St Teresa of Avila - in Catholic Tradition

[simple_soul]

There are many sides to Teresa of Avila that speak to today’s man. She’s a polylateral human being. For the purpose of this post, I would like to call attention to the two qualities in her that I find most endearing and most helpful in my own journey.

The first is her sense of humor. Teresa did not get flustered as we do when something goes wrong at mass or someone acts like a fool or a bishop says something that is not quite right. Her friends an biographers tell us that she actually laughed. it off. Only a very sober person can find humor in difficult situations. By that I mean, a person of great faith and charity.

Teresa believed in the Church. She was a daughter of the Church and she knew that her mother had warts, but was still her mother. She loved her, warts and all. At times, she would roll her eyes at some of the silliness that happened around her. Other times, she commented and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, without ever laughing at the person or dismissing the person. Nor did she dismiss the seriousness. She dismissed all temptation to dwell on it and the temptation to let things discourage her. The best way to do that was to see the humor in situations.

The other endearing quality that I find in her is how straightforward she was. She did not condone or tolerate heresy, but she did not condone or tolerate piety either. God was not an infant that had to be treated and spoken to with the language of a child. She herself was a mature woman, not a 10-year old. She spoke to God as an adult in conversation with someone who was more mature than herself.

I have always found Teresa’s manner of interacting with God to be wholesome, holistic and adult.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

*You know Br. Jay the more you share about her life the more I am lead to agree with you.
I apologize for editing your post but I wanted to address the part about her sense of humor.

This has been a big struggle in my own personal spiritual journey.
I remember reading something on a magazine when I was really young that read; “God Will Laugh at them!”
I remember it filled me with a fear and pain at the thought of God laughing at me because of my sinfulness and/or ignorance. So it set me on this path of trying to live up to perfection because I did not want God to laugh at me with disdain or scorn for my ignorance or sinfulness. I am not even sure to this day of all the reasons why I thought this all I know is it broke my heart to think it. I believe, in His own way He started to show me through the coarse of my life how this was not a very good understanding of how He laughs at us. Actually, I believe it was after someone told me, after they saw how hurt I was by something they said about me, that they were laughing with me not at me, that made me start to re-evaluate that quote. But I believe becoming a mother helped most of all. When my daughter was learning to walk. Even though her first steps were wobbly and she tripped all over herself, I found it made me laugh, but not really at her clumsiness but more at the joy I found in seeing how much of an effort she was making at trying to get it right.
Another thing that helped was cautching a Brother a while back, no it was not you, who in observing me was finding something humorous about me. It was like he was laughing at what he was seeing but not with contempt or disdain but with love and joy and for the first time I felt like I was not being laugh at by someone who presented themselves as someone who not only believed in God but was someone who was very religious and a catholic too. For the most part, I had only found this kind of aceptence with people who believed in God but who did not go to church regulary. So this really lead me to start believing that maybe God does not laugh at us with disdain and scorn. Well anyway it gave me great hope that He didn’t.
I had read, some place quite recently, that people, inherently, want to do good. The more I dwell on this the more I am inclined to believe it is so true.
So needles to say I do not believe God laughs at us with scorn or disdain anymore,…well for the most part I don’t, I just find myself “dealing” at times with the side effects of living so many years of my life as though He does…sometimes I believe I take what some people see as humor as being scorn and disdain.
Anyway your post just reminded me of my own struggles in this area and I thought I would share my thoughts,…hopefully I am not far off the mark… and will soon learn how to balance it all out…like she did…
Thank you once again for sharing your insight…*

 

[Incomplete]

Br J, you have so much to share. I don’t even know where to begin to say how much these posts have pointed me towards God. I’m so glad you’re here, and glad you have a passion for this special saint.

 

[choliks]

I think that Teresa of Avila has a lot to say to us today. I’m glad that we can discuss her in the context of Catholic Tradition, because she is certainly, if not essential, one can say indispensable in Catholic Tradition.

Teresa presents a number of challenges to today’s Catholic and serves as a worthy role model for us in the 21st century.

Teresa enters Church history at the height of the Protestant Reformation. While heresies are growing around her like weeds in a field, there is no shortage of problems among those who call themselves Catholic. The Carmelite Order in Spain left much to be desired, even though the friars and nuns were not heretics. They had become so distracted by so many things around them and had been so influenced by the secular world in which they lived that the spirit of Carmel was blurred.

It’s really interesting, because we like to think of a past Church when all liturgy was reverent, religious all wore habits, priests preached good sermons, Catholic parents raised their children in the faith, and the Church spoke clearly on social issues and doctrines. The curious thing is that Teresa wished this were the case in her day. The truth was that none of this was the case in her day.

The Church did not speak clearly on social issues and moral doctrines. Priests did not preach good sermons. Religious had done worse than abandoning the habit, they had embellished it with worldly adaptations and even trinkets, reverent liturgy was a found among Benedictine monks, not in parishes and parents raised their children according to cultural traditions, not according to the Catholic faith. In fact, the men and women of Teresa’s time were anti-clerical, suspected the bishops and popes of everything from child sexual abuse to political engineering, and kings and popes were often enemical bedfellows.

Teresa was not a dumb woman. She was not well educated. She certainly was not a theologian, philosopher or scientist. So how does she become a saint and a Doctor of the Church?

I think that we have to look at how she responded to her context, which was not so unlike our own. If we really want to reach the heights of holiness as she did, we would do well to observe how she dealt with the Church and the world of her time. Observe what she did and what she did not do. Then compare that to what we do and what we don’t do.

All too often, we dismiss the behavior of the spiritual masters for their theology, forgetting that they did not get into heaven for their theology. They got into heaven for their behavior. We call it, a life of heroic Christian virtue.

There are many sides to Teresa of Avila that speak to today’s man. She’s a polylateral human being. For the purpose of this post, I would like to call attention to the two qualities in her that I find most endearing and most helpful in my own journey.

The first is her sense of humor. Teresa did not get flustered as we do when something goes wrong at mass or someone acts like a fool or a bishop says something that is not quite right. Her friends an biographers tell us that she actually laughed. it off. Only a very sober person can find humor in difficult situations. By that I mean, a person of great faith and charity.

Teresa believed in the Church. She was a daughter of the Church and she knew that her mother had warts, but was still her mother. She loved her, warts and all. At times, she would roll her eyes at some of the silliness that happened around her. Other times, she commented and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, without ever laughing at the person or dismissing the person. Nor did she dismiss the seriousness. She dismissed all temptation to dwell on it and the temptation to let things discourage her. The best way to do that was to see the humor in situations.

The other endearing quality that I find in her is how straightforward she was. She did not condone or tolerate heresy, but she did not condone or tolerate piety either. God was not an infant that had to be treated and spoken to with the language of a child. She herself was a mature woman, not a 10-year old. She spoke to God as an adult in conversation with someone who was more mature than herself.

Modern man tends to go to ridiculous extremes that would probably make Teresa’s hair turn grey. God is a buddy like the guys down at the pub, to which Teresa would say that God is a beloved friend who deserves to be treated as such. The other extreme is that God is so removed from our reality that we can’t possibly speak to him in our own words, but we need to depend very elaborate prepackaged forms of prayer.

Teresa would tell us that vocal prayer, prepackaged prayer (i.e. Divine Office, novenas, etc) are part of the life of prayer. A life of prayer is like a romance. When two people of are in love they send each other poems (prepackaged expressions of love). They may send each other flowers or little gifts (signs and symbols). They have certain rituals such as going to a certain restaurant where they first met (liturgy). In addition to all of this, they have those moments of unspoken communication, when they sit there and look at each other allowing their souls to speak of love that has no words. And when they finally do speak, they do so with with great maturity and without affectations.

I have always found Teresa’s manner of interacting with God to be wholesome, holistic and adult.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

This! I think with Saints like St. Theresa of Avila, God’s fulfills His promise of not leaving us like orphans. Whenever we are way over our heads or we are in deep trouble, we just have to look at these Saints and we find a clue on how it should be done.

Thanks Bro. JR.

PS: I think we’re bad for your health. Too much sugar. Hahahahah.

 

[JReducation]

*You know Br. Jay the more you share about her life the more I am lead to agree with you.
I apologize for editing your post but I wanted to address the part about her sense of humor.

This has been a big struggle in my own personal spiritual journey.
I remember reading something on a magazine when I was really young that read; “God Will Laugh at them!”
I remember it filled me with a fear and pain at the thought of God laughing at me because of my sinfulness and/or ignorance. So it set me on this path of trying to live up to perfection because I did not want God to laugh at me with disdain or scorn for my ignorance or sinfulness. I am not even sure to this day of all the reasons why I thought this all I know is it broke my heart to think it. I believe, in His own way He started to show me through the coarse of my life how this was not a very good understanding of how He laughs at us. Actually, I believe it was after someone told me, after they saw how hurt I was by something they said about me, that they were laughing with* me not at me, that made me start to re-evaluate that quote. But I believe becoming a mother helped most of all. When my daughter was learning to walk. Even though her first steps were wobbly and she tripped all over herself, I found it made me laugh, but not really at her clumsiness but more at the joy I found in seeing how much of an effort she was making at trying to get it right.
Another thing that helped was cautching a Brother a while back, no it was not you, who in observing me was finding something humorous about me. It was like he was laughing at what he was seeing but not with contempt or disdain but with love and joy and for the first time I felt like I was not being laugh at by someone who presented themselves as someone who not only believed in God but was someone who was very religious and a catholic too. For the most part, I had only found this kind of aceptence with people who believed in God but who did not go to church regulary. So this really lead me to start believing that maybe God does not laugh at us with disdain and scorn. Well anyway it gave me great hope that He didn’t.
I had read, some place quite recently, that people, inherently, want to do good. The more I dwell on this the more I am inclined to believe it is so true.
So needles to say I do not believe God laughs at us with scorn or disdain anymore,…well for the most part I don’t, I just find myself “dealing” at times with the side effects of living so many years of my life as though He does…sometimes I believe I take what some people see as humor as being scorn and disdain.
Anyway your post just reminded me of my own struggles in this area and I thought I would share my thoughts,…hopefully I am not far off the mark… and will soon learn how to balance it all out…like she did…
Thank you once again for sharing your insight…

You reminded me of two points that I picked up when I was working on my degree. As I said, I had to read many of the early Carmelite and Franciscan documents on Teresa and Francis, because I was showing the relationship between them. They both had something that we often lack today.

They had the ability to look at something serious, admit to themselves that it was serious, pray over it, do penance over it, and even offer a word of fraternal correction when necessary. A the same time, they were able to sort out what they could fix and what they could not fix. They didn’t spend to much time on what they couldn’t fix. When they found themselves or others dwelling on what they couldn’t fix, they would laugh.

They were not making light of the problem. They were laughing at human foolishness and human arrogance. Both felt that it was very arrogant or foolish to spend too much time on something that you can’t fix, while the garage needs to be cleaned out. OK . . . they didn’t have a garage, but you get the point.

This! I think with Saints like St. Theresa of Avila, God’s fulfills His promise of not leaving us like orphans. Whenever we are way over our heads or we are in deep trouble, we just have to look at these Saints and we find a clue on how it should be done.

This reminds me of when Teresa was to appear before the Inquisition. Someone asked her if she was not afraid. Her response was so straightforward.

“Of course I’m afraid. I’m afraid of their insanity. I’m not afraid of my conscience. My conscience is a much harsher inquisitor than any of these men.”

It’s good to remember this when we’re afraid of what this bishop did or what that pope didn’t do. Our conscience is our greatest inquisitor. We should form it according to the mind of the Church and then follow it faithfully.

PS: I think we’re bad for your health. Too much sugar. Hahahahah.

I’m going for a double does of insulin today.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

 

[Incomplete]

This reminds me of when Teresa was to appear before the Inquisition. Someone asked her if she was not afraid. Her response was so straightforward.

“Of course I’m afraid. I’m afraid of their insanity. I’m not afraid of my conscience. My conscience is a much harsher inquisitor than any of these men.”

It’s good to remember this when we’re afraid of what this bishop did or what that pope didn’t do. Our conscience is our greatest inquisitor. We should form it according to the mind of the Church and then follow it faithfully.

I’m going for a double does of insulin today.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

So perfectly said!

 

[Aquinas29]

I love St. Teresa! One of my favorites.

I would recommend The Way Of Perfection. She wrote it as a guide for her nuns on prayer. She had such a vivid personality, and it comes through on every page.

As for St. Catherine of Siena - she is another favorite because she lived in the world, and not in a convent. Some of her penances were extreme (The one your mentioned actually made me put down the biography for a day) but that was her path. Her writings and story are good for those in Third Order groups (She was a Third Order Dominican). Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena is powerful and direct, dictated while in ecstasy.

 

[Incomplete]

Truelight,

Thank you for starting this thread. It’s the best I’ve been involved with, here or anywhere. I learned so much, bought some new books, and what I’ve learned, if I apply it, will help my growth.

 

[simple_soul]

You reminded me of two points that I picked up when I was working on my degree. As I said, I had to read many of the early Carmelite and Franciscan documents on Teresa and Francis, because I was showing the relationship between them. They both had something that we often lack today.

They had the ability to look at something serious, admit to themselves that it was serious, pray over it, do penance over it, and even offer a word of fraternal correction when necessary. A the same time, they were able to sort out what they could fix and what they could not fix. They didn’t spend to much time on what they couldn’t fix. When they found themselves or others dwelling on what they couldn’t fix, they would laugh.

They were not making light of the problem. They were laughing at human foolishness and human arrogance. Both felt that it was very arrogant or foolish to spend too much time on something that you can’t fix, while the garage needs to be cleaned out. OK . . . they didn’t have a garage, but you get the point.

*Yes I believe I see the point and to clarify it a bit further do you believe they had contempt, arrogance, or disdain in the fact that they saw other’s foolishness or human arrogance in the manner in which they found humor or laughed about it? *

 

[JReducation]

I love St. Teresa! One of my favorites.

I would recommend The Way Of Perfection. She wrote it as a guide for her nuns on prayer. She had such a vivid personality, and it comes through on every page.

As for St. Catherine of Siena - she is another favorite because she lived in the world, and not in a convent. Some of her penances were extreme (The one your mentioned actually made me put down the biography for a day) but that was her path. Her writings and story are good for those in Third Order groups (She was a Third Order Dominican). Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena is powerful and direct, dictated while in ecstasy.

We have to be very careful when we read about the penances of the saints. I know of a poster of CAF who would go to the gallows defending the appropriateness of such things as drawing blood, sucking up puss, and piercing your skin, etc, because some saints did it.

Have majored in ascetical and mystical theology I can tell you that these were acts that were not as common as they sound. They were a product of the time. Even though the Church had condemned Gnosticism, that does not mean that it was dead. There were traces of it left.

However, these men and women were not finished products at the time that they engaged in such practices. I found that when I put their lives on a timeline, they matured as they progressed in the spiritual life. Gradually, they moved away from these forms of self-torture and further into healthy and safe penitential practices and more prayer. It is impossible to be become a saint and not grow up. Even child saints reached a level of maturity that was usually beyond their years, look at Dominic Savio and Maria Goretti.

Teresa is no different. She begins her journey with a zeal that’s almost that of a zealot. As she matures in the spiritual life, her zeal is transformed. Her real penances are the sacrifices that she has to make to remain charitable to her sisters and those around her who drove her crazy. She still engaged in the normal fasting, abstinence and the culpa that was part of the religious life, but she grew away from doing harm to herself.

The one thing that we learn from Teresa is that self-hatred is not a virtue. You may never hate what God loves. She hated the sin in her life, but not herself. This comes through very powerfully in her dialogues with her nuns. She refers to them as daughters. Teresa was not simply Mother Prioress. She was their mother. She embraced the mother in her. A woman cannot embrace her motherhood and hate her body. Teresa would laugh at such a thought.

Even though she had no understanding of Theology of the Body, she lived it long before Bl. John Paul expounded on it. We see this very clearly when she goes before the Inquisition and is accused of having illegitimate children and sending them off to America to hide them. Her brother lived in Peru. She went off on the judges. **“I am capable of every sin but that one. Never could I separate myself from my child, if I had one.” ** This a powerful statement about motherhood. For Teresa, the mother’s rejection of her flesh and blood was the unimaginable sin. To appreciate this, one needs a very mature understanding of human sexuality and femininity. A person with such a profound and passionate appreciation for her motherhood cannot hate her body or torture it.

*Yes I believe I see the point and to clarify it a bit further do you believe they had contempt, arrogance, or disdain in the fact that they saw other’s foolishness or human arrogance in the manner in which they found humor or laughed about it? *

Teresa and Francis were able to set aside arrogance. They were the most humble people. They identified with the Crucified Christ who was not a man, but a worm. From this vantage point they looked at the world. They saw much that needed to be fixed, but they were worms. A worm can only make silk, not honey. That’s the bee’s job. It would be arrogant and irresponsible for the worm to attempt to make honey and ignore his his duty to make silk.

When they saw people worrying and whining about what this priest did and that bishop did not do, they would laugh. These were very realisitic people. Remember, part of holiness is maturity. The mature person has a realistic sense of self. He knows what he can fix and what he cannot. He knows if he’s a worm or a bee.

They did what they could and then they didn’t think about it again. They put it into God’s hands through penance and prayer. They knew that they could throw prayer and fasting at problems. St. John of the Cross once wrote that if we stop whining long enough to pray, the world would be converted. Francis and Teresa understood the power of prayer and fasting. They did what was within their reach and for the rest they prayed and fasted. The wonderful thing about them was that they were so intent on doing what they were doing correctly for the glory of God, that they didn’t have much time or energy for worry. Here is where they begin to transition from material poverty to spiritual detachment. Teresa writes about detachment in Way of Perfection.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[TrueLight]

Truelight,

Thank you for starting this thread. It’s the best I’ve been involved with, here or anywhere. I learned so much, bought some new books, and what I’ve learned, if I apply it, will help my growth.

You’re welcome!

 

[Incomplete]

St. John of the Cross once wrote that if we stop whining long enough to pray, the world would be converted. .

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

What a great thought! Now to put it into practice…

 

[JReducation]

What a great thought! Now to put it into practice…

St. John of the Cross wrote it, but it is my belief that he learned it from Teresa of Avila. Even though he was the confessor of the Monastery of the Encarnacion, Teresa was more his spiritual director than he was to her. Early in their relationship, he would whine to her about how he wanted to leave the world, join a Charter House and get away from the insanity around him. Teresa chided him and told him to go pray, then come back and help her with the reform.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

 

[Incomplete]

St. John of the Cross wrote it, but it is my belief that he learned it from Teresa of Avila. Even though he was the confessor of the Monastery of the Encarnacion, Teresa was more his spiritual director than he was to her. Early in their relationship, he would whine to her about how he wanted to leave the world, join a Charter House and get away from the insanity around him. Teresa chided him and told him to go pray, then come back and help her with the reform.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

Interestingly enough, I bought a book about both of them. I knew nothing of Teresa at the time, and bought the book because I was interested in learning more about John of the Cross. That’s how I grew to desire to learn more about Teresa of Avila.

 

[simple_soul]

Teresa and Francis were able to set aside arrogance. They were the most humble people. They identified with the Crucified Christ who was not a man, but a worm. From this vantage point they looked at the world. They saw much that needed to be fixed, but they were worms. A worm can only make silk, not honey. That’s the bee’s job. It would be arrogant and irresponsible for the worm to attempt to make honey and ignore his his duty to make silk.

When they saw people worrying and whining about what this priest did and that bishop did not do, they would laugh. These were very realisitic people. Remember, part of holiness is maturity. The mature person has a realistic sense of self. He knows what he can fix and what he cannot. He knows if he’s a worm or a bee.

They did what they could and then they didn’t think about it again. They put it into God’s hands through penance and prayer. They knew that they could throw prayer and fasting at problems. St. John of the Cross once wrote that if we stop whining long enough to pray, the world would be converted. Francis and Teresa understood the power of prayer and fasting. They did what was within their reach and for the rest they prayed and fasted. The wonderful thing about them was that they were so intent on doing what they were doing correctly for the glory of God, that they didn’t have much time or energy for worry. Here is where they begin to transition from material poverty to spiritual detachment. Teresa writes about detachment in Way of Perfection.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Thank you so much for taking the time to clarify this a little more for me…I was believing this was the case,…but just wanted to be sure…some day I will need to get my hands on her writings so that I can read them along with The Perfect Joy of St. Francis. For now, with how you explain it, I believe it makes a lot more sense than what I used to believe or understand in my younger days.
God Bless you all and I hope everyone has a wonderful night…

 

[JReducation]

Interestingly enough, I bought a book about both of them. I knew nothing of Teresa at the time, and bought the book because I was interested in learning more about John of the Cross. That’s how I grew to desire to learn more about Teresa of Avila.

Fire Within is a good cross reference in their theology. Fr. Tom Dubay was my professor and he taught us from his notes for this book. It’s excellent. It’s theology, not the actual writings. It unwraps the theology contained in their writings. This is very important. You can’t just read them and that’s it. If you don’t understand what they’re talking about and you don’t understand what is hidden in their coded language, you miss a lot. You really want to understand them so that you can hear what they have to say to us today and how we can pass it forward in today’s language.

Maybe it’s me. I’ve never been happy to read the works of a spiritual master, be inspired by it without analyzing it to death and finding the more that is usually hidden under the words. The Catholic Masters, unlike the Protestant Masters have a strong tradition of speaking in coded language. They usually mean more than what they say. The further East that you go, the more of this type of writing you find. They are deliberately layered. It was not their doing. It was the way that God spoke to them, just as he spoke to people in scripture, through signs, symbols, parables, metaphors, allegories and ecstasies, because human language cannot adequately express the depth of Truth.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Incomplete]

Fire Within is the book I was referring to. I learned so much from it! It’s what inspired me to read more of Teresa’s works.

I never finished it, though. Every single time I start, I end up desiring prayer so strongly that I stop within a few pages to pray.

 

[nordskoven]

I hope, Br. JR, that you consider doing an outline of Teresa of Avila’s life RE: screenplay/media. I hope you throw in her childhood penchant for reading the romance novels of her day, not about sex, but about heroic knights, and being chided for wasting her time on such things. Shades of Harry Potter…I think a balanced outline of her life, importantly with a “Theology of the Body” bent, will account for her holistic embrace of a life in Christ. I hope you put in her having more austere convents, but ones in which feast days were celebrated with guitar and castanet. And consider that St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross were both from families who were in the silk trade. Somewhere way back, they were converts, of Jewish heritage. I hope she can be depicted as short and dark and Hebrew-looking. It may have to be done in a series of vignettes that are rooted in source materials that will allow people to flesh out her life in their own readings and, of course, prayer. “Pray and work.” St. Benedict said it all. Blessings.

 

[JReducation]

I hope, Br. JR, that you consider doing an outline of Teresa of Avila’s life RE: screenplay/media. I hope you throw in her childhood penchant for reading the romance novels of her day, not about sex, but about heroic knights, and being chided for wasting her time on such things. Shades of Harry Potter…I think a balanced outline of her life, importantly with a “Theology of the Body” bent, will account for her holistic embrace of a life in Christ. I hope you put in her having more austere convents, but ones in which feast days were celebrated with guitar and castanet. And consider that St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross were both from families who were in the silk trade. Somewhere way back, they were converts, of Jewish heritage. I hope she can be depicted as short and dark and Hebrew-looking. It may have to be done in a series of vignettes that are rooted in source materials that will allow people to flesh out her life in their own readings and, of course, prayer. “Pray and work.” St. Benedict said it all. Blessings.

You just gave a rather good synopsis of her life. I would add to that that she was not the Traditionalist that we think of when we use the term. However, she was very much a Traditionalist. She had an incredible mind. She could see the big picture, when she thought of tradition. She saw the place of the Carmelite Tradition in the life of the Church and how important it was to the friars and sisters to recover it as individuals, but not as something that they would recover and live in their priories and monasteries, but as a living breathing tradition that they would preach and teach to the lay faithful. This has always made the Carmelites, Franciscans and Jesuits very unique. Today, we have to add to that group the Missionaries of Charity. They were not only inclined to a particular spirituality and apostolate, but they have always had as their mission to convert Catholics to their way of living the Gospel. The truth is that these schools are not in juxtaposition with each other and Teresa knew this. In reality, they borrowed heavily from each other and they added their customs.

For Teresa, reaching back into history to recover the spirit of the early Carmelites was a way of moving forward. This is an important lesson for us today. Teresa did not reach back in history, because she was unsatisfied with her present. She tells you herself that she was very happy at the Monastery of the Encarnacion. God drove her to reach back into history, because there was something in the past that the world needed and that could be used to build the future of the Church. This something is contemplation. Teresa was not opposed to finding new forms of contemplation. By that, we mean, new methods. She concerned herself with restoring contemplation to the daily life of the Church, both for religious and laity. Whether people used the methods of the ancient monks and hermits of the desert or the methods of the Buddhists in Thailand did not worry her too much. As long as it was contemplation of the Triune God who wants so much to speak to man. The important thing for her is the contemplation of the Trinity. Do it on your knees or on your head. It’s all the same to her. Whatever works. She did a lot of contemplation with quill and paper.

We can see this in little details about her liturgical life and that of her cloistered nuns. For example, Teresa banned organs form her houses. They were not introduced until the early 18th century or later. Her reason was a very practical one. If you had an organ, you needed an organist and you needed money. Money was something that they did not have a lot of. An organist was not that common either. However, many women in her community knew how to play the local instruments, such as the guitar and percussion instruments. Teresa herself was an accomplished guitarist. The guitar was cheaper to obtain and guitar playing was very common among the Spaniards of her time. She wrote many hymns that could be sang with a guitar.

One would ask, “How is this traditional?” Teresa’s response would be that the monks and hermits of the desert used whatever was at their disposal to embellish the liturgy. What she was trying to do was to recover their spirit of prayer, worship and contemplation, while preserving their simplicity. Do you see how she has such a broad and rich view of tradition?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Woman1987]

I was thinking of St Catherine of Siena.

Why did she (Catharina of Siena) drink the pus of someone else’s wounds? Ii thought that we shouldn’t search for crosses, just accept the ones that God gives us…

 

[JReducation]

Why did she (Catharina of Siena) drink the pus of someone else’s wounds? Ii thought that we shouldn’t search for crosses, just accept the ones that God gives us…

This was very early in her spiritual journey. It was a penance and a form of humility. However, as she grows in her life in the Spirit, we see drift away from such forms of penance and expressions of humility to forms that were much more difficult, because they required surrendering her will to the will of God and the Church. Unfortunately, even in hagiography, the sensational gets more press than the meat and potatoes. To really understand Catherine’s life of penance, read her writings.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF