A paper by sister angela ellwood ocdm given at the SYMPOSIUM ON SAINT TERESA OF AVILA commemorating
the five hundredth anniversary of her birth – 1515.
THURSDAY 21 – SATURDAY 23 MAY 2015 at theCarmelite Centre, Middle Park
Jesus
Christ, Teresa’s True Friend and Companion[1]
Her Definition of Prayer
Teresa, as a
member of a converso family in the
Spain of her day, had a deep loneliness and profound longing for truth—longing
for God.[2] Her passionate longing for love and wholeness
–her search for God– took her beyond the tenets of society’s conventions and
constrictions with their obsessive concern for status and reputation. Through her struggle for inner truth,
integrity and wholeness (a struggle fraught with conflict) she was led into an
intimate friendship of love with the Risen Jesus, who freed and transformed her.
Behind Teresa’s loneliness and vulnerability, was the fact that she
belonged to a marginalized group. There were
three areas in which she had constantly to battle:
1.
She was of Jewish blood and belonged to a converso family: this was a deep secret
shared in the intimacy of the family. Yet,
the old aristocracy keenly suspected or knew, “who was who” — conversos were ostracized and not really
accepted by them. Rowan Williams says they
had become “objects of continuing hatred and suspicion from both the lesser
gentry and the population at large.”[3] Converso
families longed for acceptance and Teresa struggled with these anxieties and
fears for years – from her teens onwards.
It was only in 1554, with the grace of conversion, that healing and
freedom from these anxieties began.
2.
She was a woman in a society which extremely
distorted and devalued the female sex.
There was great mistrust of women’s virtues and capabilities.
3.
She was a woman who had ecstatic experiences,
practised interior prayer and authoritatively wrote books on it. This, together with the founding of San José
in Avila, brought her into the public forum. All of these points were closely
watched by the Tribunal of the Faith.
Rowan Williams says, any one of the above qualifications would have been
sufficient for the society and Church of her day to see her as a “threat and a
pollutant.”[4] Therefore, he says, she had to live and
“negotiate her way in an almost entirely suspicious environment.”[5] She faced enormous obstacles.
Nevertheless, in the midst of the
all-pervading presence of the Inquisition and the pernicious reigning climate
of suspicion, mistrust and fear, Teresa courageously pursued her goals with the
utmost determination and shrewdness, her eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. For authentication, we know that she
consulted the best theologians of Spain’s Golden Age of theology. Because, before all eyes she had to show that
she wanted only what God wanted— what God wanted through the mediation of the
teaching Church.[6]
Prior to her conversion in 1554, Teresa (because of her converso origin and her warm, affective
personality) longed for acceptance, legitimacy, love and affection. That was the mine field in which she “struggled”
and in which God “struggled” to be present to her. Yet, she often tells us in the early part of
the Life that she was greatly loved. She possessed a warm, extravert, human personality
— she longed to love and had a profound capacity for love and friendship. However, within these great qualities was her
“shadow” or dark underside in which she lived ‘outside’ herself, caught in crippling,
dependant relationships, where she lived on the periphery of life. This prevented her from surrendering herself
more completely to God.
Daniel Chowning says, “Love is the most
important key for understanding her life and message and
also for explaining the intimate
conflicts that she suffered for many years.”[7] In fact, she defines prayer in its terms: “an
intimate sharing between friends — with Him, who we know, loves us”[8] — frequently
and secretly communing heart to heart with Him, in the intimacy of love. For
Teresa, it was “a loving friendship that grew in intensity and presence and
transformed her entire life”[9] — her
whole human personality caught up in Christ.
The question of Teresa’s formation in Christology:
1.
According to Tomás Alvarez, Teresa had the
fortune of a rich and complete formation in Christology, both in childhood and
as an adult.
2.
As a child she read the Flos Sanctorum, texts of the Passion according to the four Gospels.
The illustrated vignettes would have had
a powerful impact on the young Teresa.
One really impressive drawing was Jesus praying in the garden.[10]
3.
As an adult, Alvarez says Teresa’s real manual
of Christological formation was a four volume work of 1320 pages, The Life of Christ by the Carthusian,
Ludolph of Saxony. It contained an “immense
Christological spirituality.”[11] This comprehensive life of Jesus was one of
her favourite books for meditation and a rich source of Scripture — it was “the
equivalent of one of our intense biblical courses.”[12] [Scripture otherwise, was only available to
Teresa in Latin and she didn’t know Latin.]
Teresa’s quest for the Lord began in
childhood.
Even as a small girl she sought solitude for prayer. When her Mother died, Teresa was still a young
adolescent girl of 13 years. Bereft,
vulnerable and lonely, she was led to the practice of prayer – prayer as
friendship with Jesus, the God-Man. Most
nights, for many years, before she went to sleep, she would look at Our Lord’s
solitary suffering in the Garden. His
loneliness cried out to the Motherless girl.
She began to look at Him in the forsaken moments of His life – when He
was alone and afflicted. He was someone
like herself, who needed companionship and compassion. She felt that if Jesus was a person alone,
afflicted and needy, then He had to accept her in her brokenness and
poverty. And so, she would remain there
with Him in faith, as His companion — consoling Him by her compassionate and
loving presence.[13] Teresa says she gained a great deal through
this custom. It became so habitual that she
did not abandon it.[14]
When Teresa entered the Monastery of the
Incarnation, she threw herself into religious life with all the intense
enthusiasm and religious fervour of the Castilian character. And so very early in the Life, she says:
I
tried as hard as I could to keep Jesus Christ, our God and our Lord, present
within me, and that was my way of prayer.
If I reflected upon some phase of his passion, I represented him to
myself interiorly.[15]
Later in the Life she
continues:
This method of
keeping Christ present within us is beneficial in all stages of the spiritual
journey – beginning, middle and end.... It is what we of ourselves can do.[16]
Presence
to Jesus living within her — that
was her method of prayer. This
means drawing near in faith and love — to Jesus living within us.[17] “I am not asking you to do anything more than
look at Him,”[18] she
says. To
look at Jesus, means to study with the heart all the movements and sentiments
of His person,[19]
so that the truth that he is will be imprinted in us.
In the Life, Teresa writes:
If we are able, we should
occupy ourselves in looking at Christ who is looking at us, and we should
speak, and petition, and humble ourselves, and delight in the Lord’s presence.[20]
Later in the Way she instructs her nuns to look at
the life of Jesus, no matter what psychological state they experience.[21]
Every human emotion and situation, from pain and
sorrow to joy and ecstasy, finds an echo in the historical life of Jesus. By relating our lives to the mysteries of his,
we establish a relationship with Jesus, and will find renewed meaning, hope,
and transformation.[22]
Ways in which Teresa maintained her
presence to Jesus:
1.
She would identify with those characters of the
Gospel, with whom she could relate out of her own weakness and struggling
humanity and/or who stood in need of conversion. For instance, Mary in her desolation at the
foot of the Cross, the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, St Paul at the moment
of his conversion, St Peter in tears after denying Christ and St
Augustine. Their prayer, their difficult
situation, their struggle, their longing for freedom and healing became
hers. The Samaritan woman especially,
was dear to Teresa. When Teresa prayed
she would often identify with this woman’s longing and with her, ask for the
living water which Jesus promised — that living water which alone slakes the
thirst of the human heart.[23]
2.
“The moment after receiving the Eucharist was
the privileged time for Teresa.”[24] She would free herself from all exterior
things, so that she could enter within herself and be lovingly present to Jesus,
her divine guest living within her.
But silent prayer was not the only means by which Teresa encountered the
presence of Christ. When reading the Life, we find that it was especially in
and through her experience of human limitations, crises and conflicts, that Teresa
was led to discover the transforming presence of Jesus in her life.[25]
Teresa’s first years in religious life were marked by intense religious
experiences. YET despite this, her
spiritual ascent stalled. For almost
twenty years, her journey towards inner freedom involved an intense battle and
conflict between friendship with God and friendship with the world.
Her overwhelming need to receive and give
love, although a God-given gift in itself and a sign of her capacity for the
infinite, ran the risk of living perpetually outside herself in others, in a state
of dependency and restlessness –mediocrity.
It clashed with her spiritual longings for God.[26] She was unable to integrate her affective
relationships with her relationship with God.
Because of her charming, outgoing personality, obedience required that she
be deeply and constantly involved with the city’s prestigious families —
soliciting funds for the monastery.
The same personal
conflicts which gave rise to her vocational crisis at boarding school still
divided her — God and the world (but then, the world was her family, friends of
childhood, and father). That affective crisis
was the beginning in embryo of the long battle and conflict to overcome her
inordinate or dependant relationships.[27] In the Life,
Teresa describes the state of inner conflict and fragmentation which
held her captive and unable to surrender herself more completely to God. She likened it to “voyaging on a
tempestuous sea.... a war so troublesome.”[28] Many times she searched for a remedy, but to
no avail — she felt she was struggling with a shadow of death. It was a major crisis — “the life I was
living,” she said, “was not life.”[29]
When she reached the point of complete powerlessness, she let go of the
trust she had in herself and placed it in God.[30] God’s healing love would set her free and
transform her. She was aged 39 when she
experienced a profound conversion. It
was the decisive turning point — after which her life began to change, to that,
which she says, God lived in her.
One day in Lent 1554, she entered the Oratory and was overcome by an
image of the wounded Christ — an image which bore the realistic and bloody
appearance, so typical of Spanish devotional art. The sight of Jesus’ wounds, his neediness,
loneliness, and brokenness, undertaken for love of her, struck a deep chord
within her. Overwhelmed by a sense of
her own sinfulness and “with the greatest outpouring of tears” she surrendered
herself before the power of the Risen Jesus.[31]
This grace, together with another in 1556 (under
the direction of the Jesuit Father Pradanos) liberated her from her unchanneled
affectivity. Her
act of surrender was paramount in her discovery of Christ.[32] It opened her heart to her loving Saviour,
who was at work healing and transforming her.[33] Rowan Williams says Teresa’ conversion
was her discovery of being desired by God in her entirety, as she was. She was ‘needed’ by Christ and she had a gift
to offer God and his people. She found
an integrating reality for her life, and thus a spring of motivation not
dependent upon her social and ecclesiastical context and its immediate
pressures.... She was set free from the constraint of needing to be approved.[34]
Her capacity
for love and friendship was integrated and channelled, because it was rooted in Jesus Christ, Love Incarnate. In him alone she would find satisfaction of
heart.[35] Her love was more
refined, more mature and free from egotistic demands.
Out of
Teresa’s long crisis and arduous struggle with friendships, there emerged an
experiential knowledge of Jesus as the true friend, who accompanies us in all
our undertakings and remains loyal to us when all others fail.[36] The title of
Jesus as friend is central to her experience of him and permeates all her
writings and understanding of the Christian life. She conceives of the Christian life as a
journeyin the company of our good Friend Jesus who leads us to union with the
Father and with one another.[37]
Whoever lives in
the presence of so good a friend and excellent a leader, who went ahead of us
to be the first to suffer, can endure all things. The Lord helps us, strengthens us, and never
fails; he is a true friend.... God desires that if we are going to please him
and receive his great favors, we must do so through the most sacred humanity of
Christ, in whom he takes his delight.... This Lord of ours is the one through
whom all blessings come to us. He will
teach us these things. In beholding his
life we find that he is the best example.
What more do we desire than to have such a good friend at our side, who
will not abandon us in our labours and tribulations, as friends in the world do.[38]
Eamon
Carroll tells us, “When Teresa speaks of the ‘humanity’ of Jesus,” she means,
“the whole Christ, including all aspects of His human life, crowned by the
Resurrection.”[39]
Teresa’s human need and search for redemption
and liberation made Jesus above all her liberator and friend.[40] We also see that paralleled in the Gospel
stories and in the New Testament.
For Teresa, the discovery of the human condition of God, i.e., the
humanity of Jesus, was the most transforming experience in her life.[41]
No longer would her search for God seem
in opposition to daily life or her humanity.
Rather, it would be integrated into concrete bodily existence, for in
Jesus, God has entered fully into human life and has become one of us.[42]
She discovered a friend, who would satisfy
all her desires—Jesus the God-Man. She
found him fully human, praying and struggling with God's will. And she never tires of reminding us that he
lived with trials during his entire life.[43] She says in the Life:
Christ is a very
good friend because we behold him as man and see him with weaknesses and
trials–and he is company for us.[44]
Teresa, looking at human nature, realized how much we need the humanity
of Jesus. Although propelled towards the
infinite, we have bodies and live in a world where we must eat, sleep and deal
with our limitations and material realities.
We are not angels, but human beings who need human support.[45] The body has to be integrated in our search
for God. For this reason, we need the
company of those who had mortal bodies in order to learn how to please God and
work for God. She says, “A good means to
having God is to speak with his friends.”[46] But then she continues, how much more
necessary is the Sacred HUMANITY of Jesus, from whom we learn about God and how
to do God’s will —what it means to be totally directed towards God, as well as
to be fully human.[47]
Teresa experienced that life is hard and we need the example and
companionship of one who has gone before us, so as to better support our human
weakness.[48] She writes in the Interior Castle:
Life is long,
and there are in it many trials, and we need to look at Christ our model, how
he suffered them, and also at his apostles and saints, so as to bear these
trials with perfection. Jesus is too
good a companion for us to turn away from him.[49]
For Teresa, Jesus supports us because he is fully human. He entered our human condition completely and
experienced human reality with all its brokenness, limitations, and weakness. Jesus’ solidarity with us in our human
condition is the basis of our confidence and trust in him. She says, this makes him our friend, brother,
and companion in life:
A much greater love for and
confidence in this Lord began to develop in me when I saw him as one with whom
I could converse so continually. I saw
that he was man, even though he was God; that he wasn’t surprised by the
weaknesses of men; that he understands our miserable make-up, subject to many
falls on account of the first sin which he came to repair. I can speak with him as with a friend, even
though he is Lord.[50]
As Jesus plunged Teresa ever more deeply into this world of flesh and
blood, life and death, joys, sorrows and instabilities, so did he empower her
to EMBRACE REALITY with confidence and trust in his faithful and enduring love. This accompanied her in the midst of all
life’s complexities and difficulties.[51] The presence of the Risen Jesus thrust Teresa
into the heart of life. He freed her to
live more fully in the here and now.
In conclusion, Teresa’s charism is thoroughly incarnational. “It involves obedience to life under God’s
conditions.”[52] Through all the obstacles, crises and
difficulties, the only way she could carry out what she perceived to be God’s
work, was to “Fix her eyes on Jesus.”
She put all her gifts of personality and grace at God’s disposal in
accomplishing that. The will of the
Beloved had become her sole compass.
[1] In this essay I acknowledge
the debt I owe to Daniel Chowning ocd in his two articles: “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of
St Teresa of Jesus” in Kevin Culligan ocd, ed. Carmelite Studies X: A Better Wine: Essays Celebrating Kieran Kavanaugh
ocd (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2007), 3–61 and St. Teresa of Avila: Her Way of Prayer: Fix Your Eyes on Christ (Washington,
DC: ICS Publications Audio Cassettes).
Readers familiar with Chowning’s work will notice how much in debt I am
to him.
[2] See Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila in Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series, edited by
Brian Davies OP (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1991). Under the heading, “Honour: ‘The Greatest
Lie,’” 18-25, Williams makes some interesting observations regarding acceptance
depending on fraud or secrecy. [We find]
e.g., “... roots of protest against a dishonest social order, an interest in
virtue or moral achievement in its own right, and a high valuation of
situations and persons that could make honesty possible, that could lift the
burden of concealment. Converso society would be interested in
value, weight, meaning beyond the
realm of social appearance, which tells us something of why New Christians
showed interest in radical religious movements that stressed interior
truthfulness and purity, and the conflict between inner promptings and social
networks of convention,” 21.
[5] Ibid.
[7] Daniel Chowning ocd, St. Teresa of
Avila. Her Way of Prayer: Fix Your Eyes
on Christ (Washington, DC: ICS
Publications Audio Cassettes).
[10] Cf. Tomás Alvarez ocd, St Teresa of
Avila: 100 Themes on Her Life and Work, trans. by Kieran Kavanaugh,
ocd. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications,
2011), 439.
[14] Cf. Life, 9.4
[19] Secundino Castro, "L’humanité du Christ selon Ste. Thérèse
d'Avila," Carmel 33 (1984), 41.
Cited in Daniel
Chowning, ocd, “Jesus Christ,
Friend and Liberator: The Christology of St Teresa of Jesus” in Kevin Culligan ocd,
ed. Carmelite Studies X: A Better Wine:
Essays Celebrating Kieran Kavanaugh ocd (Washington, DC: ICS Publications,
2007), 3-61 at 40.
[22] Daniel Chowning, ocd, “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of
St Teresa of Jesus” in Kevin Culligan ocd, ed. Carmelite Studies X: A Better Wine: Essays Celebrating Kieran Kavanaugh
ocd (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2007), 3-61 at 35.
[26] Cf. Chowning, “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of
St Teresa of Jesus,” 22-23.
[27] See discussion of Daniel
de Pablo Moroto, Santa Teresa de
Jesús, doctora para una Iglesia en crisis (Burgos: Editorial Monte Carmelo,
1981), 47-52, cited by Daniel Chowning,
ocd, “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of St Teresa
of Jesus,” op. cit., 58, footnote 15.
[31] See Life 9.1.
[35] Cf. Chowning, “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of
St Teresa of Jesus,” 23-24.
[39] Eamon R. Carroll, “The Saving Role of the Human Christ for Teresa” in John
Sullivan ocd, ed., Carmelite Studies
3 (Washington, DC: ICS, 1984), 133–151 at 137.
[51] Cf. Chowning, ocd, “Jesus Christ, Friend and Liberator: The Christology of
St Teresa of Jesus,” 47.