In this reflection, we dive into the mysticism of St. Teresa of Avila.
October 15 is the feast of a great mystic: St. Teresa of Avila. Teresa wrote several important books. She wrote her Life, which recounts her early life with the Carmelites, an intense conversion, and many elevated experiences in prayer. She also wrote The Foundations, a book telling the story behind her founding various Carmelite communities of women, and some for men, all over Spain. Alongside these narrative books, Teresa authored The Way of Perfection, about how one prays, and the classic work, The Interior Castle, which describes the soul’s mystical journey to God.
Teresa was born in Avila in 1515 to a converso family. Her grandfather on her father’s side was Jewish. Her father worked hard to fit into the dominant society. At age 15 she enters the Carmelite convent in Avila, the Monastery of the Incarnation. While in the convent, she endures intense illness, goes into a coma, and becomes paralyzed. Recuperating at her family home, she reads The Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna and discovers contemplative prayer. Eventually, she returns to the Incarnation convent but regresses spiritually. She becomes a mediocre nun, not taking her prayer life seriously – she even fears praying at one point. All in all, she lives a distracted life.
But then she experiences an intense conversion while gazing upon a statue of the wounded Christ. She begins to have intense experiences of God, visions, and ecstasies. For instance, in her Life, Teresa describes an intense spiritual experience later referred to as the Transverberation: “I saw close to me toward my left side an angel in bodily form…the angel was not large but small; he was very beautiful, and his face was so aflame that he seemed to be one of those very sublime angels that appear to be all afire...I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetness this greatest pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capable of taking it away; nor is the soul content with less than God.”
After experiencing an ecstatic prayer life for a few years, Teresa travels around Spain founding 17 Discalced Carmelite monasteries, including 2 for men. Her Discalced Carmelite convents were egalitarian. Wealthy and poor women were accepted equally; wealthy women received no privileges. Teresa refused to exclude or investigate her nuns for impure blood – she accepted conversos. The leading men of various Spanish cities such as Valladolid, Medina del Campo, or Toledo strongly opposed Teresa.
A central theme of Teresa’ Life is prayer. She describes her own practice and advises us on how to practice. “My present procedure in prayer is as follows: I am seldom able while in prayer to use my intellect in a discursive way, for my soul immediately begins to grow recollected; and it remains in quiet or rapture to the extent that I cannot make any use of the senses.” Teresian Prayer (or, as she called it, “recollection”) is quite simple: gaze upon Christ to be conscious of God then rest in an inner silence. In her Life, Teresa counsels, “Just remain there in His presence with the intellect quiet.”
We can surmise further depth to her teaching in prayer based upon how she was influenced by Francisco de Osuna’s practice of recollection in The Third Spiritual Alphabet. Osuna’s central teaching is “no pensar nada,” which we might render as “non-thinking nothingness” or inner silence and attention-less attention to God alone. The silence of no pensar nada involves the silencing of the imagination and understanding to be anchored, without even being aware of it, in God alone.
Additionally, in The Way of Perfection, she wrote about three virtues necessary for prayer: love of neighbor, detachment, and humility. Our self-seeking and egoism are overcome by growth in love of neighbor. Our distraction and enslavement are uprooted by detachment. And our delusions about ourselves and about our true status before God are vanquished by humility.
Prayer is what happens between God and the soul in the interior castle. Teresa, in The Interior Castle, writes, “We consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places. . . . Some up above, others down below, others to the sides; and in the center and middle is the main dwelling place where the very secret exchanges between God and the soul take place…if I had understood as I do now that in this little palace of my soul dwelt so great a King…I would have remained with Him at all times.” This image of a castle communicates the idea that we have to pass through many rooms or challenges and preoccupations and distractions to encounter God at our center. But Teresa, in one of her most well know writings, her “bookmark,” assures us that God is all we need.
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.