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HOPE IS THE SAME THING AS REMEMBERING

BY KEITH EGAN

A version of this text was originally delivered as part of the “Saturdays with the Saints” series, hosted by the Institute for Church Life during the fall of 2011.

The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur penned a frequently cited aphorism: “Hope is the same thing as remembering.” There are many reasons to remember the saints, one of which is this: saints offer hope to the Church, its members and many others besides. The saints, with God’s love and grace, responded to the God who has loved them first (cf. 1 Jn 4:19), and the saints lived lives that have enriched the Christian tradition immensely. The saints say to Christians, “You too can be holy,” and the Second Vatican Council has endorsed this conviction with its “Universal Call to Holiness” (cf. Lumen Gentium, ch. 5).

St. Teresa of Ávila is an ambassador of hope because so much about her is truly memorable, and what is memorable about Teresa is now timely. This year will be a time to remember Teresa in a special way. The year 2015 will be the 500th anniversary of Teresa’s birth at the family villa in Gottarrendura about ten miles from Ávila. Alonso de Cepeda, Teresa’s father, recorded

in a notebook this entry: “On Wednesday the 28th of March in the year 1515 Teresa, my daughter, was born more or less at five thirty in the morning just as dawn was breaking.”1 Alonso’s sparse words do small justice to the significance of the birth of Doña Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda who would one day be Teresa of Jesus, saint and Doctor of the Church. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Teresa’s birth there will be numerous celebrations not only in Spain but all over the globe—wherever Teresa has become known, read, studied, and admired. Why celebrate the birthday of someone now deceased for more than four centuries? To begin with, we lose what we do not celebrate. Are not the holiness and the wisdom present in the life and writings of Teresa too much to lose if we fail to remember her, if we do not celebrate the God-given gifts bestowed on this woman from Ávila who lived so vividly what it means to be a joyful and wise disciple of Jesus of Nazareth? Gifts become truly gifts when they are shared. Teresa knew that the gifts she received

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were not hers to hoard. Pope Francis commented on remembrance in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), writing that “the believer is the ‘one who remembers’” (§13).

Not a Lonely, Long Distance Runner

In his Encyclical Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is adamant that Christians are not saved as individuals. Christians are not lonely, long distance runners. Rather, through Baptism, Christians are joined to Christ and through Christ to other disciples—those of the past, and those of the present. Citing Cardinal Henri de Lubac, Benedict writes,

“salvation has always been a ‘social’ reality” (Spe Salvi, §14). He goes on to state: “No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone” (SS §48). We are saved as a people, members of the Communion of Saints, members too of the Body of Christ, the Christ who died and was raised for the salvation of humankind. As we read in Teresa’s favorite biblical passage, the townspeople informed the woman at the well that they came to know that “this [Jesus] is the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:42). Teresa of Jesus has become a spiritual citizen of the world, a woman whose reputation for holiness and wisdom has no boundaries of any kind, national or otherwise.

Yet, how can hope be attained by celebrating the lives of the saints? The Second Vatican Council responds to the question this way:

By celebrating the days on which they died, the

church proclaims the paschal mystery in the saints

who have suffered and have been glorified with

Christ. It proposes saints to the faithful as models

who draw all people to the Father through Christ,

and through their merits it begs for God’s favor.

(Sacrosanctum Concilium, §104)

Teresa herself wrote: “So I say, daughters, that we should set our eyes on Christ, our Good, and on his saints” (IC 1.2.11).2 Moreover, in Spe Salvi Benedict cites Bernard of Clairvaux, who claimed that religious have a special role in the Body of Christ, supporting this claim by citing in turn “the words of pseudo-Rufinus: ‘The human race lives thanks to a few; were it not for them, the world would perish’” (SS §15). Teresa saw an ecclesial role for the nuns in her monasteries. She reminded them of their calling as contemplatives that the “world is all in flames; they want to sentence Christ again . . . they want to ravage his Church” (WP 1.5).

Teresa, Carmelite reformer and foundress, would agree heartily with John Paul II, who said, on the 550th anniversary of the papal bull Cum nulla (1452) which authorized the admission of women into full membership in the Carmelite Order, that Carmel is

“where prayer becomes life and life flourishes in prayer.”3

Had there been no Cum Nulla, there would have been no Teresa the Carmelite.

Teresa of Ávila has no need for our celebrations but we, Carmelites and non-Carmelites alike, need these celebrations. Teresa was well aware that the wonderful favors and graces that she received in abundance were not solely her gifts. In The Book of Her Foundations she wrote, “For I hold that our Lord never grants so great a favor to a person without allowing others to share in it as well” (BF 22.9). But, were Teresa with us still, she would not tolerate talk about her holiness, which she considered mere silly chatter. Teresa wrote to her dear friend Jerome Gracián that she “sometimes felt very depressed at hearing the silly things people say. In your parts they call me a saint: well (if I am) I must be one without feet or head! And they laugh when I tell them they had better canonize some other nun, as the only thing they have to do is pronounce the word.”4 With her bountiful sense of humor, Teresa expressed here her ever recurring emphasis on humility.

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The prophet Jeremiah is a reminder to us that the giver of the gift of a future to hope in is the Lord (cf. Jer 29:11). Hope, that much neglected virtue, broadens one’s vision and opens up new horizons. Teresa’s life and teachings expand one’s horizons, enlarge one’s heart and mind so that one may have the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16), and so that one’s “love may overflow more and more” (Phil 1:9). Through her own widening horizons, Teresa now makes it possible for one to hope in ways that one could never dream of on one’s own. Teresa is a special gift to the Christian community, where holiness is attained through the exercise of the virtues of faith, love, and hope. My intent in this article is to share some aspects of Teresa’s life and teaching that inspire hope in the followers of Jesus.

Saint and Doctor of the Universal Church

Despite Teresa’s disdainful dismissal of a reputation for holiness, she was beatified thirty-one years after she died and canonized only nine years after her beatification.5 On a truly memorable day in Rome, Teresa was canonized along with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, and Isidore the Farmer. The canonization of these extraordinary saints aroused hope in a Church that was trying to renew itself after the challenges of the Protestant Reformation. Incidentally, Teresa was the first Carmelite to be formally canonized.6

It took a much longer time for the Church to recognize Teresa’s teaching as significant for the whole Church. That occurred when Pope Paul VI abandoned a long held precedent barring women from being named Doctors of the Church. Paul VI named Teresa the first woman Doctor of the Church on September 27, 1970.7 A week after Teresa’s induction as a Doctor of the Church, the Pope bestowed the same honor on St. Catherine of Siena. Since then Pope John Paul II declared St. Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church

in 1997, and on October 7, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named St. Hildegard of Bingen the Church’s fourth female Doctor. As with so many other firsts, Teresa led the way for holy women who have articulated “eminent doctrine” to be proclaimed special teachers in the universal Church.8

Celebrations remind one that gratitude is owed to those from whom gifts have been received. Teresa would be the first to insist that gratitude belongs first to God for all the gifts that she received. It is evident, I believe, that Teresa and St. John of the Cross see as a key posture of Carmelite Spirituality that followers of Jesus are fundamentally receivers. For these two Spanish mystics is not all of life, all of love, gift? Teresa is emphatic that “we possess nothing that we have not received” (IC 6.5.6). Teresa and John use terms like “passive,”

“infused,” “mystical,” “supernatural (sobrenatural)” to indicate the conviction that, in the mystical life, all is gift; all is received.9

Once again, Teresa knows that for a gift to be truly a gift it must be shared. Teresa used every ounce of her energy to share with others the gifts that she received from God. The sheer volume of her writings is staggering in light of the circumstances and obligations of her life. Teresa herself has been a gift from God to all who seek wisdom from her life and from her writings. To remember and to live that wisdom engenders a distinctive hope in God’s merciful love.

The many-faceted life of Teresa makes it impossible to explore all the wisdom of her life and writings. This vivacious woman from Castile with a Jewish heritage (that she never mentions), was among other things Carmelite nun, reformer, foundress, author, teacher of prayer, and finally mystic, saint, and Doctor of the Church. These varied roles make Teresa a complex subject. An essay like this one can do small justice to an exploration of her wisdom about the spiritual life. So I

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must be selective. I have chosen to explore one thread in Teresa’s life that inspires hope: to explore some moments in Teresa’s relationship with Jesus Christ that was rooted in her Baptism and, through a life of prayer, culminated in her reception of the gift of spiritual marriage. That trajectory reveals Teresa’s fundamental relationship with Jesus that was fostered through prayer. Teresa’s response to this friendship with Christ reached spiritual maturity when she was brought fully and intimately into the life and love of the triune God through a vision of the humanity of Christ (cf. IC 7.2.1).

Daughter of the Church

Teresa of Jesus summed up her life in words that she repeated often as she lay dying: “At last, Lord, I am a daughter of the Church.”10 The Church for Teresa was

“Mother Church,” a Church that teaches the way to God.11 She told her daughters: “believe firmly what Holy Mother Church holds, and you can be sure you will be walking along a good path” (WP 21. 10). For Teresa, Mother Church is Christ: “The world is all in flames, and they want to sentence Christ again . . . since they raise a thousand false witnesses against Him; they want to ravage His Church” (WP 1.5). Teresa was baptized a member of the Church soon after birth in the parish church of San Juan in Ávila where she was named for her maternal grandmother, Teresa de las Cuevas.

Unfortunately, Teresa was not always treated kindly by churchmen. Felipe Sega, the papal nuncio to Spain, famously described Teresa as

[a] restless vagabond of a woman, disobedient and

contumacious, who under the guise of devotion was

inventing bad doctrines, going about outside the

enclosure against the prescriptions of the Council

of Trent and her superiors, acting as a teacher, in

contradiction to what St. Paul taught that women

should not be teachers.12

Such a disdainful calumny did not in any way lessen Teresa’s devotion to the Church that she knew transcended its leaders who opposed her. Nevertheless, Sega’s comments remind one of Teresa’s plea to the Lord that women be given the recognition they deserve:

Nor did You, Lord, when you walked in the world

despise women; rather You always, with great

compassion helped them. [And You found as much

love and more faith in them than You did in men.

Among them was Your most blessed Mother. . . . You

are a just judge and not like those of the world. Since

the world’s judges are sons of Adam and all of them

men, there is no virtue in women that they do not

hold suspect. . . . I see that these are times in which

it would be wrong to undervalue virtuous and strong

souls, even though they are women.] (WP 3.7)

Fr. García de Toledo thought that Teresa’s comments about women were too boldly stated, so she deleted the passage bracketed above in a second edition.13 Teresa was not shy about letting her frustration in this regard be known. She wrote: “just being a woman is enough to have my wings fall off—how much more being both a woman and wretched as well” (BL 10.8). As the Church struggles to overcome divisions that have the potential of dulling its impact on a suffering world, one can look to Teresa as an example of a woman who was aware of the limitations of some Church leaders at the same time that she was faithful to Christ and Christ’s Church.

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Configured to Christ

To understand Teresa, one needs to turn to her collaborator St. John of the Cross, who acted at times as her confessor and advisor. Teresa is the storyteller of the Carmelite contemplative life and John of the Cross is the poet of that life who brings theological finesse to an understanding of the journey to God. There is a remarkable paragraph in John’s Spiritual Canticle, little noticed but very important, where John reminds his readers that the grace, or “espousal” as he calls it, bestowed at Baptism is the same grace that one receives in spiritual marriage.14 John of the Cross connects the baptismal event to the love through which one is fully transformed in God or, as Teresa and John name that transformation, spiritual marriage. The ongoing configuration to Christ initiated at Baptism and lived in, with, and through Christ has as its culmination for Teresa and John matrimonio espiritual, the fullness of union with Christ through love. For Teresa, the dedicated living of a personal loving relationship with Jesus Christ grows principally through prayer both liturgical and personal. Teresa did not write much about liturgical prayer other than report on her frequent encounters with Christ after the reception of Communion and her recommendation to her daughters of spiritual communion since, in Teresa’s day, even religious were not ordinarily able to receive the Eucharist every day (WP 35.1).15 However, Teresa did write extensively about that personal prayer which she referred to as mental prayer. Her succinct but insightful description of this prayer has become classical: “For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us” (BL 8.5). Meditation on the elements in Teresa’s description of mental prayer can be a very fruitful exercise.

Teresa de Jesús

The quality of one’s life depends on the quality of one’s relationships. Teresa knew that the quality of her relationship with Jesus was paramount, central to the quality of her life and to all other relationships. She grew up in a family of lively relationships: “virtuous and God-fearing parents” as well as “three sisters and nine brothers” (BL 1.1).16 This was the same converso17 family that bought its way into the ranks of the lower nobility; hence, Teresa was entitled to be addressed as doña, a lady of rank. Indeed, Teresa’s oldest surviving letters are signed “Doña Teresa de Ahumada.”18 However, once Teresa’s reform was underway, she never again referred to herself as doña but simply as “Teresa de Jesús” or

“Teresa de Jesús, Carmelita.” It became clearer to Teresa that her relationship with Jesus shaped her identity. The richness of this relationship between Jesus and Teresa reveals itself in the variety of ways that she refers to Jesus, e.g., Beloved, Spouse, Christ, Lord, Redeemer, Savior, Son of God, the Crucified, Lamb (of God), Emperor, Friend, Companion, Guest, Teacher, Brother, Judge, Shepherd, Master, etc.19 For Teresa, Christ was no one-dimensional, distant, abstract figure, but rather someone of great divine mystery whose fullness no human can fathom but whose lavish love called her to a mutual, growing, personal, loving relationship. She was, after all, as she chose to be known, Teresa of Jesus. This relationship with Jesus was nurtured by the way Teresa learned to pray what is now called the Prayer of (Active) Recollection,20 in which Teresa recommends that one close one’s eyes and become present to Christ in some scene from the Gospels. Teresa described the action of this prayer in Spanish as re-presentar Cristo, which has been translated as “to picture Christ within me” (BL 9.4). However, I suggest that the emphasis is on presentar—to be present—with the prefix re adding emphasis for intensification, that is, to be really present to Christ.21 Teresa’s emphasis is less like St. Ignatius of

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Loyola’s emphasis on the details in a Gospel scene and more on being with Christ, being lovingly present to Christ, for instance at Gethsemane or with the woman at the well.22 Teresa enthusiastically taught this way of prayer to her daughters in The Way of Perfection (26, 28–29).23 Ernest Larkin, O.Carm. locates Teresa in the tradition leading up to modern forms of contemplative prayer like centering prayer and Christian meditation.24

Teresa’s emphasis on mental prayer was incorporated in her Constitutions, where she prescribed one hour of mental prayer twice a day (CO 2 and 7). The daily regimen of two hours of mental prayer was Teresa’s way of passing on to her daughters how they are to grow in a personal, loving relationship with Jesus Christ. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI emphasized Teresa’s special relationship with Jesus this way: “for Teresa the Christian life is a personal relationship with Jesus, which culminates in union with him through grace, love and imitation.”25 At the center of all of Teresa’s existence was this personal, loving relationship with Jesus Christ that was nurtured by prayer and which for her became prayer that only God can give. She called this latter prayer “infused,” “supernatural,” or “mystical.” Colorfully, Teresa used the Spanish word gustos for mystical prayer and contentos for the prayer which she saw as attainable by human effort and ordinary grace (IC 4.1.4). With gustos (spiritual delights), Teresa shares her understanding of prayer that is all God’s gift:

It used to happen, when I represented Christ within

me in order to place myself in His presence, or even

while reading, that a feeling (sentimiento) of the

presence of God would come upon me unexpectedly

so that I could in no way doubt He was within me or

I totally immersed in Him. . . . I believe they call the

experience ‘mystical theology.’ (BL 10.1)

Teresa: Teacher of Prayer

The human heart has a natural desire for God, a desire that expresses itself in prayer, prayer that seeks to bridge the seeming chasm between the human and the divine. For that desire to grow, prayer needs to become an ever more authentic encounter with God, a prayer that grows deeper and deeper into a personal, loving relationship with Jesus Christ. Because Teresa was foundress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns and friars, she was called upon to become a teacher of prayer for her nuns and friars; in fact, The Way of Perfection was composed in response to the needs of her daughters in the monastery of San José in Ávila. Teresa acknowledges that this is the book “you have asked me to write” (WP 2.4).

When Pope Paul VI named Teresa a Doctor of the Universal Church, he highlighted her role as “teacher of the teachers of the spirit,”26 and Pope John Paul II, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of her death in 1982, began a letter to the superior general of the Discalced Carmelites by speaking of Teresa as an

“example of virtue and [as a] teacher.”27 Teresa’s whole life, all that she did and all that she taught, concerned prayer and contemplation. She robustly proclaimed:

“So I say now that all of us who wear this holy habit of Carmel are called to prayer and contemplation. This call explains our origin. . . .” (IC 5.1.2). Teresa had concluded that “in this life there could be no greater good than the practice of prayer” (BL 7.10). Though aware of her limitations, Teresa had confidence that she was able to teach her daughters something about prayer because she and they had Christ as their teacher (see WP 10.3; IC 5.3.7). In his Encyclical Spe Salvi Benedict XVI says that it is through prayer that one learns hope (cf. §32). Once again Teresa with her wisdom about prayer is an icon of hope in the Christian tradition. Simply put: without prayer, there is no hope.

.

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Once Teresa began to attract young women to her reformed Carmels, she knew that she had to share with them her wisdom about prayer; in fact, near the beginning of The Way of Perfection, she acknowledges that “it is about prayer that you asked me to say something” (4.3). Thus, Teresa the reformer and foundress became a teacher of prayer. As a teacher of prayer Teresa was not averse to sharing with her readers her own struggles involving prayer. She admitted that

“very often, for some years I was more anxious that the hour I had determined to spend in prayer be over . . . and more anxious to listen to the striking of the clock” (BL 8.7). Teresa even admits to abandoning mental prayer for about a year and a half (BL 7.11; 19.4). This was no facile admission for someone who was aware that it was her responsibility to teach her daughters how to pray and who expended so much energy in writing about prayer, despite the demanding tasks that were hers as an administrator of her Discalced Reform.

Those who do not live in cloistered monasteries may think that Teresa was writing only for those who have the leisure for prayer and the resources to learn to pray. Indeed, her daughters were her principal concern, but Teresa taught prayer to family members and to the laity. In a reversal of roles, Teresa mentored her father Alonso in prayer and she reports that she had found him “so advanced” in prayer (BL 7.10). Then there was her conquistador brother Lorenzo, who had returned to Ávila from South America. Lorenzo willingly put himself under the tutelage of Teresa as a guide in prayer, and she was delighted that Lorenzo was the recipient of the graces of mystical prayer.28

Further Wisdom about Prayer

Teresa claimed that she felt like “a bird with broken wings, when it comes to saying anything good” (IC 3.1.5). But, then and now, it is abundantly clear that Teresa had and continues to have a great deal of good to say about prayer. Yet, it is daunting and not a bit presumptuous to offer even a brief synopsis of Teresa’s wisdom about prayer. So I shall confine myself here to a few further highlights from Teresa’s wisdom about prayer. It is appropriate to point out that it is far better to listen to Teresa directly than to hear her wisdom secondhand; for that reason I have documented and quoted as carefully as possible Teresa’s own texts. For Teresa “prayer is an exercise of love” (BL 7.12). Her prayer and her teaching about prayer are all about love. She who wanted her daughters to be contemplatives wanted them to know that “with contemplatives there is always much love, or they wouldn’t be contemplatives” (WP 40.4), and she was convinced that “love begets love” (BL 22.14), and that “the important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so do that which stirs you to love” (IC 4.1.7). Teresa, a woman with a heart bursting with love, trusted in the human capacity to love: “not all imaginations are . . . capable of this meditating, but all souls are capable of loving” (BF 5.2).

Prayer according to Teresa is a journey to union in love with Christ, a union that she wants her readers to know is not some “dreamy state” (IC 5.1.4). Teresa insists to her daughters that the Lord asks of them

“only two things; love of His Majesty and love of our neighbor” (IC 5.3.7), and that the “most certain sign” that one is fulfilling this challenge is that one grow in love of neighbor (IC 5.3.8). Teresa makes this dramatic conclusion: “if we fail in love of neighbor we are lost” (IC5.3.12). Down-to-earth mystic that she was, Teresa was well aware that one lives as well as one prays and one prays as well as one lives. Teresa speaks of the

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benefit that accrues “when our deeds conform with what we say in prayer” (IC 7.4.7).

For Teresa, prayer was and is an adventure in love, and she knew prayer meant taking a risk. La Madre wanted her daughters to become a praying community—to be

“certain that the Lord will never fail His lovers when they take a risk for Him alone” (MSg 3.7). Teresa’s challenge is to risk all in prayer, prayer that becomes an ever more generous love for Christ. Teresa the fearless wrote: “I don’t understand what they fear who fear to begin the practice of mental prayer” (BL 8.7), or who fear to “leave the intellect go and surrender oneself into the arms of love” (IC 4.3.8).

There is an oft-quoted saying attributed to the Trappist monk Thomas Keating: “The only way to fail in prayer is not to show up.” Teresa of Jesus would have expanded on that conviction as she was much exercised over her own abandonment of mental prayer when she was a young nun at the monastery of the Incarnation. The youthful Teresa claimed that the devil tricked her into a false humility—that she didn’t deserve to pray so she feared to return to the practice of mental prayer. Teresa gave up the practice of this kind of prayer for about a year, perhaps more, but she became convinced that one must not give up prayer, no matter how much wrong one has done (BL 7.1; 8.5). Teresa urged those who had not yet begun the practice of mental prayer “for the love of the Lord not to go without so great a good” (BL 8.5). Teresa felt that “to give up the practice of prayer was the greatest evil” (BL 19.10). The repentant Teresa

“saw clearly that there was no excuse for giving up prayer” (BL 7.12). In addition to the two daily periods of personal prayer, she and her daughters prayed the Divine Office and participated in the Eucharist. Teresa encouraged those who felt that they prayed poorly to persevere in prayer. However “lukewarm” their moments in prayer may be, God “esteems them highly” (IC 2.1.3). Indeed, Teresa was emphatic about the

danger of omitting mental prayer: “There is no other remedy for this evil of giving up prayer than to begin again; otherwise the soul will gradually lose more each day—and please God that [the soul] will understand this fact” (IC 2.1.1).

In the first three dwelling places of The Interior Castle, Teresa describes in rather general terms how one is to live so that one may become a candidate for the mystical prayer, that prayer which begins in the fourth dwelling places. In these early dwelling places, Teresa lays emphasis on self-knowledge, which is the path to humility. La Madre wants her daughters to know that the Lord “is very fond of humility” (IC Epilogue, 2), and that “this edifice is built entirely on humility . . . and if there is no progress in humility, everything is going to be ruined” (BL 12.4). In the third dwelling places Teresa says: “with humility present, this stage is an excellent one. If humility is lacking we will remain here our whole life—and with a thousand afflictions and miseries” (IC 3.2.9).

The door to the castle (the soul) is prayer and reflection (IC 1.1.7). It is presumed that one is praying in whatever way one can. Teresa does not offer much guidance in the first three dwelling places about how to pray or the nature of prayer at this stage of one’s spiritual journey. In the first three dwelling places, Teresa is clearly interested in moving on quickly to the fourth dwelling places. From then on she will spend the rest of The Interior Castle writing about the gifts of infused or mystical prayer. But, before one receives these infused gifts, one has to become free—free from whatever prevents one from becoming a loving person. This process of liberation Teresa calls “detachment” (IC 3.1.8).

Prayer is not some kind of gymnastics of the mind. As we have seen, Teresa’s prayer is a matter of loving presence. In fact, Teresa clearly includes herself when

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she says that “there are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop” (WP 19.2). In her description of the Prayer of the Four Waters (BL 11–22), Teresa traces growth in prayer from those who “are beginning to be servants of love” to those whose discover God’s lavish love, symbolized by Teresa as a downpour of rain (llover mucho) (BL 11.7). This discovery of God’s lavish love is at the same time a gift of hope. The intensification of the life of prayer is growth in the love of Jesus Christ, but it does not imply a preoccupation with mystical phenomena. Teresa disdains any “cupidity for God’s favors” (BL 18.4). Visions and locutions, etc., are not of the essence of prayer (cf. IC 6.3.2 & 4). Phenomena in themselves are not what make one holy.

“With the Saints We Shall Be Saints”29

My teaching of Dante’s Divine Comedy has taught me that the meaning of the Inferno and of the Purgatorio remains obscure until one reaches the climax of the Paradiso. There Dante’s mind is “bedazzled,” “amazed,” and “transformed” by his encounter with the triune God.30 Similarly the seventh dwelling places of The Interior Castle are where Teresa describes spiritual marriage, a stage that helps one to understand better Teresa’s whole journey to God. Not until the seventh dwelling places does Teresa reach the fullness of her relationship with Jesus. Not until then does she enter fully into the life and love of the triune God. What Teresa describes in the seventh dwelling places makes clear what God had in mind for her. This single-minded woman responded so generously to the God who loved her lavishly that God finally bestowed on her the grace of spiritual marriage.

Pope St. Pius V appointed Pedro Fernández, a holy and learned Dominican, to be the apostolic visitor to the Carmelites in Castile. Fernández decided that the

troubled megamonasterio31 of the Encarnación in Ávila needed new leadership so he sent Teresa, now fifty-six, back to this monastery as its prioress. Teresa knew that she needed more than a little help if she were to bring peace and a deeper spiritual life to this monastery, so she arranged to have John of the Cross appointed there as confessor and vicar. One day when John of the Cross gave Communion to Teresa, she received a vision of Jesus, recounting his words in her Spiritual Testimonies:

“‘Don’t fear, daughter, for no one shall be a party to separating you from Me.’ . . . Then He gave me his right hand, and said: ‘Behold this nail; it is a sign you will be My bride from today on’” (ST 31).32 Thus was celebrated the spiritual marriage of Teresa and Jesus. This highest state in the spiritual life is where one is so fully united with Christ that one is fully drawn into the life of the triune God.33 John of the Cross wrote that the love experienced in spiritual marriage is the “end for which we were created.”34 The bestowal of spiritual marriage upon Teresa of Jesus is a gift for all because this gift was given to her as a member of the Communion of Saints. She wrote: “You are not accustomed, Lord to bestow on a soul grandeurs and favors like these unless for the profit of many” (BL 18.4). Indeed, we are blessed as members of the Body of Christ because our sister, Teresa, has received the gift of spiritual marriage; in fact, humanity has been blessed in Teresa, a woman who has become a universal icon for all who seek union with the divine. Jesus remains in this exalted stage, as he has always been, a central focus of her love. “Fix your eyes on the Crucified and everything will become small for you” (IC 7.4.8).

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To Pray is to Hope As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written, “The first essential setting for learning hope is prayer” (SS §32). Indeed, Teresa teaches us to pray and thereby to hope. Teresa was the recipient of what Thomas Aquinas called the gratia sermonis, the gift of speech, which enables one to pass on to others what one has come to know about God.35 Teresa, the “undanted [sic] daughter of desires”36 as seventeenth-century English poet Richard Crashaw called her, is a guide for all who seek to respond to the natural desire for God that was sewn into the human heart from the first moment of one’s existence. Here in spiritual marriage, Teresa’s loving relationship with Christ culminates in her encounter with the triune God “in the manner of a cloud of magnificent splendor” (IC 7.1.6). Teresa was well aware that what she encountered in spiritual marriage was ineffable, but she tried mightily to share with her daughters the wisdom about the journey to God made with her friend and companion Jesus Christ. In this final stage of the spiritual life, Teresa finds peace and love, forgetfulness of self, “deep interior joy,” a desire to suffer even in persecution, and a desire to serve, because as Teresa says: “the purpose of this spiritual marriage [is] the birth always of good works” (IC 7.4.6), freedom from whatever stands in the way of becoming a more loving person, including freedom from the devil.37

Throughout The Interior Castle, Teresa disguises herself by putting personal references in the third person, e.g., “I know a person to whom. . .” (IC 1.2.2). As a result, Teresa’s description of the seventh dwelling places is muted. On the other hand, John of the Cross describes extensively the effects of spiritual marriage in The Spiritual Canticle and in The Living Flame of Love.38 John brings to his descriptions of spiritual marriage the theme of deification while Teresa does not mention deification. That does not mean that she

did not experience divinization, only that Teresa is an example of the neglect of divinization in the literature of Western Christianity.

If one wants to add to Teresa’s description of her experience of the seventh dwelling places, John of the Cross offers a portrait of a defied person. John says of the deified: “This divine drink so deifies, elevates and immerses her in God” (CB 26.10), and later, “She is as it were divine and deified” (CB 27.7). He goes on to say, “For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes deiform and God through participation” (CB 39.4). John speaks of the Holy Spirit, who “ever penetrates and deifies the substance of the soul, absorbing it above all being into his own being” (FB 1.35). Moreover, John describes the fire of God that “divinizes and delights” the soul

“burning gently within it” (FB 2.3). John of the Cross’ description of the deified person thus supplements Teresa’s own description of the gift of spiritual marriage that she received.

Elsewhere I have made the case that deification is at the same time a humanization.39 Teresa, like all humanity, was made in the image and likeness of God with a natural desire for God. Paradoxically, through deification, Teresa became fully human; her natural gifts were enhanced by God’s grace and glory. This is a conviction of Carmelite Ruth Burrows: “it is only when God has been able to love us in fullness that we are wholly there. Only that in us which is divine is real. Only when we are God-filled are we truly human.”40 One does not have to read far into what Teresa wrote to discover her to be warm, joyful, energetic, a friend to God and to so many others, efficient and flexible, humorous and serious, active and contemplative, feminine to her fingertips, and yet some contemporaries saw her as varonil—strong like a man.41 What a work of art Teresa is!

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Hope is the Same Thing as Remembering

How shall we celebrate Teresa’s wisdom? She concludes The Interior Castle with a request to her daughters: “in your prayers . . . do not forget this poor wretch” (IC 7.4.16). We remember her best by becoming conversation partners with Teresa under the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that Teresa’s wisdom becomes our wisdom, her love our love. In her description of her Transverberation, Teresa says that the golden dart left her “all on fire with great love of God” (BL 29.13). John of the Cross, with Teresa in mind no doubt, says that the Transverberation of the heart makes one feel “that the entire universe is a sea of love in which it is engulfed, for conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to catch sight of the boundaries of this love” (FB 2.10). That is Teresa’s story—her life and her writings are full of a love that has no boundaries. Teresa would heartily agree with a conviction of St. Augustine quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas: “as to hope . . . nothing is so needful to build up our hope than for us to be shown how much God loves us.”42

†

NOTES

1 Efrén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, Tiempo y Vida de Santa Teresa, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1977), I. 22.

2 Quotations and citations from the writings of St. Teresa are taken the following English translation: The Collected Works of Saint Teresa of Ávila, 3 vols., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976, 1980, 1985). In-text abbreviations are designated as follows: Vol. 1: The Book of Her Life (BL), Spiritual Testimonies (ST); Vol. 2: The Way of Perfection (WP), Meditations on the Song of Songs (MSg), The Interior Castle (IC); Vol. 3: The Book of Her Foundations (BF), The Constitutions (CO), and Poetry (PO).

3 John Paul II, “Message for the 500th Anniversary of the Addition of the Cloistered Nuns and the Third Order of the Laity to the Carmelite Order” (7 October 2002), §3.

4 Teresa of Ávila, Letter 297 in The Letters of Saint Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, trans. E. Allison Peers (London: Sheed and Ward, 1980). For the same letter, see Letter 320 in The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Ávila, vol. 2, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2007). For other letters expressing a similar sentiment, see Letters (Peers), I, 78 and Letters (Kavanaugh) I, 88.

5 Teresa died October 4, 1582. The Gregorian calendar added ten days that year to the calendar; hence her feast day occurs on October 15. Teresa was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622.

6 Joachim Smet, The Mirror of Carmel: A Brief History of the Carmelite Order (Darien, IL: Carmelite Media, 2011), 214.

7 Elsewhere I have treated in detail the significance of Pope Paul’s declaration that Teresa be a Doctor of the Church. See, for example, “The Significance for Theology of the Doctor of the Church: Teresa of Ávila,” in The Pedagogy of God’s Image: Essays on Symbol and the Religious Imagination (The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 1981), ed. Robert Masson (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982).

8 Egan, “The Significance for Theology of the Doctor of the Church: Teresa of Ávila,” 159.

63 TERESA OF ÁVILA / KEITH EGAN

9 See Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2002), 373:

“The soul cannot live without receiving.”

10 Efrén and Steggink, Tiempo y Vida, II, 983–984.

11 Keith J. Egan, “Teresa of Jesus: Daughter of the Church and Woman of the Reformation,” Carmelite Studies 3 (1984), 79–82.

12 Teresa of Ávila, Letter 269 (Kavanaugh), vol. 2, n. 6. See paragraph 3 of this letter which shows that Teresa was aware of this circulating critique by Sega.

13 See endnote 2 for chapter 3 in The Way of Perfection.

14 John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle (CB) in The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, rev. ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 23.6.

15 For spiritual communion or Communion by desire see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III.73.3 ad 2.

16 See note 3, p. 287 in The Book of Her Life (Kavanaugh-Rodriguez) for the names of Teresa’s sisters and brothers.

17 For a definition of converso, see the index in Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997).

18 Letters 1 and 2 (Kavanaugh).

19 For Spanish names of Jesus in the writings of Teresa of Jesus, see Concordancias de los Escritos de Santa Teresa de Jesús, 2 vols. eds. J. L. Astigarraga with Agustí Borrell (Rome: Editoriales O.C.D., 2000).

20 The word “active,” not used by Teresa, is added to the Prayer of Recollection to indicate that it is not the passive/infused/mystical recollection of the fourth dwelling places of The Interior Castle.

21 See “presente, representar, re” in Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de La Lengua Castellana o Española, eds. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra (Madrid: Universidad de Navarra/Iberoamericano/Vervuert, 2006; original, 1611). On my interpretation I have consulted Professor Gerald Gingras, Professor Emeritus of Spanish, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN, who agrees with my interpretation. My thanks to Professor Gingras.

22 Ernest Larkin, Contemplative Prayer for Today: Christian Meditation (Singapore: MedioMedia, 2007), 67–68.

23 See also BL 12. 2–4 and IC 4.1.7.

24 Ernest E. Larkin, “Today’s Contemplative Prayer Forms: Are They Contemplation?” in Review for Religious, 57.1 (January–February 1998), 77–87.

25 Benedict XVI, General Audience (2 February 2011).

26 Paul VI, Multiformis Sapientia, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 63 (1971), 185–192.

27 John Paul II, “Epistula data Philippo Sainz de Baranda Praeposito Genrali Ordinis Fraturm Discalceatorum, Beatae Mariae Virginis de Monte Carmelo” (14 October 1981).

28 On Teresa as mentor to the spiritual lives of her family, see Tomás Alvarez, St. Teresa of Avila: 100 Themes on Her Life and Work, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2011), 83–86.

29 IC 7.4.10: “con los santos seremos santos. . . .” St. Teresa of Jesus, Obras Completas, 5th ed., eds. Enrique Llamas, et al. (Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 2000), Cf. Ps 18:26 (Vulgate Ps 17:26).

30 Dante Alighieri, Commedia: Paradiso, Canto 30, trans. Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (London Penguin, 1962).

31 See José Vicente Rodríguez, San Juan de la Cruz: La Biografía (Madrid: San Pablo, 2012), 250.

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32 The rest of the Lord’s words: “‘Until now you have not merited this; from now on not only will you look after My honor as being the honor of your Creator, King, and God, but you will look after it as My true bride. My honor is yours, and yours Mine.’”

33 Works of Saint John of the Cross, 775.

34 CB 29.3.

35 Summa Theologiae II.2. 177.1. Teresa has an explanation of this grace in BL 17.5.

36 Richard Crashaw, “The Flaming Heart.”

37 IC, note 1 for 7.3.

38 The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, rev. ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991). CB=The Spiritual Canticle, version B. FB=The Living Flame of Love, version B.

39 Keith J. Egan, “Eucharist, Contemplation and Humanization” in Celebrate! 46 (Sept.–Oct, 2007), 4–7. This is a complementary essay to Egan, “Eucharist, Contemplation and Humanization” in Celebrate! 46 (July–August 2007), 4–8.

40 Ruth Burrows, Interior Castle Explored, 3rd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Hidden Spring, 2007), 112.

41 Louis Cognet notes some of the paradoxes in Teresa’s personality in La Spiritualité, 1: L’essor: 1500–1650 (Paris: Aubier, 1966), 81.

42 Summa Theologiae III.1.2. Translation is that of the Blackfriars Edition, volume 48, which on page 11 indicates that Augustine’s quotation is from De Trinitate, XIII, 10, PL 42, 1024. This quotation occurs in English in The Trinity, trans. Edmund

Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), 353.

Keith Egan is the Aquinas Chair in Catholic Theolog y Emeritus at St. Mary’s College and Adjunct Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.