be unappreciated and humbled, and that you accept this for the Lord who is with you. Turn your eyes inward and look within yourself, as has been said. You will find your Master, for He will not fail you; rather, the less you have of exterior consolation the more He will favor you.”

“O my Lord, if we truly knew You we wouldn’t care at all about anything, for You give much to those who sincerely want to trust in You! Believe, my friends, that it is a great thing to have knowledge of this truth so that you can then see that all favors here below are a lie when they divert the soul somewhat from entering within itself.”

St Teresa next returns to the main subject of the chapter which is the prayer of recollection. To be clear about what St Teresa means by recollection, she emphasizes that it is something we can “desire”, that is it is an act of our will and something we can initiate ourselves, unlike contemplation in which are faculties (intellect/imagination, memory, will) are suspended and therefore not something we can just make happen. This is important for what St Teresa will say later in the chapter, namely that, since we have control of our will in recollecting, it is something that we can perfect by practice and therefore make a habit. Recollection is not a suspension of the faculties, just their redirection inward to the soul.

“I would like to know a way of explaining how this holy fellowship with our Companion, the Saint of saints, may be experienced without any hindrance to the solitude enjoyed between the soul and its Spouse when the soul desires to enter this paradise within itself to be with its God and close the door to all the world. I say “desires” because you must understand that this recollection is not something supernatural, but that it is something we can desire and achieve ourselves with the help of God — for without this help we can do nothing, not even have a good thought. This recollection is not a silence of the faculties; it is an enclosure of the faculties within the soul.”

The next two paragraphs are of central importance for an understanding of Teresian recollection. When praying mentally, it is important that we focus our attention on God to whom we are speaking. Letting our minds wander while praying is like talking to someone while turning our backs on them. This happens, St Teresa says, because we don’t imagine him close to us, for if we did, it would be easy to look on his face. So, we want to form a habit of recollecting our senses, disengaging them from the world and drawing them inwards to focus on Him. Even if we do this for a moment during our busy life, it is so beneficial for us to remember we have Him with us always. The delight we feel helps us cultivate the habit. Knowing that he is close to us makes it unnecessary to struggle to speak to Him, to “shout” or repeat many vocal prayers. He’s so close to us he understands the subtle movements of our souls as if reading sign language.

“… we should see and be present to the One with whom we speak … for I don’t think speaking with God while thinking of a thousand other vanities would amount to anything else but turning our backs on Him. All the harm comes from not truly understanding that He is near, but in imagining Him as far away … Now, is Your face such, Lord, that we would not look at it when You are so close to us? … This alone is what I want to explain: that in order to acquire the habit of easily recollecting our minds and understanding what we are saying, and with whom we are speaking, it is necessary that the exterior senses be recollected and that we give them something with which to be occupied.”

“We must, then, disengage ourselves from everything so as to approach God interiorly and even in the midst of occupations withdraw within ourselves. Although it may be for only a moment that I remember I have that Company within myself, doing so is very beneficial. In sum, we must get used to delighting in the fact that it isn’t necessary to shout in order to speak to Him, for His Majesty will give the experience that He is present.”

“With this method we shall pray vocally with much calm, and any difficulty will be removed. For in the little amount of time we take to force ourselves to be close to this Lord, He will understand us as if through sign language. Thus if we are about to say the Our Father many times, He will understand us after the first. He is very fond of taking away our difficulty. Even though we may recite this prayer no more than once in an hour, we can be aware that we are with Him, of what we are asking Him, of His willingness to give us, and how eagerly He remains with us. If we have this awareness, He doesn’t want us to be breaking our heads trying to speak a great deal to Him.”

St Teresa closes the chapter by reminding us that recollection is an act of the will that we make, and so we have to train the will until it becomes a habit. This does requires some struggle, but St Teresa assures us that the effort is well worth it.

“… get used to praying the Our Father with this recollection, and you will see the benefit before long. This is a manner of praying that the soul gets so quickly used to that it doesn’t go astray, nor do the faculties become restless, as time will tell. I only ask that you try this method, even though it may mean some struggle; everything involves struggle before the habit is acquired.”

“I conclude by saying that whoever wishes to acquire it — since, as I say, it lies within our power — should not tire of getting used to what has been explained. It involves a gradual increase of self-control and an end to vain wandering from the right path; it means conquering, which is a making use of one’s senses for the sake of the inner life. If you speak, strive to remember that the One with whom you are speaking is present within. If you listen, remember that you are going to hear One who is very close to you when He speaks.”

While throughout the work St Teresa concentrates on vocal and mental prayer, she cannot help but at least broach the topic of contemplation since she sees it as a natural progression. While we cannot make contemplation happen, we certainly can prepare ourselves so the Lord can give it to us. The closeness to God we acquire in practicing recollection, makes us ready, if the Lord so desires, for contemplation.

“If then the Lord should desire to raise you to higher things He will discover in you the readiness, finding that you are close to Him.”

Chapter 30

St Teresa dedicates this chapter to asking the question, what exactly are we asking for when we pray. She begins by having us focus on the following lines of the Our Father, “Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come”, and wonders why, since God knows what we need before we even ask it, isn’t it enough to just say “Give us what we need?”. While this may have been sufficient for the Son who was totally surrendered to the Father’s will, it is not good for us to not carefully consider what we are asking for. Anyone who has had to undergo a great trial, like a serious illness or the loss of a loved one, knows that one of the most difficult prayers to make is “Thy will be done” in complete submission to the Father’s will. We can’t understand why God has sent us this great trial and we don’t want to accept it. Only as our faith matures can we begin to see the long term good that comes from the transient evil at hand.

[As I write these words, it has been less than two weeks since I lost my dog of over eleven years who succumbed to heart disease. As you can imagine, I prayed “God please cure my Daniel!” But could God make him eternal? Yes! He could, but that would just have made my dog into an idol for me, a creature that could be the focus of my eternal love rather than the Creator. The transient nature of all of life on earth, the fact that all our loved ones and we ourselves will die, forces us to look elsewhere for the Eternal. Intellectually this is easy to understand, but very difficult to internalize.]

“Couldn’t You, my Lord, have concluded the Our Father with the words: “Give us, Father, what is fitting for us”? … Between You and Your Father these words would have sufficed. Your petition in the garden was like this. You manifested Your own desire and fear, but You abandoned them to His will. Yet, You know us, my Lord, that we are not as surrendered to the will of Your Father as You were. You know that it was necessary for You to make those specific requests so that we might pause to consider if what we are seeking is good for us … If we aren’t given what we want, being what we are, with this free will we have, we might not accept what the Lord gives. For although what He gives is better, we don’t think we’ll ever become rich, since we don’t at once see the money in our hand.”

St Teresa next presents us with what she admits is a speculative reflection on her part regarding why the two petitions “hallowed be thy name” is juxtaposed to “thy kingdom come”. She suggests that, in order for us to fittingly give God the honor He is due, He gives us His kingdom here on earth because we do not have the capacity to properly hallow his name on our own. How this works is not really explained, but from later chapters one can surmise that she’s referring to contemplation and its attendant inner peace — particularly in chapter 31. Perhaps in her mind, she equates this inner peace to the peace of a well governed kingdom where everyone cooperates with everyone else, or as she puts it, where “everyone hallows … His name”.

“Well, Jesus says that we may recite these words in which we ask for a kingdom like His to come within us: “Hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come within us.” … I am reflecting here on what we are asking for when we ask for this kingdom … since His Majesty saw that we could neither hallow, nor praise, nor extol, nor glorify this holy name of the Eternal Father in a fitting way, because of the tiny amount we ourselves are capable of doing, He provided for us by giving us here on earth His kingdom.”

“Now, then, the great good that it seems to me there will be in the kingdom of heaven, among many other blessings, is that one will no longer take any account of earthly things, but have a calmness and glory within, rejoice in the fact that all are rejoicing, experience perpetual peace and a wonderful inner satisfaction that comes from seeing that everyone hallows and praises the Lord and blesses His name and that no one offends Him. Everyone loves Him there, and the soul itself doesn’t think about anything else than loving Him; nor can it cease loving Him, because it knows Him. And would that we could love Him in this way here below, even though we may not be able to do so with such perfection or stability.”

St Teresa realizes at this point that we need reassurance. She understands that life can be wearisome with all its trials, and that surrendering to the Father’s will amounts to carrying our cross. That’s why he quiets the soul and gives us a foretaste of what we will enjoy later. At this point, the Lord is starting to draw us into pure contemplation, and the transition in which He calms our faculties, she calls the “prayer of quiet”.

“… there are times when, tired from our travels, we experience that the Lord calms our faculties and quiets the soul … And to those to whom He gives here below the kingdom we ask for, He gives pledges so that through these they may have great hope of going to enjoy perpetually what here on earth is given only in sips … [this is] the beginning of pure contemplation; those who experience this prayer call it the prayer of quiet.”

St Teresa closes by extending her reassurance to even those who are not adapt at mental prayer. She tells the story of a nun who’s mind would wander if she didn’t practice vocal prayer but who was nonetheless raised to pure contemplation. This nun may not have been aware that she was being raised to union with God, but it was clear to St Teresa from her deeds and how she lived. In this way, St Teresa is echoing St John’s insight that “since the wisdom of this contemplation is the language of God to the soul, of Pure Spirit to pure spirit, all that is less than spirit, fails to perceive it.” (Dark Night of the Soul, 2.17.4) In other words, contemplative prayer is not something that is directly experienced because it is purely spiritual, and the senses, being inferior to spirit, cannot perceive it. Rather, contemplative prayer is transformative and can only be indirectly inferred by its effect on the soul.

“… it may seem to anyone who doesn’t know about the matter that vocal prayer doesn’t go with contemplation; but I know that it does … I know a person who was never able to pray any way but vocally … Once she came to me very afflicted because she didn’t know how to practice mental prayer nor could she contemplate … I saw that though she was tied to the Our Father she experienced pure contemplation and that the Lord was raising her up and joining her with Himself in union. And from her deeds it seemed truly that she was receiving such great favors, for she was living a very good life.”

Chapter 31

In the previous chapter, St Teresa briefly mentions “the prayer of quiet” as a transitional prayer between natural prayer, ie prayer where we make the effort to reach out to God by the exercise of our natural faculties, and supernatural prayer, ie prayer which is beyond our ability and where God does the work and our faculties are suspended/silenced. In this chapter, she expands on what is meant by the “prayer of quiet” and she gives some advise to those who experience it.
St Teresa begins by explaining that the prayer of quiet is supernatural and not something we can initiate on our own. In this prayer, God’s presence puts us at peace and he communicates himself to our soul as he did to Simeon who recognized the infant Jesus as the messiah. Just like Simeon understood that the infant was the Christ but did not understand how he understood, so too does the soul in the prayer of quiet see that it is near God who will give it contemplation without knowing how it knows.

“… I nonetheless want to explain this prayer of quiet … In this prayer it seems the Lord begins … to give us His kingdom here below so that we may truly praise and hallow His name and strive that all persons do so.”

“This prayer is something supernatural, something we cannot procure through our own efforts. In it the soul enters into peace or, better, the Lord puts it at peace by His presence, as he did to the just Simeon, so that all the faculties are calmed. The soul understands in another way, very foreign to the way it understands through the exterior senses, that it is now close to its God and that not much more would be required for it to become one with Him in union …”

“Simeon could have easily judged the babe to be the son of poor people rather than the Son of our heavenly Father. But the child Himself made Simeon understand. And this is how the soul understands here, although not with as much clarity. For the soul, likewise, fails to understand how it understands. But it sees it is in the kingdom, at least near the King who will give the kingdom to the soul.”

All supernatural prayer is characterized by some suspension of the faculties, since it is God and not our faculties that are doing the work. In the prayer of quiet, the faculties of the intellect and memory are very calm, while the will is completely suspended (“captive”). And while the intellect and memory are still free, nonetheless they don’t want to be occupied with anything more than God, so even saying a vocal prayer can be disturbing to them! The soul no longer feels that it is in the world and is so absorbed in satisfaction that it doesn’t think there is more to desire.

“A person feels the greatest delight … The faculties are still; they wouldn’t want to be busy; everything else seems to hinder them from loving. But they are not completely lost; they can think of who it is they are near, for two of them are free. The will is the one that is captive here … The intellect wouldn’t want to understand more than one thing; nor would the memory want to be occupied with anything else … It pains them to speak; in their saying “Our Father” just once a whole hour passes … they see that He is beginning to give them here His kingdom. It doesn’t seem to them that they are in the world, nor would they want to see or hear about anything other than their God. Nothing pains them, nor does it seem anything ever will. In sum, while this prayer lasts they are so absorbed and engulfed with the satisfaction and delight they experience within themselves that they do not remember there is more to desire …”

The prayer of quiet has a transformative effect on the soul which persists after the prayer is completed. For days afterwards, one doesn’t feel they are wholly in the world, and that their will is still suspended, while the remaining two faculties are dulled. Still one can go about one’s business while still in a contemplative state, thus joining both active and contemplative lives.

“When this quiet is great and lasts for a long while, it seems to me that the will wouldn’t be able to remain so long in that peace if it weren’t bound to something. For it may happen that we will go about with this satisfaction for a day or two and will not understand ourselves … and they definitely see that they are not wholly in what they are doing, but that the best part is lacking, that is, the will. The will, in my opinion, is then united with its God, and leaves the other faculties free to be occupied in what is for His service … But in worldly matters, these faculties are dull and at times as though in a stupor.

“… the active and the contemplative lives are joined … the will is occupied in its work and contemplation without knowing how; the other two faculties serve in the work of Martha. Thus Martha and Mary walk together.”

St Teresa finds it necessary at this point to remind us that this prayer really is a gift, and not something we can make happen or hang on to. In a paradoxical way, the best we can do to hang on to this favor is to remember that there is nothing we can do to hang on to this favor! We can only remain open to God’s grace by persisting in humility as the publican did when he prayed “God have mercy on me a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

“… since they see themselves in that contentment and do not know how it came on them — at least they see they cannot obtain it by themselves — they experience this temptation: they think they’ll be able to hold on to that satisfaction and they don’t even dare take a breath. This is foolish, for just as there’s nothing we can do to make the sun rise, there’s little we can do to keep it from setting. This prayer is no longer our work, for it’s something very supernatural and something very much beyond our power to acquire by ourselves. The best way to hold on to this favor is to understand clearly that we can neither bring it about nor remove it; we can only receive it with gratitude, as most unworthy of it; and this not with many words, but by raising our eyes to Him, as the publican did.”

We can’t make the prayer of quiet happen, but we can dispose ourselves so that God can it if he wishes. St Teresa gives us some advice here: Pray in solitude. Pray gently without trying to make the prayer happen since any attempt by the will to make it happen will make it not happen. If the intellect is distracted, don’t try to settle it down since this would amount to exercising the will and preventing it’s suspension. Rather, you should just ignore the intellect’s unruliness. In the prayer of quiet, the will is self-forgetful and simply loves God without trying to understand anything; rather, it gives over any self-consideration to God who doesn’t forget to observe what is fitting for us.

“It is good to find more solitude so as to make room for the Lord and allow His Majesty to work as though with something belonging to Him. At most, a gentle word from time to time is sufficient, as in the case of one who blows on a candle to enkindle it again when it begins to die out. But if the candle is burning, blowing on it will in my opinion serve no other purpose than to put it out. I say that the blowing should be gentle lest the will be distracted by the intellect busying itself with many words.”

“… you’ll often see that you’ll be unable to manage these other two faculties. It happens that the soul will be in the greatest quiet and the intellect will be so distracted … it knows little about how to remain stable … Thus when the will finds itself in this quiet … it shouldn’t pay any more attention to the intellect than it would to a madman. For should it want to keep the intellect near itself, it will necessarily have to be somewhat disturbed and disquieted. And in this state of prayer everything will then amount to working without any further gain but with a loss of what the Lord was giving the will without its own work.”

“… for without effort of the intellect the will is loving, and the Lord desires that the will, without thinking about the matter, understand that it is with Him … [the will] doesn’t desire to understand how it enjoys the favor or what it enjoys; but it forgets itself during that time, for the One who is near it will not forget to observe what is fitting for it. If the will goes out to fight with the intellect so as to give a share of the experience, by drawing the intellect after itself, it cannot do so at all …”

While the prayer of quiet is supernatural, it is not yet contemplation because not all the faculties are suspended. There is still the tiniest of effort on our part to “swallow this divine food” — St Teresa here uses the metaphor of a suckling child. The transition to contemplation occurs because the supernatural delight experienced by the will draws the intellect in without any effort, for if it exerts itself, it will lose! This delight is supernatural in that it occurs internal to the will, not external, and so draws the intellect away from the world and inward to God.

“This is the way this prayer of quiet is different from that prayer in which the entire soul is united with God, for then the soul doesn’t even go through the process of swallowing this divine food. Without its understanding how, the Lord places the milk within it. In this prayer of quiet it seems that He wants it to work a little, although so gently that it almost doesn’t feel its effort.”

“… they feel this prayer within themselves, a quiet and great contentment of the will, without being able to discern what it is specifically. Yet the soul easily discerns that it is far different from earthly satisfactions … The delight is in the interior of the will, for the other consolations of life, it seems to me, are enjoyed in the exterior of the will … When the will sees itself in this degree of prayer so sublime (… very recognizably supernatural), it laughs at the intellect … when [it] goes off to the more foolish things of the world … In this prayer the will is the ruler and the powerful one. It will draw the intellect after itself without your being disturbed. And if the will should desire to draw the intellect by force of arms, the strength it has against the intellect will be lost.”

St Teresa equates the Father answering our petition for His Kingdom to granting the prayer of quiet. When we are in His Kingdom, we are no longer in this world, and so we are forgetful of the things of this world. This doesn’t mean complete detachment, but at least an awareness of what is lacking and the humility to grow in detachment.

“… let’s conclude by saying that to the soul placed in this prayer it seems the Eternal Father has already here below granted its petition for His kingdom. … For when this favor is granted by God, we shall forget the things of the world … I don’t say that all those who experience this prayer must by necessity be completely detached from the world. At least, I would like them to know what is lacking and that they humble themselves and try to go on detaching themselves from everything …”

Unfortunately some people think the goal of prayer is to simply recite a large volume of prayers in a day, like units of a commodity produced in a factory. This misses the point of prayer. It is not to say lots of words, but to raise “one’s mind and heart to God” (CCC 2559). For St Teresa, this ultimately means the prayer of union. For those that merely recite volume upon volume, even if God does offer them the gift of His Kingdom, they don’t receive it since they remain stuck on their mistaken ideas about prayer.

“When individuals do not respond by service that is in conformity with so great a favor … the Lord goes in search of those who do love Him so as to give more to them … For they are so fond of speaking and reciting many vocal prayers very quickly, like one who wants to get a job done, since they oblige themselves to recite these every day, that even though, as I say, the Lord places His kingdom in their hands, they do not receive it. But with their vocal prayers they think they are doing better, and they distract themselves from the prayer of quiet.”

Chapter 32

St Teresa continues with her meditation on the Our Father in this chapter and moves on to the next lines, “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. She reminds us that the Son, in teaching us to pray “Our Father” brings us into the family of the Trinity. This doesn’t just mean that the Father has paternal obligations to us as his children, but also that we have filial obligations to the Father, and the model for those obligations is summarized in “your will be done” as Jesus prayed in the Garden. Our complete participation in the Divine will makes us the vehicle of the Father’s will being done on earth as the Son did when he carried the cross to Calvary.

“Now … that He has granted us so wonderful a favor as to make us His brothers, let us see what He desires us to give His Father.”

“‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ … Lord, if You hadn’t made the petition, the task would seem to me impossible. But when Your Father does what You ask Him by giving us His kingdom here on earth, I know that we shall make Your words come true by giving what You give for us. For once the earth has become heaven, the possibility is there for Your will to be done in me.”

St Teresa’s meditation here reminds us of that line in the Gospel of John where Christ promises “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) The first part of this line can be read as saying, if you are in union with God, or as St Teresa puts it here, if you have been given the kingdom, then you are no longer willing with your own will but with God’s will, and so it will be done. But most people don’t understand that praying “your will be done” means trials, so St Teresa goes on to add

“I would like to question those who fear to ask for trials … about what they say when they beseech the Lord to do His will in them. Perhaps they say the words just to say what everyone else is saying but not so that His will be done.”

“His will must be done whether we like this or not … [so] take my advice, and make a virtue of necessity … I freely give mine to You [Lord] … For I have felt and have had great experience of the gain that comes from freely abandoning my will to Yours.”

Paradoxically, surrendering your will to His makes you a participant in His Divine Will that will be done regardless, so its not like you are not adding or subtracting anything. Rather, there is great spiritual merit in doing so. It is an expression of pure love for God. Still, knowing that surrendering one’s will is meritorious does not make it easy! So St Teresa continues

“… to say that we abandon our will to another’s will seems very easy until through experience we realize that this is the hardest thing one can do if one does it as it should be done … Don’t fear that it means He will give you riches, or delights, or honors, or all these earthly things. His love for you is not that small … Do you want to know how He answers those who say these words to Him sincerely? Ask His glorious Son, who said them while praying in the Garden … see if the Father’s will wasn’t done fully in Him through the trials, sorrows, injuries, and persecutions He suffered until His life came to an end through death on a cross.”

As St Teresa prepares to conclude this chapter she reminds us what this is all about: the total giving of ourselves to God is a necessary condition for perfect contemplation, without which we will never achieve union, that is, the our transformation into Himself. We then don’t have to worry about whatever trials He may want us to undergo, He will also give us the strength with the favor of His kingdom.

“… everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our wills to His, and detachment from creatures … For we are preparing ourselves that we may quickly reach the end of our journey and drink the living water from the fount we mentioned. 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 …”

“In this contemplation … we don’t do anything ourselves. Neither do we labor, nor do we bargain, nor is anything else necessary — because everything else is an impediment and hindrance — than to say fiat voluntas tua … If You want it to be done with trials, strengthen me and let them come … grant me the favor of Your kingdom that I may do Your will …”

“… what strength lies in this gift! It does nothing less, when accompanied by the necessary determination, than draw the Almighty so that He becomes one with our lowliness, transforms us into Himself, and effects a union of the Creator with the creature.”

In this union, God finds delight in the soul and the two commune in intimate friendship. However, this does not dissolve the soul’s personality since God gives it back its own will and along with His own, and he even takes joy in doing what the soul asks of it because the soul does His will! This intimacy might be compared to the Trinity of three Persons, ie three centers of will, that act in union.

“Not content with having made this soul one with Himself, He begins to find His delight in it, reveal His secrets, and rejoice that it know what it has gained and something of what He will give it. He makes it lose these exterior senses so that nothing will occupy it. This is rapture. And he begins to commune with the soul in so intimate a friendship that He not only gives it back its own will but gives it His. For in so great a friendship the Lord takes joy in putting the soul in command, as they say, and He does what it asks since it does His will.”

St Teresa concludes by reminding us that union is far beyond our strength and it we try to reach it, we will only be discouraged. Only a humility in which we experience, not merely intellectualized, our smallness and God’s greatness, can open us up to the gift of perfect contemplation.

“Only humility can do something, a humility not acquired by the intellect, but by a clear perception that comprehends in a moment the truth one would be unable to grasp in a long time through the work of the imagination about what a trifle we are and how very great God is … don’t think that through your own strength or efforts you can arrive, for reaching this stage is beyond our power; if you try to reach it, the devotion you have will grow cold. But with simplicity and humility, which will achieve everything, say: fiat voluntas tua.”

Closing Remarks: St Teresa makes it clear throughout her work that to be a contemplative means a rigorous life of prayer, not something readily valued by the world. Nonetheless, the reward is nothing less than union with God!

The first step in this prayer journey is the prayer of recollection, so-called because you recollect your senses from the world and turn them inward to encounter God within your soul. You don’t go looking for God somewhere out there, far away; rather, you begin by imagining our Lord very close as you speak to Him, maybe even picturing His face. Praying to God while our mind wonders is like being distracted when talking to a friend and turning your back on him! Picturing Him close helps us focus.

Recollecting is a natural process since you have complete control of your faculties. And like any exercise of our faculties, it is something that you can habituate by repeated effort. It may be hard at first to start praying this way if you are not used to it, but it won’t take long before you find delight in it. In time, you will start recollecting automatically during the day, even for brief moments, because you find it so delightful to easily be with God!

As you pray mentally, you should consider carefully what you are asking for. Just saying “Give me what I need” is not sufficient because we are not that surrendered to God’s will. Are you sure you can handle the trials? Rather, in praying the Our Father, we ask for His kingdom which is that inner peace we need to carry our cross as we surrender completely to his will.

As the Lord quiets the faculties and begins to draw you into contemplation, you enter the prayer of quiet. This is the beginning of supernatural prayer because it is not something you can initiate yourself. God’s presence captivates the will, while the intellect (aka imagination) and the memory are still free, but very subdued. They don’t even care to pray vocally as they don’t want to be disturbed! In this prayer, the soul knows it is very close to God but doesn’t know how it knows. The will simply loves God without trying to understand anything. It is completely absorbed in God in self-forgetfulness.

The prayer of quiet has a transformative effect on the soul which lasts even after the prayer ends. Your will remains suspended and you go about your work as if you were not fully in the world. It is important to remember that this is a gift which is given to you. You can’t make it happen and you can’t hang onto it. The best you can do is be open in humility. While supernatural, the prayer of quiet is not yet contemplation because not all the faculties are suspended, but it leads into it. The delight experienced by the will during the prayer of quiet draws in the intellect without any exertion on the will’s part, for if the will were to act to pull the intellect in, it would no longer be totally absorbed in God and lose!

Next, consider what you are asking for when you pray “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. As part of God’s family, we have obligations to the Father as he has to us. The model of obedience here is Jesus praying in the Garden, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39). The degree to which you are willing to say “yes” to the trials God sends your way is the degree to which you channel the Father’s will on earth. Paradoxically, surrendering one’s will to God is simultaneously accompanied with an experience of great difficulty and gain. But you might as well make a virtue of a necessity because evading God’s will is impossible!

Keep your eye on the goal, union with God, our transformation into Himself. Unless you totally surrender your will to the Divine will, union cannot happen. This is terrifying, but remember that God will give us his kingdom to have the strength to withstand any trial, as Christ did. In union, the soul and God live in intimate friendship as a bridge and bridegroom, with a unified will while not loosing their individual personalities. It is a gift far beyond what you can achieve naturally, so only humility can predispose you to accept it from God.

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 6 of 10

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).

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 5 of 10

Chapter 20

This chapter, which on the surface appears to lack focus, needs to be seen in light of previous chapters where St Teresa states that, on the one hand, not everyone is a contemplative (chapter 17), while on the other, God invites everyone to drink from the fount of life (chapter 19). Here she resolves this apparent contradiction by adding that God doesn’t exclude anyone from contemplation but also doesn’t force anyone and gives this water to everyone that follows him.

“It seems I contradicted … what I said before. When I was consoling those who were not contemplatives, I said that the Lord had different paths by which to go to Him just as there are many dwelling places … But He did not say: ‘some come by this path, and others by another.’ Rather, His mercy was so great He excluded no one from striving to come to this fount of life to drink … He does not force us; on the contrary, in many ways He gives drink to those who wish to follow Him so that no one will go without consolation or die of thirst … You must always proceed with this determination to die rather than fail to reach the end of the journey.”

Having established that no one is excluded from drinking from the fount of life, St Teresa tells us that the journey must begin with determination, even if imperfect at first. She will return to this theme several times in the remainder of the work, repeatedly reminding us of this.

“let us deal a little with how this journey must begin … I don’t say that if a person doesn’t have the determination of which I shall speak here, he should stop trying; for the Lord will continue perfecting him. And if that person should do no more than take one step, the step will contain in itself so much power that he will not have to fear losing it, nor will he fail to be very well paid.”

No sooner does St Teresa seem to be narrowing down her focus on how the journey is to begin, then she interjects the non-sequitur “Thus, daughters, in reference to all the persons who speak with you …” and turns her attention to the kind of persons and conversations her nuns should entertain. While not completely unrelated, its not at all clear why she makes this transition. Nonetheless, her insight here is wise: she advises that you should only speak with the language of God, and those who do not understand this language, nor wish to learn it, will simply not be interested. You don’t need to shun such people, they will simply go their own way because you have nothing in common.

“Let truth dwell in your hearts, as it should through meditation, and you will see clearly the kind of love we are obliged to have for our neighbor.”

“There’s no longer time, Sisters, for children’s games, for these worldly friendships, even though they may be good, seem to be nothing else … God is your business and language. Whoever wants to speak to you must learn this language; and if he doesn’t, be on your guard that you don’t learn his; it will be a hell.”

“If those who speak with you wish to learn your language, though it is not your business to teach anyone, you can tell about the riches that are gained in learning it since telling of this is beneficial to the other, and when he learns about the great gain that is to be had, he may go and seek out a master who will teach him. It would be no small favor from the Lord if you were to succeed in awakening some soul to this good.”

Chapter 21

As is typical of her style, after a digression at the end of her last chapter, St Teresa begins this chapter picking up on the theme of determination where she left off to divert into her aside. Here she exhorts her nuns to be resolute to the end, whatever diabolic obstacles may be placed as stumbling blocks a long the way. These come in the way of numerous criticisms from scoffers of mental prayer.

“They must have a great and very resolute determination to persevere until reaching the end, come what may, happen what may, whatever work is involved, whatever criticism arises, whether they arrive or whether they die on the road, or even if they don’t have courage for the trials that are met, or if the whole world collapses. You will hear some persons frequently making objections: ‘there are dangers’; ‘so-and-so went astray by such means’; ‘this other one was deceived’; ‘another who prayed a great deal fell away’; ‘it’s harmful to virtue’; ‘it’s not for women, for they will be susceptible to illusions’; ‘it’s better they stick to their sewing’; ‘they don’t need these delicacies’; ‘the Our Father and the Hail Mary are sufficient.'”

Of these criticism, St Teresa says she only agrees with one, that “the Our Father and the Hail Mary are sufficient” as prayers. But in agreeing, she is not abandoning mental prayer in favor of vocal prayer; rather, in the remainder of the text, she will use the words of the “Our Father” as a springboard to teach how one should pray properly. In this way, St Teresa silences her critics by teaching mental prayer with the very prayer that her critics themselves say is sufficient.

“It is always good to base your prayer on prayers coming from the mouth of the Lord … So it seems to me now that I should proceed by setting down some points here about the beginning, the means, and the end of prayer … I don’t say that I’m going to write a commentary on these divine prayers … But I will mention some thoughts on the words of the Our Father.”

“Hence, don’t pay any attention to the fears they raise or to the picture of the dangers they paint for you … For when you are about to gain the treasure … by a royal road and by a safe road, the road chosen by our King and all His elect and saints, they will tell you that there are so many dangers and so many things to fear.”

Here, the “royal” and “safe” road can be understood as the “Our Father”.

At this point, St Teresa issues an important warning here to her critics: unless you engage in authentic prayer, your spiritual life will dry up. Since she will argue that for any vocal prayer to be authentic it must be joined with mental prayer, by arguing against mental prayer, her critics are advocating for an inauthentic form of prayer which will end in killing the spiritual life of those who follow their advice.

“So you see, how will one journey without a drop of this water on a road where there are so many struggles? It is clear that when it is needed most they will not have it and will die of thirst. Because whether we like it or not, my daughters, we must all journey toward this fount, even though in different ways. Well, believe me; and don’t let anyone deceive you by showing you a road other than that of prayer … Should anyone tell you that prayer is dangerous, consider him the real danger and run from him … There will be danger in not having humility and the other virtues. But that the way of prayer be a way of danger — God would never will that.”

“And see how blind the world is, for they fail to consider the many thousands who have fallen into heresies and great evils because they didn’t practice prayer but engaged in distractions.”

While it is not irrelevant for us today, this chapter is actually aimed at arming her nuns against the kinds of criticisms they would have heard in their days. Her nuns would have been sensitive to these criticisms and therefore hesitant to engage in mental prayer as St Teresa taught them. The saint had to reassure them. She argues that people have gone astray regarding authentic prayer, and that’s why God raises up servants to remind us of the goodness of prayer. Her closing argument, in my opinion, is the final nail in the coffin of those who advocate against mental prayer: For vocal prayer to be prayer at all, the person praying must be attentive to what is being said. But to be attentive to what is being said is exactly what we mean by ‘mental prayer’. Surely her critics are not advocating for the mindless recitation of words in order to avoid mental prayer?!

“God will raise up someone to open the eyes of these half-blind people and tell them that the devil has placed a cloud in front of them to prevent their seeing the way … Little by little, souls discover again the way; God gives them courage. If they are told there is danger in prayer, one of these servants of God will strive, if not in words then in deeds, to make known how good prayer is.”

“Therefore, Sisters, give up these fears … If they tell you that the prayer should be vocal, ask, for the sake of more precision, if in vocal prayer the mind and heart must be attentive to what you say. If they answer “yes” — for they cannot answer otherwise — you will see how they admit that you are forced to practice mental prayer and even experience contemplation if God should give it to you by such a means.”

Chapter 22

Having argued effectively at the end of the last chapter that vocal prayer necessarily entails mental prayer, St Teresa now turns to a more substantive definition of mental prayer: As long as you are praying with the awareness that you are speaking to God, who you are in relation to Him, and what you are saying to him, then you are engaged in mental prayer. So reciting a vocal prayer, like the “Our Father”, can and should be joined with mental prayer, since you should always pray with awareness.

“… the nature of mental prayer isn’t determined by whether or not the mouth is closed. If while speaking I thoroughly understand and know that I am speaking with God and I have greater awareness of this than I do of the words I’m saying, mental and vocal prayer are joined. If, however, others tell you that you are speaking with God while you are reciting the Our Father and at the same time in fact thinking of the world, then I have nothing to say. But if you are to be speaking, as is right, with so great a Lord, it is good that you consider whom you are speaking with as well as who you are, at least if you want to be polite.”

That this seems obvious to us today is a testament to the influence St Teresa has had on the Church. But its clear from the numerous times she has to urge her nuns not to fear mental prayer that this was not the case in her days.

“Who can say that it is wrong, when we begin to recite the Hours or the rosary, to consider whom we are going to speak with, and who we are, so as to know how to speak with Him? Now I tell you, Sisters, if before you begin your vocal prayer you do the great deal that must be done in order to understand these two points well, you will be spending a good amount of time in mental prayer. Yes, indeed, for we must not approach a conversation with a prince as negligently as we do one with a farm worker, or with some poor thing like ourselves for whom any manner of address is all right.”

St Teresa has a great appreciation of God’s loving kindness in giving us prayer, that he let’s us approach him this way, even though we hardly know how to address him properly, and yet he accepts us in humility. The last thing we want to do is to be rude to him by talking to him while our minds are elsewhere!

“… this King listens to me and lets me approach Him … even though as an uneducated person I don’t know how to speak to Him … He delights more in the unpolished manners of a humble shepherd who He realizes would say more if he knew more than He does in the talk of very wise and learned men … But just because He is good doesn’t mean that we should be rude … we should strive to be aware of His purity and of who He is …”

St Teresa is overcome at this point with love for her Creator and breaks out into an extemporaneous prayer, almost as an example of how we might approach God in prayer. You can see all the elements of mental prayer in it: a clear awareness of her smallness as she speaks to God in his infinite being. I quote her prayer in its entirety:

“Oh, our Emperor, supreme Power, supreme Goodness, Wisdom itself, without beginning, without end, without any limit to Your works; they are infinite and incomprehensible, a fathomless sea of marvels, with a beauty containing all beauty, strength itself! Oh, God help me, who might possess here all human eloquence and wisdom together in order to know how to explain clearly — insofar as is possible here below, because in this case all knowledge is equivalent to knowing nothing — a number of the many things we can consider in order to have some knowledge of who this Lord and Good of ours is!”

St Teresa beautifully concludes this chapter by deepening our appreciation of what mental prayer is really all about. In “understanding whom you are speaking with” as you pray, what you are doing is entering into a relationship with God, the nature of which can only be likened to the intimacy one has with one’s spouse — here St Teresa is echoing the biblical imagery of the Bride and the Bridegroom as metaphor for mankind’s union with God.

“Yes, bring yourselves to consider and understand whom you are speaking with … it is only right, daughters, that we try to delight in these grandeurs our Spouse possesses and that we understand whom we are wedded to and what kind of life we must live … here below before getting married a person will know the other party … who this man is, who His Father is, what country He is going to bring me to, what good things He promises to give me, what His status is, how I can make Him happy, and in what ways I can please Him, and from studying how I can conform my way of life to His? Now if a woman is to be happily married, she must … strive for this conformity even though her husband is a man of lowly estate.”

“This is mental prayer, my daughters: to understand these truths. If you should want to grow in understanding these things and pray vocally, well and good. You should not be thinking of other things while speaking with God, for doing so amounts to not knowing what mental prayer is.”

Chapter 23

As if recovering from yet another digression, St Teresa begins the chapter by returning once again to the question of determination, and tries to convince us with three reasons for why it is important in order to achieve our final goal of contemplation and divine union.

“Well now, I say there are so many reasons why it is extremely important to begin with great determination that I would have to go on at much length if I mentioned them all. Sisters, I want to mention only two or three.”

Her first reason is that, if you give your time in prayer with the right intention, God will always reward you with much more in return. So there is no reason not to give of yourself with complete abandonment and there will be no displeasure in holding back.

“One is that if we resolve to give something, that is, this little care, to someone who has given so much to us and continually gives — giving this little care is certainly to our advantage and we thereby gain so many wonderful things — there is no reason for failing to give with complete determination. There’s no reason for being like the lender who gives something with the intention of getting it back again … rather, there is always some displeasure felt by the borrower when the object is taken back …”

She compares this to gifts between husband and wife where everything is held in common, and so the exchange is more of a symbol of their mutual love until death than any transfer of goods.

“What bride is there who in receiving many valuable jewels from her bridegroom will refuse to give him even a ring, not because of what it is worth, for everything belongs to him, but to give it as a pledge that she will be his until death? Does this Lord deserve less … But this little bit of time that we resolve to give Him … let us give to Him, since we desire to do so, with our thoughts free of other things and unoccupied by them … I should consider the time of prayer as not belonging to me and think that He can ask it of me in justice when I do not want to give it wholly to Him.”

“Let the intention be firm; my God is not at all touchy; He doesn’t bother about trifling things. Thus you will have something to be grateful for; this intention amounts to giving something.”

While St Teresa urges to give with complete abandonment, she realizes that some just don’t have that spirit of giving. A lot of people just bring their petitions to God and pray in the hopes of getting something in return for the “time they have put in”. While they may not be the most generous, it is something and God will reward them.

“… for anyone who is not generous but so stingy that he doesn’t have the spirit of giving, it is enough for them to lend. In the end, one who lends does do something, and this Lord of ours takes everything into account … He is not at all petty … when there is a question of His repaying us, He’s so careful that you need have no fear. Just the raising of our eyes in remembrance of Him will have its reward.”

The next reason St Teresa forwards for determination is that it keeps the devil at bay. If you are determined, it is less likely that you will be moved by temptation.

“Another reason for beginning with determination is that the devil will not then have so free a hand to tempt … And if he knows that someone is changeable and unstable in being good and not strongly determined to persevere, he will keep after him day and night;”

The final reason is that the determined person strives with great fortitude, knowing that failure is absolute, like one in battle who has made his peace with imminent death. St Teresa calls him a “desperado”, someone without any other hope except that of the way forward, like when Peter, faced with our Lord’s “hard teaching” that caused many to turn away, said “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (John 6:66) For Peter, there was no other way forward.

“The other reason for beginning with determination is — and it is very much to the point — that the person who does so struggles more courageously. He knows that come what may he will not turn back. As in the case of one who is in a battle, he knows that if he is conquered they won’t spare him his life and that if he doesn’t die in battle he will die afterward. He struggles with greater determination and wants to fight like a desperado — as they say — and he doesn’t fear the blows so much, because he is convinced of how important victory is and that for him to conquer is to live.”

In closing the chapter, St Teresa ends by assuring her nuns of final victory. Having impressed on them all the difficulties they will face and urged them to meet them with determination, St Teresa rightly worried that some might reason, is it worth it? Should I bother to embark on this difficult path? Or should I cut my losses short since I will only loose all my investment in the end? St Teresa consoles them not to worry, victory is theirs.

“It’s also necessary to begin with the assurance that if we don’t let ourselves be conquered we will obtain our goal … Don’t be afraid that the Lord will leave you to die of thirst … for the devil intimidates persons who don’t yet fully know the goodness of the Lord through experience, even though they know it through faith. But it is a great thing to have experienced the friendship and favor He shows toward those who journey on this road and how He takes care of almost all the expenses.”

St Teresa shows remarkable sympathy to those who can only take it on faith that the struggle is worth it, and have not experienced the Lord’s goodness directly as she has. But she testifies to this as a witness and asks us to trust her.

“I’m not surprised that those who have not experienced this want the assurance of some gain for themselves … I say that should anyone have some doubt little would be lost in trying the journey of prayer; for this journey brings with it the following good: more is given than is asked for, beyond what we could desire. This is absolutely true; I know. And those of you who know it by experience, through the goodness of God, can be my witnesses.

Chapter 24

Once again St Teresa begins a new chapter by returning to her discussions from chapters 19 and 21 on mental prayer as it is joined to vocal prayer. After reminding us what mental prayer entails, she expands on our understanding by noting that it is not sufficient to know what the words mean just once, but you must think about what you are saying each time you recite the prayer. After all, you are speaking to God each time you pray and so your attention must be on him.

“Now, then, let us speak again to those souls I mentioned that cannot recollect or tie their minds down in mental prayer or engage in reflection … what I now want to counsel you about … is how you must pray vocally, for it’s only right that you should understand what you’re saying … I will speak of those prayers we are obliged as Christians to recite … so that people won’t be able to say of us that we speak and don’t understand what we’re speaking about … What I would like us to do, daughters, is refuse to be satisfied with merely pronouncing the words. For when I say, ‘I believe,’ it seems to me right that I should know and understand what I believe. And when I say, ‘Our Father,’ it will be an act of love to understand who this Father of ours is and who the Master is who taught us this prayer.”

“If you reply that you already know this and that there is no reason to recall it, you are wrong … God never allows us to forget the Master who taught us this prayer, and with so much love and desire that it benefit us. He wants us to remember Him often when we say the prayer, even though because of our weakness we do not remember him always.”

St Teresa next turns the the importance of solitude in prayer, noting that Christ himself prayed in solitude. Clearly, if you are engaged in talking to God, you don’t want to be distracted by the world and need to isolate yourself from it. So in mental prayer, you should make every effort to create a situation in which there is silence both outside you and inside.

“Now with regard to vocal prayer you already know that His Majesty teaches that it be recited in solitude … one cannot speak simultaneously to God and to the world; this would amount to nothing more than reciting the prayer while listening to what is being said elsewhere or to letting the mind wander and making no effort to control it.”

Of course, anyone who has tried this quickly discovers that, depending on the circumstances, it is not always easy to quiet the mind. St Teresa consoles us in this regard, and asks us not to be too hard on ourselves when we can’t control our distractions. We should try, but sometimes it is just beyond our ability. God could quiet the mind for us, but he sometimes allows these distractions to happen for some greater good. We should just make the effort to be alone, and trust God will hear us and answer, even if we don’t hear him.

“There can be exceptions at times either because of bad humors … or because of faint feelings in the head … Or it can happen that God will permit days of severe temptation in his servants for their greater good. And though in their affliction they are striving to be quiet, they cannot even be attentive to what they are saying, no matter how hard they try; nor will the intellect settle down in anything, but by the disordered way it goes about, it will seem to be in a frenzy.”

“Whoever experiences the affliction these distractions cause will see that they are not his fault; he should not grow anxious, which makes things worse, or tire himself trying to put order into something that at the time doesn’t have any, that is, his mind. He should just pray as best he can; or even not pray, but like a sick person strive to bring some relief to his soul; let him occupy himself in other works of virtue.”

“What we ourselves can do is to strive to be alone; and please God it will suffice, as I say, that we understand to whom we are speaking and the answer the Lord makes to our petitions. Do you think He is silent? Even though we do not hear Him, He speaks well to the heart when we beseech Him from the heart.

If you have followed St Teresa’s reasoning up to this point, it should be obvious that vocal and mental prayer are just two aspects of authentic prayer. If you just want to pray vocally, that is, without mental prayer, or more precisely, without knowing what we are saying and to whom we are speaking, then you really are not praying at all. It may be hard at first, but that habit of being attentive during prayer can be formed with some effort.

“You will say … that you neither can nor want to pray any other way but vocally … Since such individuals do not have the habit, it is difficult for them to recollect their minds in the beginning; and so as to avoid a little fatigue, they say they neither can nor know how to do anything else than pray vocally.”

“You are right in saying that this vocal prayer is now in fact mental prayer. But I tell you that surely I don’t know how mental prayer can be separated from vocal prayer if the vocal prayer is to be recited well with an understanding of whom we are speaking to. It is even an obligation that we strive to pray with attention.”

Closing Remarks: It might seem like a contradiction to us that not many people are very contemplative, and yet God does not exclude anyone from contemplative prayer. St Teresa clears up the confusion by explaining that, yes, God does indeed invite all of us to drink from the “fount of life” (her metaphor for contemplative prayer), but he also doesn’t force anyone.

If we are to journey to this fount, we must begin with very resolute determination. We need to overcome thoughts that would discourage us from practicing mental prayer, like that it will lead to error. To answer any doubts we might have and address the critics of her day, St Teresa shows us how traditional vocal prayers, like the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary”, if recited with attention and not mindlessly, are already mental prayers. As long as you are praying with the awareness that you are speaking to God, the awareness of who you are in relation to Him, and the awareness of what you are saying to him, then you are already engaged in mental prayer.

It is a testament to God’s loving kindness that he allows us to approach him this way, miserable as we are, so the least we can do is not be rude by talking to him while thinking about something else. It is important that we be attentive to God each time we pray, and not merely be content with having understood the words of the prayer just once so that now we can safely recite it mindlessly. Over time, we come to better understand who we are speaking with and enter into a relationship with God that can only be likened to the biblical marriage between the Bride and Bridegroom.

However, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, because distractions in prayer are often beyond our control; nonetheless, we should strive for both exterior and interior silence. If God wants, he can give us quiet or leave us to battle our distractions, whatever is most efficacious for our good. But don’t be discouraged! The watchword is “determination”! With that you will not be afraid to give of yourself completely in prayer, fight off any diabolic temptations and battle forward like a real “desperado”, one who knows that failure is not an option!

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 4 of 10

Chapter 16

In this chapter, St Teresa is finally ready to begin her discussion on prayer! After spending over a third of the book discussing the virtues necessary as a foundations for prayer, she is now ready to discuss vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. She compares what she’s been up to like a game of chess, in which setting up the pieces is analogous to developing the necessary virtues, particularly humility which is most powerful.

“Don’t think that what I have said so far is all I have to say, for I am just setting up the game, as they say. You asked me to mention something about the foundation for prayer. Even though God did not lead me by means of this foundation, for I still don’t have these virtues,[2] I know of no other. Now realize that anyone who doesn’t know how to set up the pieces for a game of chess won’t know how to play well. And if he doesn’t know how to check his opponent’s king, he won’t know how to checkmate it either.”

“The queen is the piece that can carry on the best battle in this game, and all the other pieces help. There’s no queen like humility for making the King surrender. Humility drew the King from heaven to the womb of the Virgin … For I cannot understand how there could be humility without love or love without humility.”

St Teresa next turns to the distinction between contemplation and meditation. It’s not clear here if St Teresa takes “meditation” to mean the same as “mental prayer” (she uses the Spanish ‘meditacion’ for the former, and ‘oracion mental’ for the latter), but she goes on to say that contemplation is something altogether different. Meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues and essential for any Christian life. It is the starting point even if we don’t possess all the virtues. While contemplation is something beyond, comparing it to checkmate in her analogy between the prayer life and chess and something God gives us only when we give ourselves entirely to Him.

“I say that had you asked about meditation I could have spoken about it and counseled all to practice it even though they do not possess the virtues, for meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues, and to undertake it is a matter of life and death for all Christians.”

“But contemplation is something else, daughters … if a person spends a little time each day thinking about his sins … they immediately say he is a very contemplative soul … but [this] is mistaken. In the beginning he didn’t know how to set up the game. He thought it was enough to know the pieces in order to checkmate the King. But that was impossible, for this King doesn’t give Himself but to those who give themselves entirely to Him.”

Just as St Teresa has had to explain the relationship between the virtues (humility in particular) and mental prayer, she now warns that she has more to explain before progressing from mental prayer to contemplation.

“Therefore, daughters, if you desire that I tell you about the way that leads to contemplation, you will have to bear with me if I enlarge a little on some other matters … And if you don’t want to hear about them or to put them into practice, stay with your mental prayer for your whole life, for I assure you and all persons who aim after true contemplation … that you will not thereby reach it.”

At this point, St Teresa tries to turn to the question of mental prayer, “to explain — because some of you don’t know — what mental prayer is, and please God we shall practice this as it ought to be practiced” but she is immediately gets caught up in a digression about the impediment that a lack of virtue creates for mental prayer. A careful reading reveals a circularity in her reasoning. If we take “meditation” and “mental prayer” as essentially synonymous, then in paragraph 3 she says that “meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues”, while in paragraph 6 she asserts “that mental prayer also involves much labor if the virtues are not obtained”. So, which is first? Acquisition of the virtues or mental prayer?

The circularity here doesn’t seem insurmountable. When we first begin to pray, we lack much in the way of the virtues and may find mental prayer difficult, but as we persist, the virtues will grow making our mental prayer easier until we break out of the cycle. This is my particular reading of St Teresa and it is speculative, but it does describe my own experience in my prayer life.

“But I fear that mental prayer also involves much labor if the virtues are not obtained — although it’s not necessary that they be possessed in as high a degree as is required for contemplation. I say that the King of glory will not come to our soul — I mean to be united with it — if we do not make the effort to gain the great virtues.”

St Teresa’s digression is understandable because she’s trying to express a complex thought here. Normally, great virtue is required for ease in mental prayer and even greater virtue before God grants us contemplation. But contemplation really is a gift from God and he does sometimes grant it briefly to those in a bad state to draw them out. So, we cannot presume on God’s ways. He fights the devil for us by any means he sees fit.

“I want to say, then, that there are times when God will want to grant some great favor to persons who are in a bad state so as to draw them by this means out of the hands of the devil … O my Lord, how often do we make You fight the devil in arm to arm combat!”

“there are souls that God thinks He can win to Himself by these means … And even though they are in a bad state and lacking in virtue, He gives them spiritual delight, consolation, and tenderness that begin to stir the desires … though He does so rarely and it lasts only a short while … so as to try them to see if with that favor they will want to prepare themselves to enjoy Him often.

But for those who actually prepare themselves in the virtues and give themselves over with determination, God gifts them with contemplation and doesn’t stop until we reach a very high degree. However, if we don’t give ourselves over to him completely, he leaves us in mental prayer.

“For myself I hold that there are many to whom our Lord God gives this test, but few who prepare themselves for the enjoyment of the favor of contemplation. When the Lord grants it and we do not fail on our part, I hold as certain that He never ceases to give until we reach a very high degree. When we do not give ourselves to His Majesty with the determination with which He gives Himself to us, He does a good deal by leaving us in mental prayer …”

Before closing, St Teresa exhorts her sisters to remain determined and keep our eyes always fixed on Christ. Even when we do something imperfect, we should not turn our eyes to the imperfection, but persist in our path to becoming saints.

“O Lord, how true that all harm comes to us from not keeping our eyes fixed on You; if we were to look at nothing else but the way, we would soon arrive …

“God deliver us, Sisters, when we do something imperfect, from saying: “We’re not angels, we’re not saints.” Consider that even though we’re not, it is a great good to think that if we try we can become saints with God’s help.

St Teresa closes with an apology for her digression. For those who have become accustom to St Teresa’s style, her self-awareness is comical as she points out the shortcomings of the text within the text itself — something of a dramatization of self-detachment in textual form.

“I have digressed a good deal. I want to return to what I was saying, that is, explaining the nature of mental prayer and of contemplation. It may seem impertinent for me to be doing that, but for you everything is acceptable. It may be that you will understand the matter better through my rough style than through other more elegant styles. May the Lord help me, amen.”

Chapter 17

St Teresa continues to build up the tension for the reader expecting her to finally begin explaining mental prayer and contemplation! This chapter focuses on yet one more important aspect of humility as it pertains to prayer: not everyone is called to contemplation, which is not necessary for our salvation, and the truly humble person will accept whatever path God chooses for us, whether that of an active or a contemplative. In fact, St Teresa shocks our modern sensibility by praising the absolute lowest position in the monastery, to serve the servants of the Lord!

“How could a truly humble person think he is as good as those who are contemplative? … Prepare yourself so that God may lead you along this path if He so desires. When He doesn’t, you can practice humility, which is to consider yourself lucky to serve the servants of the Lord and praise His Majesty because He brought you among them and drew you away from the devils in hell where you deserved to be a slave of these devils.

St Teresa’s words should not be distressing, but a consolation, to someone who isn’t very contemplative. In fact this lowly path may even be higher in the eyes of the Lord and she may receive even greater rewards in heaven!

“it is important to understand that God doesn’t lead all by one path, and perhaps the one who thinks she is walking along a very lowly path is in fact higher in the eyes of the Lord.”

“So, not because all in this house practice prayer must all be contemplatives; that’s impossible. And it would be very distressing for the one who isn’t a contemplative if she didn’t understand the truth that to be a contemplative is a gift from God; and since being one isn’t necessary for salvation, nor does God demand this, she shouldn’t think anyone will demand it of her.”

St Teresa remarks on the diversity of intellects and temperaments that make the contemplative path difficult for some, and even includes herself since she had difficulty in meditation for many years. The important thing is humility. This is always the safest path because spiritual delights can be deceptive, but humility is always certain.

“I spent fourteen years never being able to practice meditation without reading.”

“I know an elderly person who lives a good life, is penitential and an excellent servant of God, who has spent many hours for many years in vocal prayer, but in mental prayer she’s helpless … If humility is present, I don’t believe they will be any the worse off in the end but will be very much the equals of those who receive many delights; and in a way they will be more secure, for we do not know if the delights are from God or from the devil.”

“Those who do not receive these delights walk with humility, suspecting that this lack is their own fault, always concerned about making progress … In humility, mortification, detachment, and the other virtues there is always greater security. There is nothing to fear; don’t be afraid that you will fail to reach the perfection of those who are very contemplative.”

Finally, St Teresa clarifies that she’s not suggesting that her nuns not strive to be contemplatives, but that it is not of one’s choosing, so you should leave your path in life up to God.

“I don’t say that we shouldn’t try; on the contrary, we should try everything. What I am saying is that this is not a matter of your choosing but of the Lord’s. If after many years He should give to each a certain task, it would be a nice kind of humility for you to want to choose for yourselves … Be sure that if you do what lies in your power, preparing yourselves for contemplation with the perfection mentioned, and that if He doesn’t give it to you (and I believe He will give it if detachment and humility are truly present), He will save this gift for you so as to grant it to you all at once in heaven.”

Chapter 18

St Teresa dedicates this chapter to expelling any illusions that those in the active life might have about contemplatives. While it may seem that the latter receive nothing but spiritual delights from the Lord, this is far from the case, and they often have to undergo trials that, without the grace of courage and determination, they would not be able to sustain. While St Teresa doesn’t expand on what these trials might be, except to say that “you would be surprised at the ways and modes in which God gives them crosses”, one can easily imagine the sort of inner trials contemplatives undergo. St Teresa describes theirs as “a rough and uneven path”, so much so that “at times they think they are lost and must return to begin again”.

“I know both paths, and I know clearly that the trials God gives to contemplatives are intolerable. These trials are of such a kind that if He didn’t give that food with its delights, these persons wouldn’t be able to endure the trials.”

“So, I see few true contemplatives who are not courageous and determined to suffer, for the first thing the Lord does, if they are weak, is to give them courage and make them unafraid of trials.”

“I believe that when those of the active life see the contemplative favored a little, they think there is nothing else to the contemplative’s life than receiving favors. Well, I say that perhaps these active persons couldn’t endure one day of the kind the contemplative endures. Thus, since the Lord knows what each one is suited for, He gives to each person a proper task …”

There are many paths in the spiritual life, and we should trust the Lord to point out the path that plays to our strengths and be eager to serve. Even for her nuns called to contemplative life, those that can’t engage in mental prayer should turn to vocal prayer.

“Since the captain sees his soldiers present and eager to serve and has understood the capability of each one, he distributes the duties according to the strengths he sees … So it is with us, Sisters; let us give ourselves to mental prayer. And let whoever cannot practice it turn to vocal prayer, reading, and colloquy with God, as I shall say afterward.”

She likens God’s guidance of path in the spiritual life to a captain distributing duties to his soldiers, and equates contemplatives to standard-bearers in battle. In the confusion of any battle, rallying points are needed, and these are the standard-bearers. They must hold high the cross, the “flag of humility”, in the midst of a battle in which they cannot defend themselves.

“Even though the standard-bearer doesn’t fight in the battle, he doesn’t for that reason fail to walk in great danger; and interiorly he must do more work than anyone. Since he carries the flag, he cannot defend himself; and even though they cut him to pieces he must not let it out of his hands. So it is with contemplatives: they must keep the flag of humility raised and suffer all the blows they receive without returning any. Their duty is to suffer as Christ did, to hold high the cross …”

We really don’t have an overview of our lives and can’t understand what path is best for us, and so we should leave it up to the Lord, submitting humbly to his will, rather than demanding what we think we deserve. We really don’t know the chalice of which we are to drink, and only God can determine if we are ready to drink from it. In the next life, we will understand the value of our experiences in this, but we can’t understand that yet. Speaking of her nuns, St Teresa calls for obedience, and by extension humility, as the safest and most certain path, in contrast other devotions (more mystical in nature) in which there is the possibility of illusions from the devil.

“So, Sisters, we don’t know what we are asking for. Let us leave it to the Lord … There are some persons who demand favors from God as though these were due them in justice. That’s a nice kind of humility! Thus, He who knows all very seldom grants such persons favors, and rightly so. He sees clearly that they are not ready to drink from the chalice.”

“What each of you will understand, daughters, if you are advanced, will be that you are the most wretched of all … for we shall have to wait for the next world to see the value of such experiences.”

“I say that I don’t know why a nun under obedience by vow is in the monastery if she doesn’t make every effort to practice this obedience with greater perfection. At least I can assure her that as long as she fails in obedience she will never attain to being a contemplative.”

“I conclude by saying that these are the virtues I desire you to have [ie. obedience] … As for those other devotions … having them is an uncertain matter. It could be that in other persons they may be from God, whereas in your case His Majesty may permit them to be an illusion of the devil and that you be deceived by him …”

Chapter 19

This chapter represents a break from St Teresa’s earlier train of thought, and she beings by admitting that “so many days have gone by since I wrote the above … I’ll have to let this work turn out in whatever way it does, without any order.” Nonetheless, she does bring her focus back to mental prayer and embarks on an extended metaphor in which she tries to explain the final goal, contemplation and divine union.

Since mental prayer is preparatory for contemplation, she laments the difficulty some people have in engaging in it due to unruly thoughts. For this, she advises determination to the very end, lest they stop just short of their final goal without even knowing it.

“There is nothing for me to say to anyone who can form the habit of following this method of prayer, or who has already formed it, for by means of so good a path the Lord will draw him to the haven of light … But what I would like to speak about and offer a remedy for … is the following. There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop.”

“I pity these souls greatly, for they seem to be like very thirsty persons who see water in the distance, but when they want to go there, they meet someone who prevents their passing from the beginning through the middle to the end … and perhaps they were no more than two steps from the fount of living water, of which the Savior said to the Samaritan woman, ‘whoever drinks of it will never thirst.'”

St Teresa next turns to her extended metaphor in which she uses the images of fire and water to explain what contemplation and divine union are. The metaphor is complex and open to interpretation, so what follows is a reading that, I believe, is consistent with what St Teresa is trying to communicate. The difficulty comes because she uses the image of water and fire equivocally. The ambiguities, however, can be resolved if we take the images as referring to either to their earthly or heavenly variety and take “fire” as referring to some passion and “water” as that which satisfies it.
She starts by noting three properties of water pertinent to the discussion:

The first property of water is that it extinguishes its opposite, fire. Heavenly water extinguishes any earthly attachment (“a great fire”), but not desire for God (“fire … from pitch”). Then this heavenly water enhances it more.

“The first is that it refreshes; for, no matter how much heat we may experience, as soon as we approach the water the heat goes away. If there is a great fire, it is extinguished by water — unless the fire burns from pitch; then it is en-kindled more.”

Then she inverts the imagery and has water refer to earthly satisfactions (“water … from the earth”), and pits it against the inextinguishable fire which is the love of God. One can even interpret this as divine union.

“So, as I say, the water that rises from the earth has no power over the love of God; the flames of this love are very high, and the source of it is not found in anything so lowly. There are other little fires of love of God that any event will extinguish. But extinguish this fire? No, not at all! Even though a whole sea of temptations comes, the fire will not be put out and thereby made to lose control over these temptations.”

But when both the water and the fire are from heaven, they enhance one another

“Well, if it is water that rains from heaven, so much less will it extinguish this fire; the two are not contraries but from the same land. Have no fear that the one element will do harm to the other; rather, they help each other produce their effect. For the water of true tears, those that flow in true prayer, readily given by the King of heaven, helps the fire burn more and last longer; and the fire helps the water bring refreshment.”

The second property of water is that it cleans us. The metaphor of water cleansing our sins is common — one has only to think of Baptism. But here St Teresa adds a profound insight regarding the attainment of perfection. While we can make some progress by our own efforts, we can’t fully remove all our imperfections. Since we always carry with ourselves some imperfection, and since you can’t attain to perfection using imperfect means, we can never attain perfection by our own efforts. Rather, the perfection of divine union is supernatural and not a matter of our own choosing.

Here I quote paragraph six in its entirety as it conveys the insight so eloquently:

“Another property of water is that it cleans dirty things. What would the world be like if there were no water for washing? Do you know how clean this water is, this heavenly water, this clear water, when it isn’t cloudy, when it isn’t muddy, but falls from heaven? Once this water has been drunk, I am certain that it leaves the soul bright and cleansed of all faults. Since this divine union is something very supernatural, it is not a matter of our own choosing. As I have written, God doesn’t permit a soul to drink this water unless to cleanse it and leave it clean and free from all the mud and misery in which, through its own faults, it was struck. Other delights that come through the medium of the intellect, however much they may accomplish, come from water running on the ground; they do not come from drinking at the fount. There is never a lack of muddy things to detain one on this path, and the water is not so pure and clean. Living water is not what I call this prayer in which, as I say, there is reasoning with the intellect; I mean from the way I understand things. For something from the road that we don’t want will stick to our soul and be helped to cling there by our body and natural lowliness, however much we may want to avoid this.”

St Teresa illustrates this point by showing us that, even in thinking about how to negate this world, our attention turns back to the world and we still affirm it! This is such an important point, and she does such a good job at conveying the idea, that I quote paragraph seven in its entirety.

“Let me explain myself further: suppose that in order to despise the world we are thinking about its nature and how all things come to an end. Almost without our realizing it we find ourselves thinking about the things we like in the world; and in desiring to flee them, we are at least hindered a little by thinking about how they were and how they will be and what we will do; in order to think of what we must do to free ourselves, we place ourselves in danger again. Not that this reasoning must be abandoned, but one must be fearful; it’s necessary to proceed with care.”

“By means of this living water the Lord Himself takes up these cares, for He doesn’t want to entrust them to us. He so esteems our soul that He doesn’t allow it to be occupied with things that can harm it during the time He wishes to favor it. Rather, He immediately places it near Himself and shows it in an instant more truths, and gives it clearer understanding of what everything is, than we could have here below in many years. For our eyes don’t see clearly; the dust blinds us as we walk. By this living water the Lord brings us to the end of the journey without our understanding how.”

The third property of water is that it satisfies. You can die from too little, but you can also die from too much heavenly water “because the love of God and desire for Him can increase so much that the natural subject is unable to endure it, and so there have been persons who have died from love.” St Teresa herself says she knows of a woman “who would have died if God hadn’t succored her immediately with such an abundance of this living water, for she was almost carried out of herself with raptures.” But since God can never give us something that will harm us, He will increase our capacity to receive what he gives us. All desire comes from the self, and the longing to completely forsake this world to be with God is moderated by the desire to help others along the same path.

“It should be understood here that since there can be nothing imperfect in our supreme Good, everything He gives is for our good; and however great the abundance of this water He gives, there cannot be too much in anything of His. If He gives a great deal, He gives the soul, as I said, the capacity to drink much; like a glass-maker who makes the vessel a size he sees is necessary in order to hold what he intends to pour into it.”

“In desiring this water there is always some fault, since the desire comes from ourselves; if some good comes, it comes from the Lord who helps. But we are so indiscreet that since the pain is sweet and delightful, we never think we can have enough of this pain … we foster this desire as much as we can, and so sometimes it kills … But perhaps by continuing to live we can help others die of desire for this death. And I believe the devil causes this desire for death, for he understands the harm that can be done by such a person while alive; and so at this stage he tempts one to perform indiscreet penances so that one’s health will be lost …”

St Teresa closes this chapter by explaining that, by making the goal of contemplation and divine union explicit right from the beginning, her nuns would not despair and abandon the path when they encounter trials along their way, but rather would persist with determination until the end. Thus she ends the chapter addressing the difficulty that she commented on in the beginning, and exhorts her sisters to trust that the Lord’s invitation to divine union is open to all.

“Why do you think, daughters, that I have tried to explain the goal and show you the reward before the battle, by telling you about the good that comes from drinking of this heavenly fount, of this living water? So that you will not be dismayed by the trial and contradiction there is along the way, and advance with courage and not grow weary … Behold, the Lord invites all … If this invitation were not a general one, the Lord wouldn’t have called us all … He could have said, ‘Come all of you, for in the end you won’t lose anything, and to those whom I choose I will give to drink.’ But since He spoke without this condition to all, I hold as certain that all those who do not falter on the way will drink this living water.”

Closing Remarks: In these chapters, St Teresa finally turns her attention from the virtues, which are the necessary for prayer, to prayer itself and discusses vocal, mental and contemplative prayer. Mental prayer, which on my reading she also calls meditation, is the basis of acquiring the virtues, and the acquisition of the virtues make mental prayer easy. Contemplation, on the other hand, is something altogether different. It is a pure gift from God which he gives us when we give ourselves entirely to Him. Typically, contemplation requires a very high degree of virtue, but sometimes he grants it briefly to those in a bad state to draw them out. But for those who are ready, God doesn’t stop gifting us with contemplation until we reach a very high degree. However, if we don’t give ourselves over to him completely, he leaves us in mental prayer.

St Teresa, however, does take on more digression on the importance of humility as in our prayer life: not everyone is called to contemplation. It is not necessary for our salvation and the truly humble person accepts whatever path God chooses, whether active or contemplative. In fact, the active, as a servant of the servants of God (ie of the contemplatives) may be following the higher path! Humility is always the safest path because spiritual delights might be deceptive. Nor should the active think that contemplatives receive only spiritual delights from the Lord. The latter undergo many trials and require special graces to sustain them. They are like standard-bearers in battle who cannot defend themselves, yet must still hold high the “flag of humility” despite blows. Only God knows what chalice we are to drink of, and so we should leave the decision of our calling in his hands.

St Teresa ends her digression and returns to her discussion on prayer. Mental prayer is the path to contemplation, but since it is difficulty, especially for those whose minds are restless, they give up before they reach the final goal, which is contemplation and divine union. To encourage them to persist with determination, she makes the goal explicit from the onset and assures them that it is well worth the trials. To describe contemplation, she compares it to heavenly water: 1. Heavenly water (contemplation) extinguishes any earthly fire (attachment to creatures) but increases heavenly fire (love for God). 2. Heavenly water cleanses us. We cannot use our own faculties (intellect) which are themselves dirty, to clean ourselves, and so the final step of perfection can only come from God by this heavenly water. 3. Heavenly water satisfies. In fact, too much can kill us, but since no evil can come from God, he expands our souls to accommodate it.

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 3 of 10

Chapter 10

This is an important chapter in which St Teresa focuses more closely on what detachment really means. It’s not merely distancing oneself from the world and an indifference to worldly affairs, something achieved by entering a monastery, but a detachment from one’s self-will. This, she says, is more important than all else, and equates it to the virtue of humility. While detachment from worldly things may open up a space for the possibility of humility, detachment from self-will is true humility which gives us “holy freedom of spirit”.

“Once we have detached ourselves from the world and from relatives and have enclosed ourselves here under the conditions that were mentioned, it seems that we have done all there is to do and that we don’t have to struggle with anything … if each Sister is not alert in going against her own will as though doing so were more important than all else, there are many things that will take away this holy freedom of spirit by which you can fly to your Maker without being held down by clay or leaden feet.”

“Here true humility can enter the picture because this virtue and the virtue of detachment it seems to me always go together. They are two inseparable sisters. … He has no one to fear because he doesn’t care if he loses everything, nor would he consider this a loss. The only thing he fears is displeasing his God …”

St Teresa gives some advise on how to progress in removing self-will: by considering how vain and transient all things are, thus turning our attention back to the Eternal. She also gives us an important insight when reflecting on humility: humility is transparent to the one who possesses it because we never focus on how far we’ve progressed in humility, rather on how much farther we have yet to progress. But while we may not notice our humility, others will.

“A great aid to going against your will is to bear in mind continually how all is vanity and how quickly everything comes to an end. This helps to remove our attachment to trivia and center it on what will never end … When we begin to become attached to something, we should strive to turn our thoughts from it and bring them back to God — and His Majesty helps.”

“It is true that these virtues have the characteristic of so hiding themselves from the person who possesses them that he never sees them or manages to believe that he has them even though he is told he does. But he esteems them so highly that he always goes about striving to obtain them, and he gradually perfects them within himself. Yet, they are so manifest in the one who possesses them that without his desiring it, these virtues are at once recognized by others who deal with him.”

St Teresa next moves on from detachment to mortification, in particular mortification of the body. But before she does, she highlights an interesting paradox: its only in detachment from things that you enjoy them, that is, only when our passions are rightly ordered will we take true pleasure in them.

“But what foolishness that I should set about praising humility and mortification when they were so much praised by the King of Glory and so confirmed by His many trials. Now, my daughters, this is the work that must be done in order to escape from the land of Egypt, for in finding these virtues you will find the manna. All things will taste good to you. However bad a thing may taste to those who are in the world, you will find it sweet.”

When it comes to the body, we can become attached to our striving for comfort, and there is no end to the excuses we make in this regard. Discretion in mortification is called for, because the goal is free ourselves from any bodily self-will and not some heroic asceticism. We can often achieve these mortifications by means that cannot cause us any harm, such as keeping silence.

“Now, then, the first thing we must strive for is to rid ourselves of our love for our bodies, for some of us are by nature such lovers of comfort that there is no small amount of work in this area … Be determined, Sisters, that you came to die for Christ, not to live comfortably for Christ. The devil suggests that you indulge yourselves so that you can keep the observance of the order; and a nun will so eagerly want to strive to care for and preserve her health for the sake of keeping the observance of the order that she dies without ever having kept this observance entirely for so much as a month, nor perhaps for even a day.”

“Sometimes [some people] feel a desire to do penances without rhyme or reason … subsequently the devil makes them imagine that the penances did them harm … We don’t keep some of the very ordinary things of the rule, such as silence, which isn’t going to do us any harm.”

“I find for myself that the Lord wishes that we be sickly; at least in my case He granted me a great mercy in my being sick; for since I would have looked after my comfort anyway, He desired that there be a reason for my doing so.”

“For if the devil begins to frighten us about losing our health, we shall never do anything. May the Lord give us the light to be right about everything, amen.”

St Teresa closes with an insight into the social consequences of an inordinate concern for bodily health. Since others cannot judge the seriousness of your ailment, you will, wittingly or unwittingly, abuse their charity:

“You will ask why the prioress gives [permission to be excused due to illness] … She has a scruple that she might fail in charity.”

Chapter 11

This chapter is a continuation of her discussion of mortification, and St Teresa warns against complaining about light illnesses. Habitual complaining is burden to those who live with you. Rather, when one has no attachment to the body, any inordinate complaining is experienced as self-indulgence and you will naturally refrain from it. If, however, you do pursue comfort, you will find no end to your bodily needs.

“It seems to me an imperfection, my Sisters, to be always complaining about light illnesses. If you can tolerate them, don’t complain about them. When the sickness is serious, it does the complaining itself; this is different and the sickness is immediately obvious. Consider that you are few, and if one has this habit of complaining, it wears everyone out if you have love for one another and there is charity.”

“If you have lost self-love, you will feel any self-indulgence so keenly that there is no fear you will take anything without necessity or complain needlessly.”

“A fault this body has is that the more comfort we try to give it the more needs it discovers.”

St Teresa also reminds us that we should be willing to bear some trials for our Lord because of our sins

“shouldn’t we suffer just between ourselves and God some of the illnesses He gives us because of our sins? And even more so because by our complaining the sickness is not alleviated.”

Regarding serious illness and death, St Teresa counsels us to practice self-forgetfulness and abandoning yourself totally to God, come what may. We can even “mock” (ie take lightly) our body and death. With determination and God’s graces, we can gain dominion over our bodies. The rewards are well worth it.

“There will be enough Sisters to look after what is necessary; forget about yourselves except in what concerns a definite need. If we do not determine once and for all to swallow death and the lack of health, we will never do anything. Strive not to fear them; abandon yourselves totally to God, come what may. So what if we die? If our body has mocked us so often, shouldn’t we mock it at least once?”

“And believe that this determination is more important than we realize. For little by little as we grow accustomed to this attitude we shall, with the Lord’s help, remain lords of our bodies.”

“May the Lord conquer him as He alone can. I truly believe that the benefits coming from this practice are not known except by one who already enjoys the victory. They are so great, from what I believe, that no one would feel he was undergoing trial if he could remain in this calm and dominion.”

She writes this despite having suffered much illness herself. Kavanaugh notes “Detachment from the body would be inauthentic if it would end up in a lack of compassion for others in their illnesses.”

Chapter 12

St Teresa begins this chapter with a hopeful message about interior mortification (interior = things we might be attached to inside ourselves). While it is a heavy burden, God does lighten the burden. As we grow spiritually, our whole life becomes an act of martyrdom. Our focus turns away from those things which pass, like our life here on earth, and our attention is directed to the Eternal. Focusing on God rather than ourselves frees us spiritually.

“Everything seems to be a heavy burden, and rightly so, because it involves a war against ourselves. But once we begin to work, God does so much in the soul and grants it so many favors that all that one can do in this life seems little.”

“… the whole matter … lies in losing concern about ourselves and our own satisfaction. The least that any of us who has truly begun to serve the Lord can offer Him is our own life … he must not turn his back upon the desire to die for God and suffer martyrdom … all life is short … there is no reason to give importance to anything that will come to an end. And who will not work hard if he thinks that each hour is the last? Well, believe me, thinking this is the safest course.”

In practice, this leads to interior mortification, which brings with it its own pleasure: not pleasure in the self, but pleasure in liberation from the self.

“So, let us try hard to go against our own will in everything. For if you are careful, as I said, you will gradually, without knowing how, find yourselves at the summit. But how extremely rigorous, it seems, to say that we shouldn’t please ourselves in anything when we do not also mention the pleasure and delight this going against our will carries in its wake and what is gained by it even in this life.”

St Teresa closes off the chapter with some modes, common to her time, but also applicable to ours, in which we might assert our self-will. We might focus on privilege, social standing (honor) or wealth. Rather, humility requires that we consider and imitate how the Lord emptied himself, something one can practice anywhere, not only in a monastery.

“Take careful note of interior stirrings, especially if they have to do with privileges of rank.”

“the perfect soul can be detached and humble anywhere … if there is any vain esteem of honor or wealth (and this can be had inside monasteries as well as outside, although inside the occasions for it are more removed and the fault would be greater), you will never grow very much or come to enjoy the true fruit of prayer. And this is so even though you may have many years of experience in prayer — or, better, I should say reflection because perfect prayer in the end removes these bad habits.”

“Clearly, a humble person will reflect on his life and consider how he has served the Lord in comparison with how the Lord ought to be served and the wonders the Lord performed in lowering Himself so as to give us an example of humility; and he will consider his sins and where he merited to be on account of them.”

As a remedy to these acts of pride, St Teresa recommends acts of humility, not just interiorly but exteriorly too. This is also an example for others to follow.

“do not strive only in an interior way … but strive also in an exterior way that the Sisters draw some benefit from your temptation … ask the prioress as soon as the temptation comes to give you orders to do some lowly task; or, if possible, do it on your own and go about studying how to double your willingness to do things that go contrary to your nature.”

St Teresa locates the danger in the small offenses against honor which grow and draw others into the rivalry. Rather we should cut this in the bud immediately and not indulge other’s feelings of being offended.

“… there is nothing so small in which there is so obvious a danger as this concern about honor and whether we have been offended … this concern begins in someone as something small and amounting to hardly anything, and then the devil stirs another to think it is something big, and this other will even think she is practicing charity by going and saying to the offended nun, ‘How do you put up with such an offense? …’ The devil puts such malicious talk on the other Sister’s tongue that though you barely overcome the offense, you are still tempted to vainglory, when in reality you did not suffer with the perfection with which you should have suffered … May no one be moved by an indiscreet charity to show pity for another in something that touches upon these false injuries, for such pity is like that of Job’s wife and friends.”

Chapter 13

St Teresa is still not done discussing the danger of honor and advises us how to recognize and over come it. Attachment to honor is a great spiritual danger, and its remedy is to unite it with the humiliation that Christ received and imitate him and his mother. The cross we bear, like the Cross of our Lord, is never reasonable.

“you should run a thousand miles from such expressions as: ‘I was right.’ ‘They had no reason for doing this to me.’ ‘The one who did this to me was wrong.’ God deliver us from this poor way of reasoning. Does it seem to have been right that our good Jesus suffered so many insults and was made to undergo so much injustice? I don’t know why the nun who doesn’t want to carry the cross, except the one that seems to her reasonable, is in the monastery.”

“Either we are brides of so great a King or we are not. If we are, what honorable woman is there who does not share in the dishonors done to her spouse even though she does not will them? In fact, both spouses share the honor and the dishonor. Now, then, to enjoy a part in His kingdom and want no part in His dishonors and trials is nonsense.”

“Let us, my daughters, imitate in some way the great humility of the Blessed Virgin, whose habit we wear, for it is embarrassing to call ourselves her nuns. However much it seems to us that we humble ourselves, we fall far short of being the daughters of such a Mother and the brides of such a Spouse.”

St Teresa next turns to the question of bad customs. The fact that we imitate one another is not in itself a bad thing, but it can lead to bad customs just as rivalry over honor can poison a community. She understands that it takes effort for a community to maintain its virtues, but its vices are propagate with little effort!

“And if we could understand what great harm is done when a bad custom is begun, we would rather die than be the cause of it. For such a death would be a bodily one, but the loss of souls is a great loss, and it doesn’t seem there is any end to the loss. Once some are dead, others follow after; and all, perhaps, are hurt more from a bad custom we have started than from many virtues. For the devil does not allow the bad custom to cease, but natural weakness causes the virtues to be lost.”

“For the devil does not allow the bad custom to cease, but natural weakness causes the virtues to be lost.”

For the remedy against the imitation of bad habits, St Teresa turns to the primitive rule of the Carmelites and reminds her sisters of their hermitic origins. The community was only there to support the solitary relationship of each member to God, and not more. The detachment is to be from all creatures, including the other members of the community, so there is little danger of too much closeness leading to the imitation of bad habits. It is a radical life, and not everyone is called to it, but for those who are, it is a heaven on earth.

“For the style of life we aim to follow is not just that of nuns but of hermits, and thus you detach yourselves from every creature. I see the Lord gives this favor of detachment in a special way to the one He has chosen for this life. Even though the detachment may not be entirely perfect from the beginning, it is seen that she is advancing toward it by the great contentment and happiness she finds in not having to deal again with anything of the world and by how she relishes everything about the religious life … Here we have a very happy life if one is pleased only with pleasing God and pays no attention to her own satisfaction. If a nun desires something in addition to pleasing God, all will be lost because that something cannot be had … interiorly it takes time to become totally detached and mortified, exteriorly it must be done immediately.”

Chapter 14

In this short chapter, St Teresa develops a thread from the previous where she advises that any nun that “is inclined to the things of the world and not seen to be making progress” should leave. Only those whose intentions are pure will pursue it with determination. Also, they must be intelligent enough to understand the charism of the order and the advise of those wiser than her. A nun with such intelligence will at least be able to give back to the community, even if she herself doesn’t advance much. Since this must be a deep understanding, not merely superficial, it takes time to discern.

“I truly believe that the Lord highly favors the one who has real determination. Thus, the intention of the new member should be considered, lest she merely be looking for a secure future,”

“the Lord can bring this intention to perfection if she has good intelligence; but if she doesn’t, in no way should she be accepted, for neither will she understand why she is entering, nor afterward will she understand those who desire to lead her along the best spiritual path. For the most part those who have this fault always think they know more about what suits them than do those who are wiser.”

“When a nun with good intelligence begins to grow attached to good, she takes hold of it with fortitude because she sees that doing so is most appropriate. And if her intelligence doesn’t help her to attain a high degree of spirituality, it will be useful for giving good counsel and for many other services without being a bother to anyone.”

“This lack of intelligence is not so quickly noticed. For many speak well but understand poorly; others speak little and without polish but they have the intelligence for a great deal of good. In fact, there is a holy simplicity that knows little about the affairs and style of the world but a lot about dealing with God.”

Chapter 15

In this chapter, St Teresa narrows her focus down on a particular kind of mortification, not excusing yourself even if falsely blamed, and begins by self-ironizing in a manner that shows how self-aware she is! After making excuses for the disordered nature of the work and blaming her nuns for asking her to write it, she adds

“Now it is wrong for me to ask you to avoid doing what I have just finished doing, that is, making excuses. For I see that not making excuses for oneself is a habit characteristic of high perfection, and very meritorious; it gives great edification. And although I have often taught it to you, and by God’s goodness you practice it, His Majesty has never given it to me.”

And yet she fully recognizes that

“Indeed, it calls for great humility to be silent at seeing oneself condemned without fault. This is a wonderful way to imitate the Lord who took away all our faults. So, I ask you to take great care about this practice; it brings with it great benefits. I see no reason at all for us to try to excuse ourselves, unless, as I say, in some cases where not telling the truth would cause anger or scandal. When to excuse oneself will be recognized by those who have more discretion than I.”

St Teresa praises this virtue highly because it such a close imitation of our Lord. It can do no bodily harm and in fact needs no bodily strength, but looks only to God for strength.

“The truly humble person must in fact desire to be held in little esteem, persecuted, and condemned without fault even in serious matters. If she desires to imitate the Lord, in what better way can she do so? For here there is no need of bodily strength or help from anyone but God.”

“and let us do this penance, for you already know that I am rather strict when there is question of your doing too many penances. They can do harm to one’s health if done without discretion. In this practice there is nothing to fear.”

In fact, we really can’t complain because

“we are never, never blamed without there being faults on our part, for we always go about full of them since the just man falls seven times a day, and it would be a lie to say we have no sin. Thus even though we are blamed for faults we haven’t committed, we are never entirely without fault, as was the good Jesus.”

“O my Lord, when I think of the many ways You suffered and how You deserved none of these sufferings, I don’t know what to say about myself, nor do I know where my common sense was when I didn’t want to suffer, nor where I am when I excuse myself … Give me light and grant that I may truly desire to be abhorred by all since I have so often failed You who have loved me so faithfully.”

Rather the important thing is that we be faultless in the eyes of God, not man, and allowing yourself to be falsely blamed can even be a way of preaching Christ to others:

“What is this, my God? What do we expect to obtain from pleasing creatures? What does it matter if we are blamed a lot by all of them if in Your presence we are without fault? … For when you have no other gain than the embarrassment of the person who after having blamed you sees that you are in fact without fault and yet allow yourself to be condemned, that gain is extremely great … We must all try to be preachers through our deeds …”

St Teresa both consoles and warns her sisters that the good or evil they do will not remain a secret. If they are wrongly accused, then God will provide someone to defend you if it is necessary. It may seem impossible to someone who is not mortified, but you should actually rejoice at being blamed because of the benefit it has for your soul. You should not worry about being defended; rather, you should be indifferent about what they are saying about you, and have detachment from yourself.

“However enclosed you are, never think that the good or evil you do will remain a secret. And do you think, daughters, that when you do not excuse yourselves there will be lacking someone to defend you? … But I wouldn’t want you to be thinking about being defended, but that you rejoice in being blamed; and time will be the witness to the benefit you will see in your soul. For one begins to obtain freedom and doesn’t care whether they say good or evil of him but rather thinks of what is said as though it were another’s affair. … In the beginning it is difficult; but I know that such freedom, self-denial, and detachment from ourselves can, with God’s help, be attained.”

Closing Remarks: In these chapters, St Teresa is still not ready to teach us about prayer but continues to prepare us by discussing detachment and humility. While detachment from worldly goods opens up the possibility for humility, detachment from self-will is true humility and gives us “holy freedom of spirit”.

In practice, humility requires that we imitate how the Lord emptied himself. Exteriorly, we should take on lowly tasks and, interiorly, we should root out any sense of entitlement. Manifesting indignation because of some offense can poison a community, as can bad habits. St Teresa reminds her nuns that they are called to be hermits and practice detachment even from other members of the community. In this way the propagation of bad customs is mitigated. This is not a life for anyone, but only for those who can understand it and pursue it with determination.

St Teresa advises on the need to mortify our bodies which know no limit to their desire for comfort. The aim should be freedom from bodily self-will and not heroic asceticism. This can be done without danger of harm by such practices as keeping silence. Inordinate complaining about discomforts is disordered; rather, we should bear these trials because of our sins. Our whole life is to be one prolonged martyrdom in which we loose concern for ourselves and offer our life to God, even unto death. This has its own pleasure: not pleasure in the self, but pleasure in liberation from the self.

Finally, we should practice humility by not excuse ourselves when falsely accused. While this may be unjust, we can’t complain because we are never without some fault. In fact we should rejoice because it is beneficial for our souls to so closely imitate Christ who was falsely condemned. No good or evil deed remains hidden, so God will provide you a defense if necessary. Rather, we should remain indifferent to what others say about us.

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 2 of 10

Chapter 5

This chapter picks up where St Teresa ended with in the last chapter, on the importance of being able to change confessors and picking a good one. She give several arguments for why this is important in this chapter.
The first issue she addresses is that danger of too much familiarity between the confessor and the prioress, in which the honor of each prevents the nuns to talk to the one about the other, to the detriment of the soul.

“Nor may He allow a situation in which if the prioress gets along well with the confessor no one dares to speak either to him about her or to her about him. The result of this state of affairs will be the temptation to omit the confession of very serious sins for fear of being disturbed. O God help me, what harm the devil can cause here, and how dearly the nuns will pay for this restriction and concern about honor! For while they think that by dealing with no more than one confessor they are doing something great for religious life and the reputation of the monastery, the devil manages in this way to catch souls, since he cannot in any other.”

But also, St Teresa was worried that an appointed confessor may not be learned and able to advise her sisters on contemplative life. So they should be allowed to seek out and speak to learned persons:

“May she always ask permission from the bishop or the provincial that, besides speaking with the ordinary confessors, she and all the others might sometimes speak and discuss their souls with learned persons, especially if the confessors, however good, may not be learned. Learning is a great help for shedding light upon every matter.”

Here St Teresa was speaking out of personal experience with confessors since she herself had received bad counsel from some who didn’t know any better:

“It happened to me that I spoke about matters of conscience with a confessor who had gone through the whole course of theology, and he did me a great deal of harm by telling me that some matters didn’t amount to anything. I know that he didn’t intend to misinform me and had no reason to, but he simply didn’t know any more. And the same thing happened to me with two or three others, besides the one I mentioned.”

As a remedy to this, St Teresa recommended that her nuns have a “spiritual and learned person” as a spiritual advisor, since without good spiritual advise, the foundation of their lives as contemplatives would not be sound. This person did not have to be their confessor and if the confessor was not spiritual and learned, they could look for someone else:

“Having true light at our disposal for the sake of keeping the law of God with perfection is all our good; prayer is well founded on such light. Without this strong foundation and if the Sisters are not given freedom to confess and discuss their souls with persons like those I have mentioned, the whole building will be wobbly. [Thus they must speak to spiritual and learned persons. If the appointed confessor is not spiritual and learned, they should at times seek out others.]”

St Teresa was also sensitive to the fact that there are different paths to God, and that contemplative spirituality is just one such path which a given confessor may not be familiar with. So again, being able to seek out a spiritual director who was knowledgeable in the matter would be beneficial:

“For there are different paths along which God leads souls, and one confessor perhaps will not know them all.”

She even went so far as to suggest that having a spiritual advisor is a way of keeping confessors honest! Here she was probably again considering the bad advise she had received from those confessors she alludes to above.

“For even if the devil tempts a confessor so as to deceive him about some doctrine, he will be careful and consider with caution everything he does when he knows that you speak to others.”

In fact, St Teresa herself took her own advise regarding the issue — she came up with her advise about allowing the sisters to seek out spiritual and learned persons by herself seeking the advise of spiritual and learned persons!

“I have seen and understood what I have mentioned here, and discussed it with learned and holy persons who have considered what was most suitable for this house so that there would be progress along the path of perfection.”

Chapter 6

Chapter 5 was a conscious digression for St Teresa, but one which she says is very important. In this chapter she returns to the question of love which came up two chapters ago in connection with detachment and humility as necessary conditions for contemplative prayer and for the inward and outward peace recommended by our Lord. It is worth quoting the exert from chapter 4 again here:

“Before I say anything about interior matters, that is, about prayer, I shall mention some things that are necessary for those who seek to follow the way of prayer … if they do not possess them, it is impossible for them to be very contemplative … the practice of these three things helps us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us. The first of these is love for one another; the second is detachment from all created things; the third is true humility, which, even though I speak of it last, is the main practice and embraces all the others.”

Previously St Teresa dwelt on a defective type of love, one which was excessive and “takes away the strength of will to be totally occupied in loving God”. But in this chapter, her focus changes to “the love that it is good for us to have, that which I say is purely spiritual.” Admittedly, she struggles to clarify “which love is spiritual, or when sensual love is mixed with spiritual love” but she trusts that “the Lord wills that it be well said.” All said, she does provide something of a definition. Perfect love comes with an experiential knowledge about the difference between loving the Creator and loving the creature:

“Now it seems to me that those whom God brings to a certain clear knowledge love very differently than do those who have not reached it. 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 (and this seen through experience, which is entirely different from merely thinking about it or believing it); or this knowledge comes from seeing and feeling what is gained by the one love and lost by the other, and what the Creator is and what the creature is, and from many other things that the Lord teaches to anyone who wants to be taught by Him in prayer, or whom His Majesty desires to teach.”

St Teresa refers to persons whom the Lord brings to this state as “majestic souls” who “are not content with loving … these bodies … however attractive”. Rather, they praise the Creature as the ultimate cause behind the beauty of the creature. As she puts it:

“Yes, it pleases them to see such bodies, and they praise the Creator; but, no, they do not stop there. I mean stop in such a way that they love these things. It would seem to them that they were loving something of no substance, loving a shadow.”

Having provided a general definition of perfect love, St Teresa continues for the rest of the chapter with practical ways in which “perfect persons” manifest this love:

They are not attached to the affection of others, but are not ungrateful and recommend them to God.

“All other affection wearies these persons, for they understand that no benefit comes from it and that it could be harmful. But this does not make these persons ungrateful or unwilling to repay the love of others by recommending them to God. They entrust to the Lord the care of those who love them, for they understand that the love comes from Him.”

They think they are loved by others for love of God, not because of some loveable quality in themselves. And they remain free from repaying that love (ie becoming attached), leaving repayment up to God.

“It doesn’t seem there is anything within themselves to love, and they immediately think they are loved because these others love God. They leave it to His Majesty to repay those who love them, and they beg Him to do so. In this way they remain free, for it seems to them that repaying the love is not their business.

Desiring love from someone is a seeking after satisfaction. But perfect persons seek no such consolation apart from God.

“Now, note well that when we desire love from some person, there is always a kind of seeking our own benefit or satisfaction, and these perfect persons have already trampled underfoot all the good things and comforts the world has to offer them. Their consolations are of a kind that even though they may desire them, so to speak, they cannot tolerate having them apart from God or from speaking of Him. For what benefit can come to them from being loved?

They realize that the suffering they once experienced at unrequited love is vain.

“they laugh at themselves because of the affliction they once suffered as to whether or not their love was repaid. Although our affection is good, the desire that it be repaid is very natural. But once we receive the payment, we realize that the pay is all straw”

Perfect love is detached from any expectation, but it is not detached from wanting to give. It is, in fact, the only true love.

“It will seem to you that such persons do not love or know anyone but God. I say, yes they do love, with a much greater and more genuine love, and with passion, and with a more beneficial love; in short, it is love. And these souls are more inclined to give than to receive. Even with respect to the Creator Himself they want to give more than to receive. I say that this attitude is what merits the name “love,” for these other base attachments have usurped the name “love.””

Perfect love is intent on the eternal and looks for the loveable in the soul of the other in the hope that they will be eternally together.

“It is true that what they see they love and what they hear they become attached to; but the things that they see are stable. As soon as these persons love, they go beyond the bodies and turn their eyes to the soul and look to see if there is something to love in the soul … Nothing could be presented to them that they wouldn’t eagerly do for the good of this soul, for they desire to continue loving it; but they know that if it does not love God very much and have His blessings, their loving it is impossible.”

Ultimately, perfect love is an imitation of the love of Christ, the love that lays down your life for a friend.

“Well now in the case of perfect love, if a person loves there is the passion to make the other soul worthy of being loved, for, as I say, this person knows that otherwise he will not continue to love the other. It is a love that costs dearly. This person does everything he can for the other’s benefit; he would lose a thousand lives that a little good might come to the other soul. O precious love that imitates the Commander-in-chief of love, Jesus, our Good!”

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is a continuation of St Teresa’s discussion of perfect love. Possibly because she had difficulties coming up with a comprehensive definition, she felt it necessary to flesh out a better understanding by multiplying examples:

8. Perfect love wants to see the other make spiritual progress and is always fearful at the possibility of eternal separation.

“It is not happy unless it sees that person make progress … It is always fearful lest the soul it loves so much be lost and the two be separated forever. Death here below matters nothing to it, for it doesn’t want to become attached to anything that in a mere moment escapes from one’s hand and cannot be grasped again. It is, as I said, a love with no self-interest at all. All that it desires or wants is to see the other soul rich with heavenly blessings.”

Perfect love is not disquieted at the trials of the other if they are good for the other, although it would gladly suffer trial for the other if the merit could be transferred:

“reason immediately considers whether the trial is good for the one loved, whether there is an enrichment in virtue and how that soul bears the suffering; it asks God to give the other patience and merit in the trials. If this love sees that the other person has patience, no distress is felt; rather it rejoices and is consoled. This love would much rather suffer the trial itself than see the other suffer it if the merit and gain that lies in suffering could be given to the other entirely — but not because this love is disquieted and disturbed.”

Perfect love is completely sincere, and will correct the other out of love for their immortal soul:

“These lovers cannot in their hearts be insincere with those they love; if they see them deviate from the path or commit some faults they immediately tell them about it. They cannot help but do so. And since they are not going to change their attitude, nor are they going to flatter or hide anything from the other, either that other person mends his ways or the friendship is broken. For these lovers cannot suffer such a thing, nor should it be suffered.

This level of intimacy can only be sustained within the bonds of perfect love, not with others in the world. If the lover cannot bear the correction, then the intimacy was not there in the first place and the friendship is broken.

“There is a continual war between the two attitudes these lovers have; on the one hand they go about forgetful of the whole world, taking no account of whether others serve God or not but only keeping account of themselves; on the other hand, with their friends, they have no power to do this, nor is anything covered over; they see the tiniest speck. I say that they bear a truly heavy cross.”

St Teresa herself benefited from the corrections of such people who had reached perfection:

“Love such persons as much as you like. They must be few, but the Lord does desire that it be known when someone has reached perfection … I know through experience. After the Lord, it is because of persons like these that I am not in hell, for I was always very attached to their praying for me, and so I strove to get them to do this. Now let us return to our subject.”

Perfect love is compassionate. Do not judge the weaknesses of others but remember your own weaknesses that were made strong by God’s grace. And do not be prideful and think that you gained fortitude through your own effort since this leads to coldness towards the weaknesses of others.

“If you are not like them, do not fail to be compassionate. And perhaps our Lord desires to exempt us from these sufferings, whereas in other matters we will suffer. And those sufferings that for us are heavy — even if in themselves they truly are — may be light for another. So in these matters let us not judge from ourselves, nor let us think that we are at a stage in which perhaps the Lord without our own effort has made us stronger, but let us think of the stage we were at when we were weaker.

“Consider that this advice is important for knowing how to sympathize with your neighbor in his trials, however small they may be. This is especially true in the case of those souls that were mentioned. Since they desire trials they make little of everything, and it is very necessary that they take the time to remember how they themselves were once weak and that if they are not weak now, their strength doesn’t come from themselves. For it could be that the devil by this means will make charity toward one’s neighbor grow cold, and make us think that what in reality is a fault belongs to perfection.”

Perfect love takes time for the other even in mundane activities, as long as the intention is pure.

“Strive also to take time for recreation with the Sisters when there is need and during the time set aside for it by custom, even though this may not be to your pleasure, for everything done with a pure intention is perfect love.”

Perfect love takes pity on the other, but shows discretion in what one ought to feel sorry about.

“Thus, it is very good that some take pity on others in their need. Let them take care that there be no lack of discretion in things that would go against obedience … And learn how to understand which are the things one ought to feel sorry about and take pity on with regard to the Sisters.”

Perfect love is tolerant of the other’s faults because it recognizes that we all have faults.

“Here love shows itself, and it is practiced well when you know how to suffer the fault and not be surprised; so the others will do with respect to your faults, for you may have many more than you are aware of.”

Perfect love strives to correct faults in others by fixing them in yourself and teaching by example.

“Recommend the Sister to God and strive yourself to practice with great perfection the virtue opposite the fault that appears in her. Make every effort to do this so that you teach that Sister in deed what perhaps through words or punishment she might not understand or profit by; and the imitation of the virtue in which one sees another excel has a great tendency to spread. This is good advice; don’t forget it.”

Perfect love does not give itself over to false intimacy, but love sincerely since this is truly aimed at the good of the other.

“Oh, how good and true will be the love of the Sister who can help others by setting aside her own advantage for their sake … Better friendship will this be than all the tender words that can be uttered, for these are not used, nor should they be used, in this house; those like, “my life,” “my soul,” “my only good,” and other similar expressions addressed now to one, now to another, of the Sisters. Keep these words of affection for your Spouse,”

Perfect love does its share of the chores, and rejoices to see a sister grow in virtue!

“Another very good proof of love is that you strive in household duties to relieve others of work, and also rejoice and praise the Lord very much for any increase you see in their virtues.”

Perfect love avoids being the cause of petty resentments, and strives to remedy them as soon as possible.

“If by chance some little word should escape, try to remedy the matter immediately and pray intensely. And if things of this sort against charity continue, such as little factions, or ambition, or concern about some little point of honor.”

St Teresa here echoes St Benedict’s Rule, that “grumbling” is a great danger to the peace of a monastery:

“Oh, how great an evil it is! God deliver us from the monastery where it enters; I would rather that the monastery catch fire and all be burned.”

Chapter 8

St Teresa once again returns to chapter 4 where she presented us with three conditions for contemplative prayer (love, detachment and humility), and having dealt with love in chapters 6 and 7, picks up the thread with her discussion on detachment in chapter 8. Detachment for her means embracing the Creator and not caring for the whole of creation. In withdrawing from the world, she tells us that God will infuse us with virtues with little struggle on our part.

“Now let us talk about the detachment we ought to have, for detachment, if it is practiced with perfection, includes everything. I say it includes everything because if we embrace the Creator and care not at all for the whole of creation, His Majesty will infuse the virtues. Doing little by little what we can, we will have hardly anything else to fight against; it is the Lord who in our defense takes up the battle against the demons and against the world.”

Her path is not one of heroic asceticism in which we forcefully struggle to free ourselves from our vices, but rather of gently making room in our hearts for God by clearing it of worldly clutter.
St Teresa understands that created things are a hindrance to unity with God, and she is very grateful that her monastery provides her sisters with separation from everything:

“With regard to externals, obviously we are separated here from everything. [I think the Lord wants all of us He has gathered together in this house to withdraw from everything so that His Majesty may unite us to Himself here without any hindrance. O my Creator and Lord! When did I merit such honor? For it seems You went a roundabout way to bring us closer to Yourself. May it please Your goodness that we do not lose through our own fault this nearness to You.] O Sisters, understand, for the love of God, the great favor the Lord has granted those whom He brought here.”

Here St Teresa is not merely referring to detachment from material possessions, but also detachment from people. She extends her gratitude for the smallness of St Joseph’s with only twelve nuns and the prioress, compared to the Incarnation where she lived previously with more than 180 other nuns! The din of too many people in one’s life can also a hindrance to unity with God. This is something of a harkening back to the primitive rule of the Hermits of mount Carmel.

“Instead of keeping me where there were so many living together and where my wretchedness would not have been so clearly seen during my lifetime, You have brought me to a place where, since there are so few nuns, it seems impossible for this wretchedness not to be known. That I might walk more carefully, You have removed from me all opportunities to conceal it. Now I confess there is no longer an excuse for me, Lord, and so I have greater need of Your mercy that You might pardon any fault I may have.”

In that quiet where there is only the bare soul and God, every imperfection is made manifest. St Teresa counsels her sisters that this life isn’t for everyone, and that if a sister want to find consolation in hiding her soul in her relationship with others, then St Josephs is not for her:

“In other places there is the freedom to find relief by being with relatives; here if some relatives are allowed to visit, it is that they might find relief by being with us. But the nun who desires to see them for her own consolation, if these relatives are not spiritual persons, should consider herself imperfect. She ought to believe that she is not detached, not healthy; she will not possess freedom of spirit; she will not possess complete peace. She needs a doctor; and I say that if this attachment is not removed and she is not cured, she is not meant for this house.”

The attachment to find consolation in others is likened by St Teresa to a spiritual illness:

“She needs a doctor; and I say that if this attachment is not removed and she is not cured, she is not meant for this house. The best remedy I know is that she not see them until obviously she is free and obtains this freedom from the Lord through much prayer. When it is clear that she considers these visits a cross, it will be all right for her to see them, for then she will be of benefit to her relatives and not be harmed herself.”

Chapter 9

St Teresa dedicates this chapter to detachment from relatives, which she sees as an occasion for the religious to remain rooted in the world. How is one fleeing the world if one remains rooted in it because of one’s relatives:

“I don’t know what it is in the world that we renounce when we say that we give up everything for God if we do not give up the main thing, namely, our relatives.”

This is not that our relatives are mischievous, but rather that their concerns are rooted in the world and “having too much to do with” them draws us into their world of familial reciprocity, and away from God.

“In this house, daughters, great care should be taken to recommend them to God; that is right. As for the rest, we should keep them out of our minds as much as possible, because it is a natural thing for the will to become attached to them more than to other persons.”

“For since these seek to be repaid by God, they do things for us. Those who seek to be repaid by us soon grow tired, since they see that we are poor and unable to help them in any way. And although this may not be universally so, it is now more usually so; for, after all, the world is the world.”

Our relatives is what makes us cling most to the world. It helps to embrace Jesus with determination, for in him everything is found and everything is forgotten. It helps to withdraw bodily until we come to know this truth.

“All that the saints counsel us about fleeing the world is clearly good. Well, believe me, our relatives are what clings to us most from the world, as I have said, and the most difficult to detach ourselves from … what helps is that the soul embrace the good Jesus our Lord with determination, for since in Him everything is found, in Him everything is forgotten. Yet, it is a very great help to withdraw even bodily until we have come to know this truth.”

Closing Remarks: Before entering into a discussion on contemplative prayer, St Teresa felt it necessary that her sisters have the correct disposition. As she explains, without love for one another, detachment from all created things and true humility, it impossible to be very contemplative and possess the peace recommended by our Lord. Previously, she began her discussion of love with warnings against the dangers of excessive love, a love marked by a disordered attachment to others. In these chapters, she turns her discussion to the question of perfect love and detachment.

Perfect love entails an experiential knowledge of the difference between loving the Creator and loving His creatures. Detachment does not mean that we abstain from loving one another; rather, that we love one another in loving God, for the sake of loving God who loves them, and with the same self-sacrificial love with which God loves. To love a creature in isolation from loving his or her Creator, we are imbuing the finite object of our affection with expectations of God — we make them into an idol which is sure to disappoint. Properly ordered love is always directed to the Eternal through his creatures.

Jan 17, 2021. Second Sunday of Ordinary Time.

“The Way of Perfection” – Part 1 of 10

Introduction by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD

There are two textual sources: the Valladolid text and the expanded Escorial texts.

“We have indicated whatever is taken from Escorial and introduced into our main text from Valladolid by enclosing it in brackets. Where there are two versions of the same passage, yet with significant differences, we give a translation of the Escorial version in a note.”

The text is made up of a prologue and 42 short chapters. In this lecture I’ll go over the prologue and chapters 1 through 4.

Prologue

Why did St Teresa come to write “The Way of Perfection”? She tells us in the prologue that the Sisters at the monastery of St Joseph, which she founded, heard that she had written her Autobiography. But her censor did not feel that it was appropriate for the sisters because it contained her mystical experiences. But they pressed her to write a book on prayer and the result was “The Way of Perfection”. St Teresa wrote it as an act of obedience to them.

“The Sisters … have known that I received permission … to write some things about prayer. … The Sisters have urged me so persistently to tell them something about it that I have decided to obey them.”

Before we jump into the text, we should be aware that St Teresa can be hard to interpret at times, because, by her own admission, her writing is not systematic. One has to resist the temptation of over interpreting her in an effort to systematize her writing. My approach in these lectures will be to lift themes from each chapter and illustrate them with quotes.

“… since I don’t know what I’m going to say, I cannot say it in an orderly way. I believe this lack of order is best since writing this book is a thing already so out of order for me.”

Chapter 1

“The Way of Perfection” was written in the midst of the bitterness of the Protestant Reformation that she felt was betraying Christ. St Teresa was compelled to do something about it, so she resolved to do what she could: to strive for spiritual perfection, to pray for the Church, and to urge her Sisters to do the same.

“The news [of the Lutherans in France] distressed me greatly … I resolved to do the little that was in my power … to follow the evangelical counsels as perfectly as I could and strive that these few persons who live here do the same. … Since we would all be occupied in prayer for those who are the defenders of the Church …, we could help as much as possible this Lord of mine who is so roughly treated by those for whom He has done so much good; it seems these traitors would want Him to be crucified again and that He have no place to lay His head.”

The Reformation was painful for St Teresa and she lamented the souls lost to it. For her, the spiritual well-being of souls was of such importance that she felt it was central to prayers of her monastery, not the worldy goods than many came to ask prayers for. It might be surprising that St Teresa would start a book about praying on this topic, but before she even starts to discuss prayer, she locates its place in the economy of the soul and the Church.

“… my heart breaks to see how many souls are lost. … This is why He has gathered you [my Sisters] together here. This is your vocation. … these must be the objects of your petitions — not, my Sisters, the business matters of the world. For I laugh at and am even distressed about the things they come here to ask us to pray for: to ask His Majesty for wealth and money …”

Chapter 2

St Teresa returns to her discussion of the Reformation in the next chapter, and takes an aside to discuss poverty in this one. This is typical of her writing style: perhaps because her mind was on the “wealth and money” her patrons come to ask prayers for, or perhaps because she was discussing the evangelical counsels, her mind came to focus on poverty. Despite the disjoint style, her insights are valuable even abstracted from the body of the rest of the work.
To understand poverly rightly, St Teresa counsels her Sisters to center our lives on God as our greatest good, and not to worry further because everything will then necessarily fall into place. One might think that this is reckless and could lead to evils, like starvation, but any ill that comes of it is transient. We should never place any created good as first because any created good is always of lesser value than God who is our greatest good.

“Your eyes on your Spouse! He will sustain you. Once He is pleased, those least devoted to you will give you food even though they may not want to, as you have seen through experience. If in following this advice you should die of hunger, blessed be the nuns of St. Joseph’s! … Leave this worrying to the One who can move all … His words are true; they cannot fail; rather, heaven and earth will fail. Let us not fail Him; do not fear that He will fail you. And if some time He should fail you, it will be for a greater good. … It would be a good exchange to give up everything for the enjoyment of everlasting abundance.”

To achieve spiritual freedom, she cautions us that you can not only be attached to the worldly goods you have, but also to the goods you do not have. So its not just about being poor in an exterior way, but being detached inwardly. This is what it means to be “poor in spirit”.

“The less there is the more carefree I become. The Lord knows that, in my opinion, it distresses me more when we have a large surplus than when we are in need. … to worry about money would amount to … making ourselves poor in an exterior way but not being poor in spirit … where there are too many cares about whether others will give us alms, sooner or later these cares will become habitual.”

Paradoxically, poverty of spirit is precisely the detachment from worldly goods so that they don’t have power over you; rather, you have power over them. This is the spiritual freedom to please God exclusively.

“Poverty of spirit is a good that includes within itself all the good things of the world. … it gives once again to one who doesn’t care about the world’s good things dominion over them all. What do kings and lords matter to me if I don’t want their riches, or don’t care to please them if in order to do so I would have to displease God in even the smallest thing?”

St Teresa ties money to vainglory, a mark of success in the world to cultivate the admiration of others. This is yet another form of enslavement.

“In my opinion honor and money almost always go together; … Poverty that is chosen for God alone has no need of pleasing anyone but Him.”

Spiritual poverty can also be understood as humility, the awareness of our total dependence on God. Since God provides through others and we should not be negligent in thanking them, because in thanking them, we are showing our gratitude to God.

“The Lord also desires that, even though it comes from Him, we show gratitude to those persons through whose means He gives this food to us. Do not be negligent about showing gratitude.”

Chapter 3

St Teresa begins the chapter by picking up the theme of how to respond to the Protestant Reformation. Warfare cannot stop the heresy, so another approach is required. Using the metaphor of a lord who withdraws into a stronghold, she gives us her approach: begin first by growing spiritually yourself.
This is useful advise in our own times with the culture war that’s waging today. People will turn to activism when they should first put their own lives in order. Otherwise, not only will you spread your disorder to the world, but you won’t even know what to fix and where to begin!

“Human forces are not sufficient to stop the spread of this fire caused by these heretics, even though people have tried to see if with the force of arms they could remedy all the evil that is making such progress. It has seemed to me that what is necessary is a different approach, the approach of a lord when in time of war his land is overrun with enemies and he finds himself restricted on all sides. He withdraws to a city that he has well fortified and from there sometimes strikes his foe. Those who are in the city, being chosen people, are such that they can do more by themselves than many cowardly soldiers can. And often victory is won in this way. At least, even though victory is not won, these chosen people are not conquered. For since they have no traitor, they cannot be conquered — unless through starvation. In this example the starvation cannot be such as to force them to surrender — to die, yes; but not to surrender.”

Her choice of words here are critical: “Human forces are not sufficient”. Yes focus first on your spiritual growth, but realize that it will not ultimately come from yourself, but from God on whom we are totally dependent.

The entire chapter revolves around the theme of growth in spiritual perfection to combat the world. Here’s a couple of ways in which I paraphrased the metaphor:

1) The Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, is always in spiritual warfare. So the Body must remain strong. The Body has many parts and we are its parts. You can best make the Body strong by making yourself strong.

2) The battle against the world begins in our own hearts, against our own vices and imperfections.

“Since in neither the ecclesiastical nor the secular arm can we be of any help to our King, let us strive to be the kind of persons whose prayers can be useful in helping those servants of God who through much toil have strengthened themselves with learning and a good life and have labored so as now to help the Lord.”

St Teresa’s words here are pertinent, “whose prayers can be useful in helping those servants”. Here she is specifying what her part of the Mystical Body she and her Sisters are occupying. Their prayers are for the preachers and theologians who are the front line defenders of the Church as we can see from the next quote:

“I don’t think that as yet you understand well how much you owe the Lord for bringing you here where you are so removed from business affairs, occasions of sin, and worldly occupations. … These persons [the preachers and theologians] must live among men, deal with men, live in palaces, and even sometimes outwardly behave as such men do. Do you think, my daughters, that little is required for them to deal with the world, live in the world, engage in its business, and, as I said, resemble it in its conversation, while interiorly remaining its strangers, its enemies; in sum, not being men but angels?”

St Teresa pushes connection between the necessity for the strength of spiritual perfection before doing battle with insight: those who defend the Church will have everything thrown at them. Not only will they need interior fortitude to withstand the onslaught, but also they cannot have any worldly attachments since they will not be able to conceal them and these imperfections will be used against them.

“And if they [the preachers and theologians] are not interiorly fortified through an understanding of the importance of trampling everything underfoot, of detachment from things that come to an end, and of attachment to eternal things, they will show some sign of this lack no matter how much they try to conceal it. … Now I wonder who it is that teaches people in the world about perfection, not so much that these people might seek perfection …, but that they might condemn others. … So, then, do not think that little help from God is necessary for this great battle these preachers and theologians are fighting; a very great deal is necessary.”

Chapter 4

St Teresa begins with a discussion of “prayer without ceasing”. She doesn’t really specify what she means here by “unceasing prayer”, but her focus in this chapter is on preparation for prayer rather than prayer itself. Fr Kavanaugh adds some comments in the Interpretative Notes to this chapter which are useful in understanding what St Teresa is getting at:

“Unceasing prayer (1 Thes 5:17), to which the nuns were called also by their Carmelite rule, could not be produced through mere human effort. Teresa felt it more as a gift along with Christ’s peace.” (Kavanaugh).

On this interpretation, “unceasing prayer” might not be the mere product of our effort, but we can make ourselves disposed to it by fasts, disciplines and silence:

“Our primitive rule states that we must pray without ceasing. If we do this with all the care possible — for unceasing prayer is the most important aspect of the rule — the fasts, the disciplines, and the silence the order commands will not be wanting. For you already know that if prayer is to be genuine, it must be helped by these other things; prayer and comfortable living are incompatible.”

St Teresa specifies three things necessary for prayer and to possess peace: love, detachment and humility. She continues:

And Kavanaugh ties these three things to “unceasing prayer” in his notes:

“The peace that Christ offers, and is so necessary for unceasing prayer, comes through a complete remaking of those who pray: in their relationship with others (love-charity); in their attitude towards possesions (detachment-hope); and in their attitude towards self (humility-faith).” (Kavanaugh)

While St Teresa treats of all three throughout the work, in the remainder of this chapter, she focuses on love. Echoing 1 Peter 4:8 “Love covers a multitude of sins” she writes:

“About the first, love for one another, it is most important that we have this, for there is nothing annoying that is not suffered easily by those who love one another. … But, because of either excess or defect, we never reach the point of observing this commandment perfectly.”

It might be surprising that St Teresa warns against excess love — warning against a deficit of love makes sense — but she goes on to clarify that excess love for another person is just an attachment to a creature and not God, and though one falls short of observing the commandment perfectly:

“those who are interested in perfection have a deep understanding of this excessive love, because little by little it takes away the strength of will to be totally occupied in loving God. … For these great friendships are seldom directed toward helping one love God more.”

St Teresa gives some examples of what bad things can come of friendships based on inordinate love:

“It gives rise to the following: failing to love equally all the others; feeling sorry about any affront to the friend; desiring possessions so as to give her gifts; looking for time to speak with her, and often so as to tell her that you hold her dear and other trifling things rather than about your love for God. For these great friendships are seldom directed toward helping one love God more. On the contrary, I think the devil gets them started so as to promote factions in religious orders. For when love is in the service of His Majesty, the will does not proceed with passion but proceeds by seeking help to conquer other passions.”

I found St Teresa’s point about promoting factions interesting. Seeking the affection of others, somewhat like being attached to honor which St Teresa warns us about in Chapter 2, can be understood as either a desire to be loved (ie. included in the in-group) or fear of being excluded (ie. excluded from the in-group). This attachment is precisely the dynamics of factions.
The inordinte love is an attachment and enslaves our wills to creatures rather than to God. St Teresa counsels us to break these friendships off delicately.

“Let us not condescend, oh daughters, to allow our wills to be slaves to anyone, save to the One who bought it with His blood. Be aware that, without understanding how, you will find yourselves so attached that you will be unable to manage the attachment. … To break away from these friendships … great care is necessary at the outset of the friendship. This breaking away should be done delicately and lovingly rather than harshly.”

Here words here are interesting: “without understanding how”. Often times, our attachments sneak in unconsciously, without our even being aware of their being formed by repeated habit. We might become conscoius of them later when they rear their ugly heads, but because of their unconscious nature, we often don’t even know they are there! And may not even know when God removes them!

As indicated in a footnote to the text, St Teresa went through a couple of revisions as she struggled to differentiate “spiritual love” from one mixed with passion. The idea she was trying to express is best summarized by the following quote:

“I want to speak now about the love that is spiritual, that which is not affected by any passion; where passion is present the good order is thrown into complete disorder.”

She closes the chapter by advising that we take counsel with good confessors and make remedy as soon as possible, emphasizing again how dangerous such friendships can be:

“And if we deal with virtuous persons discreetly and moderately, especially confessors, we will benefit. But if you should become aware that the confessor is turning toward some vanity, be suspicious about everything and in no way carry on conversations with him even though they may seem to be good, but make your confession briefly and bring it to a conclusion. And it would be best to tell the prioress that your soul doesn’t get on well with him and change confessors. That would be the most proper thing to do — if you can do it without hurting his reputation.”

“In similar cases and others as well, in which the devil could ensnare one in many difficulties and in which one does not know what counsel to take, the best thing to do is try to speak with some learned person … Make your confession to him and do what he tells you to do about the matter … Failing to provide a remedy cannot be allowed; for unless the devil is quickly cut short, the effect will not be something of minor importance when he begins to interfere.”

“Keep in mind that this is a very important point, for such friendship is dangerous, harmful, and a hell for all the Sisters. I say that you must not wait until you recognize that serious evil is present, but you should in the beginning cut the relationship short by every possible and knowable means. In good conscience you can do so.”

Closing Remarks: St Teresa wrote “The Way of Perfection” for her sisters who asked her to teach them somthing about prayer. Surprisingly she starts by talking about the Protestant Reformation! Just like in our times, and throughout history, the world is broken. She takes this as her launching point to locate the place of prayer in her spirituality:

We tranform the world by allowing ourselves to be transformed by God. But you can’t do this on your own because as fallen creatures we’re broken and we wouldn’t even know where to start to fix ourselves or the world. If we just “act”, we will wind up spreading our disorder more and not fixing anything. Like Mary’s openness to God two thousand years ago allowed Him to enter the world and transform it, so now our openness to God in prayer will fix our broken world today.

Christmas Eve, 2020.