Below are the words of the mystical soul of Saint Teresa of Avila whose Feast the Church celebrates today. Her perspective certainly comes from an advanced spiritual life. She writes that the soul lacks humility and cannot always focus on the Passion of Jesus Christ because of the pain. But our Lord knows this and gives us the opportunity to meditate on His Resurrection, because He is so near to us in the Blessed Sacrament. For Saint Teresa, however, her elevated soul is confident in bearing with joy any trial that comes. Would that we all could have such confidence! Saint Teresa’s confidence comes from her relationship with Jesus as a helpful, never-failing Friend; and it is through Him that all blessings come. For as long as our earthly journey lasts, Saint Teresa teaches us that it is a great thing to have before us the Humanity of Christ and His trials. When Jesus is habitually thought of as our Human Friend, then, as Saint Teresa shares, He is always easy to find at our side. Trials are a part of the life of every human being, and so, with Jesus at our side as our Friend or the Humanity of God, we can follow in His Footsteps, as Saint Teresa advises us to do, by embracing the Cross. The words below are from the autobiography of this gifted Carmelite saint.When I began to gain some experience of supernatural prayer -- I mean of the Prayer of Quiet -- I tried to put aside everything corporeal, though I dared not lift up my soul, for, being always so wicked. But I thought I was experiencing the presence of God, as proved to be true, and I contrived to remain with Him in a state of recollection. In view of the advantage I was deriving from it and the pleasure it was bringing me, no one could have made me return to meditation on the Humanity -- on the contrary, this really seemed to me a hindrance. O Lord of my soul and my Good, Jesus Christ crucified! Never once do I recall this opinion which I held without a feeling of pain: I believe I was committing an act of high treason, though I committed it in ignorance.
The soul is somewhat lacking in humility and that what it has is so completely disguised and hidden as not to be noticed. Who can there be, like myself, so miserably proud that, when he has labored all his life long over every imaginable kind of penance and prayer and suffered every kind of persecution, he does not count himself very wealthy and very abundantly rewarded if the Lord allows him to stand with Saint John, at the foot of the Cross? I cannot imagine how it can enter anyone's head not to be contented with this; yet I myself was not, and I have lost in every respect where I ought to have gained. It may be that our temperament, or some indisposition, will not always allow us to think of the Passion, because of its painfulness; but what can prevent us from being with Him in His Resurrection Body, since we have Him so near us in the Sacrament, where He is already glorified?
No trial has come to me that I cannot gladly bear when I look at You as You stood before Your judges. With so good a Friend, so good a Captain at our side, Who came forward first of all to suffer, one can bear everything. He helps us; He gives us strength; He never fails; He is a true Friend. I can see clearly, and since that time have always seen, that it is God's will, if we are to please Him and He is to grant us great favors, that this should be done through His most sacred Humanity, in Whom, His Majesty said, He is well pleased. Very, very many times have I learned this by experience: the Lord has told it to me. I have seen clearly that it is by this door that we must enter if we wish His Sovereign Majesty to show us great secrets. Even if you reach the summit of contemplation Your Reverence must seek no other way: that way alone is safe.
It is through this Lord of ours that all blessings come. He will show us the way; we must look at His life -- that is our best pattern. What more do we need than to have at our side so good a Friend, Who will not leave us in trials and tribulations, as earthly friends do? Blessed is he who loves Him in truth and has Him always at his side. Let us consider the glorious Saint Paul, from whose lips the name of Jesus seems never to have been absent, because He was firmly enshrined in his heart. Since realizing this, I have looked carefully at the lives of a number of saints who were great contemplatives and I find that they followed exactly the same road. Saint Francis, with his stigmata, illustrates this, as does Saint Anthony of Padua with the Divine Infant. Saint Bernard, too, delighted in Christ's Humanity, and so did Saint Catherine of Siena and many others of whom Your Reverence will know better than I. This withdrawal from the corporeal must doubtless be good, since it is advised by such spiritual people, but my belief is that it must be practiced only when the soul is very proficient: until then, it is clear, the Creator must be sought through the creatures.
When God is pleased to suspend all the faculties, as we have seen that He does in the modes of prayer already described, it is clear that, though we may not desire it to be so, this Presence is taken from us. At such a time as that, let this be done. Blessed is such a loss, since it brings with it the enjoyment of more than we seem to have sacrificed; for the soul can then employ itself wholly in loving One Whom the understanding has been striving hard to know. It loves what it has not comprehended and rejoices in that of which it could not have such great fruition save by losing itself, in order, as I say, the better to gain itself. But that we should exert care and skill to accustom ourselves not to endeavor with all our strength to have always before us -- and the Lord grant it be always -- this most sacred Humanity, it is that, I say, which seems to me not to be right. The soul is left, as the phrase has it, in the air; for it has nothing to lean upon, however full it may think itself to be of God. It is a great thing for us, while we live as human beings, to have before us Christ's Humanity.
We are not angels and we have bodies. To want to become angels while we are still on earth, and as much on earth as I was, is ridiculous. As a rule, our thoughts must have something to lean upon, though sometimes the soul may go out from itself and very often may be so full of God that it will need no created thing to assist it in recollection. But this is not very usual: when we are busy, or suffering persecutions or trials, when we cannot get as much quiet as we should like, and at seasons of aridity, we have a very good Friend in Christ. We look at Him as a Man; we think of His moments of weakness and times of trial; and He becomes our Companion. Once we have made a habit of thinking of Him in this way, it becomes very easy to find Him at our side, though there will come times when it is impossible to do either the one thing or the other. For that reason it is advisable to do as I have already said: we must not show ourselves to be striving after spiritual consolations; come what may, the great thing for us to do is to embrace the Cross.
The Lord was deprived of all consolation; they left Him alone in His trials. Let us not leave Him; for His hand will help us to rise more effectually than our own efforts. And He will withdraw Himself when He sees that it is good for us and when He is pleased to draw the soul out of itself. God is well pleased to see a soul humbly taking His Son as Mediator, and yet loving Him so much that, even if His Majesty is pleased to raise it to the highest contemplation, it realizes its unworthiness, and says with Saint Peter: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." I have proved this, for it is in this way that God has led my soul. Others will take another and a shorter road. What I have learned is this: that the entire foundation of prayer must be established in humility, and that, the more a soul abases itself in prayer, the higher God raises it.
I will conclude, then, by saying that, whenever we think of Christ, we should remember with what love He has bestowed all these favors upon us, and how great is the love which God has revealed to us in giving us such a pledge of the love which He bears us; for love begets love. And though we may be only beginners, and very wicked, let us strive ever to bear this in mind and awaken our own love, for, if once the Lord grants us the favor of implanting this love in our hearts, everything will be easy for us and we shall get things done in a very short time and with very little labor. May His Majesty give us this love, since He knows how much we need it, for the sake of the love which He bore us and through His glorious Son, Who revealed it to us at such great cost to Himself. Amen.
