Showing posts with label Teresa of Avila. Show all posts

On today's feast of St Teresa, we offer a passage from Archbishop Rowan Williams' excellent Teresa of Avila (Continuum 1991). The context of this quote is Teresa's personal history. In 1492 the large Jewish community in Spain was given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or expulsion. The Jews who agreed to baptism almost immediately came under the suspicion of the Inquisition, which doubted the sincerity of their conversion. Talk about double binds. Teresa's own family were conversos of this sort, and she would have grown up feeling somewhat marginalized in Spanish society. The quote is found on pp 162-163.

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We have been made more attentive than ever in recent years to the extent to which context (rightly) sets the agenda for the enterprise of Christian reflection. Teresa's case is no exception. For her, the unity of the story is, as we have seen, centered in the twofold sense of God as wanting our company and God as the enemy of the human systems of status. If Teresa's family and social world had been different, this would not have been so manifestly the focus of her thought. As we saw in the first chapter, she was in several ways an anomalous person, not an insider. Thus the unifying thread she perceives is to do with the God who is hidden within the diversities of human life (the King in the centre of the castle), who is 'anomalous' in refusing to stay within the proper hierarchical structures of a well-ordered universe, and whose action is essentially at odds with the quest for personal security and legitimacy on the basis of good behavior. 'God at the centre' is consistently set in opposition to a 'centre' of social order and power and purity--the centre from which Teresa, as a woman and a Jew, is distant. Turning to God within is a very familiar strategy in religious protest; when the approved centre of public existence is not accessible, it is necessary to relocate the centre in the inner life. But what makes Teresa so interesting in this respect is that this shifting of the centre is conceived as God's own characteristic movement; God is a reality moving away from a centre of self-possession towards being-in-another. And so the moving of the centre of meaning that is involved in turning from external ambiguity to inner clarity is is saved from being simply a move into the private sphere by its association with God's journey into creation. The rejection of the world's standards is also a claim on behalf of God's will and ability to penetrate the world and to remake it in self-abandoning love.

Teresa (1515-1582) was one of the great figures of 16th century Spanish Catholicism and one of the great Christian mystics, period. Hers was a family of converted Jews that came under the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Her parents were opposed to her vocation and she had to sneak out of her house early one morning to go to the Carmelite convent she felt drawn to join. The Carmelites of those days had gotten somewhat lax, and she began a reform movement which resulted in the foundation of twenty or so convents during her lifetime. Both men and women were subject to her authority; one of these was the equally great mystic John of the Cross. She wrote a number of works, her masterpiece being The Interior Castle.

On her feast today, rather than a long quote from the Castle--I always get depressed when I try to figure out which of the seven mansions I'm in at my present stage of spiritual development--I'd like to share three of her poems with you. Before we get to that, I want to mention two things of related interest. First is a book by Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila (Continuum 2000), which he wrote before becoming chief cat-herder of the Anglican Communion. I found it very informative without being overbearingly academic.

I should also mention the existence of a community of Byzantine rite Carmelites in Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania. Their website is worth a visit.

Christ has no body

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which is to look out
Christ's compassion to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good,
yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

God alone is enough

Let nothing upset you,
let nothing startle you.
all things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins
all that it seeks.
Whoever has God
lacks nothing:
God alone is enough.

Let mine eyes see

Let mine eyes see thee, sweet Jesus of Nazareth,
let mine eyes see thee, and then see death.
Let them see that can, Roses and Jessamine,
seeing thy face most fair, all blossom are therein.
flower of Seraphim, sweet Jesus of Nazareth.
Let mine eyes see thee, and then see death.
Nothing I require, where my Jesus is,
anguish all desire, saving only this,
all my help is his, he only succoreth.
Let mine eyes see thee, and then see death.