Advent Day 10: Teresa of Avila
The treasure is inside us
The truth is, the treasure is inside of us.
Advent Day 10: Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Do you ever feel you’ve wasted precious years on things that don’t matter? Relationships or habits that drain you? That the wisdom you’re just now gaining might have come long ago if you hadn’t been so busy, distracted, resentful, angry…fill in the blank with whatever it is that trips you up. That you’re doing all the right things—meditation, yoga, journaling—but spiritual depth feels always out of reach?
When I get to feeling all that, I take comfort from Teresa of Avila, the Patron Saint of Spiritual Late-Bloomers (okay, that’s not a thing, but it should be), a woman whose midlife awakening left a profound mark on Christianity and whose spiritual counsel reaches across the ages.
Teresa first entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at age twenty after provoking a local scandal, the details of which have been lost to history, though a boy was almost certainly involved. Actually, entered paints a false picture. Rather, she was marched to the convent by her father.
Not that Teresa’s wealthy father had any intention of turning his brilliant, beautiful daughter into a nun. Rather, the convent was punishment for her misdeeds. It was expected that in the convent Teresa would shape up then return home, marry an aristocrat, bear children, and carry on the family line. Instead, Teresa decided she could never let a man run her life, and so she became a nun. How’s that for rebellion?
But if you’ve got an image in your mind of Teresa passing her days in pious prayer, think again. By the 1500s, the Convent of the Incarnation resembled more a sorority than a house of prayer. Rather than cloistered living, the nuns, who all came from the upper classes, regularly entertained townspeople who showed up to gossip and flirt and play games. Men particularly enjoyed the company of the young nuns, and Teresa—an opinionated, witty conversationalist—was the gentlemen's favorite.
Teresa loved the attention, frivolity and flirting. More than anything she desired popularity and admiration. But, little by little over the years, the superficiality and spiritual laziness of the convent began to get to her. She longed for a deeper life, a deeper connection with God. But when she prayed the prayers and sang the songs that were part of convent life, she felt nothing. Nor was she able to curb what she called her vanities.
For years she went through the motions of religious life while secretly wandering in a spiritual desert. Then, when she was thirty-nine years old (late middle-age in 16th century Spain), her soul received a jolt.
It was a special feast day and Teresa was hurrying down a hallway on her way to the convent chapel when she spotted a statue of Jesus leaning against the wall like a walking stick. This was the abused and bleeding Jesus of the Passion. Irritated that someone had left the statue there, Teresa stopped for a moment to move it. But as she leaned down to grasp it, the figure of Jesus enlivened, staring up at her with eyes full of compassion and pain. Overcome by a rush of love and compassion, Teresa fell to the floor in a flood of tears. She begged forgiveness for having failed to follow Jesus’s way of loving-kindness, for being gossipy and petty, her irritability with her fellow nuns, for wasting her days with shallow pursuits. She promised to transform herself.
Teresa came to consider this moment her great awakening.
Over the next couple years she often entered states of deep meditation. In these hours of stillness she arrived at the core mystical revelation that the God she had longed for was not some remote deity but an intimate Presence whose dwelling place was within her.
We need no wings to go in search of Him, but have only to look upon Him present within us… You can’t enter paradise without first entering yourself.
What dwelled in Teresa’s interior paradise was Love. The purpose of all her meditative visions (which she described as more felt than seen), she believed, was to pierce her soul so that love could flow freely in and out.
I saw in the angel’s hand a long dart of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very inner depths; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all aflame with a great love of God.
The nun who’d once passed her days in fun and frivolity was now satisfied with nothing less than God.
Teresa being Teresa, she was happy to chat about her transformation. Nothing pleased her more than awakening others to the love she was now experiencing. She encouraged people to find union with God by going inside themselves through prayer and meditation. She empowered them to think of themselves as soul friends of Christ, needed by Christ to spread love.
Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on Earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Unsurprisingly, Teresa’s DIY spirituality did not sit well with everyone, including officials from the Spanish Inquisition who demanded that she explain herself.
Teresa willingly complied. In books and letters, she described the soul as a great castle, and the process of awakening as moving from room to room, penetrating ever deeper into the castle until one arrives at the innermost room where God—The Beloved—awaits. Teresa believed that she and God depended on one another in an intimate friendship which she described as a mystical marriage.
The mystical marriage…is like rain falling from the sky into a river or pool. There is nothing but water. It’s impossible to divide the sky-water from the land-water. When a little stream enters the sea, who could separate its waters back out again? Think of a bright light pouring into a room from two large windows: it enters from different places but becomes one light.
Teresa found that once she reached this communion with God, the showy aspects of her awakening settled into something much more earthy.
…in this dwelling she (the soul) has found a place to rest at last. Maybe it’s because, after all she has experienced, nothing can scare her anymore. Maybe it’s because now she has this constant loving companionship and so she no longer feels alone. Maybe it’s because the Beloved has strengthened the soul now, expanding and validating her. Only His Majesty knows why he does what he does.
Everything she learned in her meditations and visions she summed up in one sentence:
The Beloved asks only two things of us, that we love him and that we love each other.
Teresa had fervent enemies—including fellow Carmelites—but she had equally fervent fans. With the courage of her convictions, and having dodged the Inquisition so far, in 1560 Teresa took it upon herself to reform her Carmelite tradition, returning it to the simplicity exemplified by the Desert Mothers and Fathers of the early years of Christianity.
In the decades that followed, despite being dogged by political-religious forces, she opened seventeen new convents where devotional life combined quiet contemplation with community action. Along the way, she recruited a few brave souls who shared her vision of simplicity, chief among them John of the Cross.
Eventually, Teresa’s raptures ended and she settled into that peace that surpasses all understanding which is not dependent on the outcome of events. But she was quick to point out that a mystic’s life was not one of uninterrupted bliss.
…just because the soul sits in perpetual peace does not mean that the faculties of sense and reason do, or the passions. There are always wars going on in the other dwellings of the soul. There is no lack of trials and exhaustion. But these battles rarely have the power anymore to unseat the soul from her place of peace.
She also warned against the trap of thinking that unless you’re conquering every ill then you’re doing nothing.
It’s not necessary to try to help the whole world. Concentrate on your own circle of companions who need you. Then, whatever you do will be of greater benefit.
For Teresa, the only point of living was love—of God, self and neighbor. Love was a waterwheel that, once set in motion, needed to be continually resupplied to keep turning.
Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul… Be assured that the more progress you make in loving your neighbor, the greater will be your love for God.
Teresa died in 1582. Her last words were: My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. Oh, my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another.
Practice
In her spiritual masterpiece The Interior Castle, Teresa writes:
Remember: if you want to make progress on the path and ascend to the places you have longed for, the most important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever awakens you to love.
What or who awakens you to love? Do a meditation while holding this person/place/thing in your heart. This can be a 5-minute (or more) period of stillness, a walk, or a candle-lighting. Whatever method you choose, try to remain in that awakened state of love. If you feel yourself drifting toward other thoughts, gently bring yourself back.
Holiday Happenings at Life In The City
Dec. 11, 11:15 am: LITC’s original musical, Make Room In Your Heart.
Dec. 21, 7:30 pm: Blue Christmas, an intimate service for the longest night of the year.
Dec. 23, 7:00 pm: Our annual Christmas Eve-Eve service.
Dec. 25, 11:15 am: Celebrate Christmas morning with your church family.
Jan 1, 11:15 am: A quiet, contemplative service to welcome 2023.
Feedback
This is a first draft of a book that will go to publishers in 2023. If you spot typos or have suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email Greg Durham at greg@lifeinthecityaustin.org.
Catch Up On Recent Posts
Read the Introduction to The Heart Moves Toward Light: Advent With The Mystics, Saints and Prophets.
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I have enjoyed this thoroughly. Just ran into a sentence that interrupted my reading flow:
I recommend you re-work this sentence “Actually, entered paints a false picture. “
Recommend something like: Actually, saying that she “entered” the convent at that time creates the wrong impression.
Great recap and story. You bring the mystics to life. What translation do u quote from? It is quite readable. Peace brother.