Teresa’s Poetry

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, a woman who displayed a remarkable independence of spirit in 16th Century Spain, during a time when the Church was not particularly tolerant of independence of thought or spirit and when no one was tolerant of such a characteristic in a woman. She bent Church rules, she barely survived the Spanish Inquisition, she annoyed many with her reform of both the male and female Carmelite orders, and she did it all while suffering debilitating illness through most of her life – living with almost constant pain. At the same time, she authored a body of written work that many would call the cornerstone of Christian mysticism, and she is, even today, one of the most widely read writers in the Spanish language.

Among other things, Teresa was a poet. She wrote poems not for their own sake, but rather (in the words of one of her biographers) “as a release for the mystical fire she could no longer contain in her heart.

I once before shared one of her poems (here). In honor of her feast, here is another. It is titled On Those Words “Dilectus Meus Mihi”.

Myself surrendered and given,
The exchange is this:
My Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.

When the Gentle hunter
Wounded and subdued me,
In love’s arms,
My soul fallen;
New life receiving,
Thus did I exchange
My Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.

The arrow hew drew
Full of love,
My soul was oned
With her Creator.
Other love I want not,
Surrendered now to my God,
That my Beloved is for me,
And I am for my Beloved.

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I Am Yours, What Do You Want of Me?

I spent the last several days at Christ the King Retreat House in Buffalo, MN, leading 52 women on a retreat organized around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. It was a blessed time and I am enormously grateful for all that God gave us over these days.

At the end of a talk focused on Ignatius’ Principle and Foundation, I shared with the participants a poem by Teresa of Avila, that I think expresses beautifully a central aspect of the attitude Ignatius is hoping we will develop through our prayer with his Exercises. Here it is; perhaps you will find it a moving prayer to pray:

I am Yours and born for you,
What do You want of me?

Majestic Sovereign, Unending wisdom,
Kindness pleasing to my soul;
God sublime, one Being Good,
Behold this one so vile.
Singing of her love to you:
What do You want of me?

Yours, you made me,
Yours, you saved me,
Yours, you endured me,
Yours, you called me,
Yours, you awaited me,
Yours, I did not stray.
What do you want of me?

Good Lord, what do you want of me?
What is this wretch to do?
What work is this,
This sinful slave to do?
Look at me, Sweet Love,
Sweet Love, look at me,
What do you want of me?

In your hand I place my heart,
Body, life and soul,
Deep feelings and affections mine,
Spouse – Redeemer sweet,
Myself offered now to you,
What do you want of me?

Give me death, give me life,
Health or sickness, Honor or shame,
War or swelling peace,
Weakness or full strength,
Yes, to these I say,
What do you want of me?

Give me wealth or want,
Delight or distress,
Happiness or gloominess,
Heaven or hell,
Sweet life, sun unveiled,
To you I give all.
What do you want of me?

Give me, if You will, prayer;
Or let me know dryness,
An abundance of devotion,
Or if not, then barrenness.
In you alone, Sovereign Majesty,
I find my peace,
What do you want of me?

Give me then wisdom.
Or for love, ignorance,
Years of abundance,
Or hunger and famine.
Darkness or sunlight,
Move me here or there:
What do you want of me?

If You want me to rest,
I desire it for love;
If to labor, I will die working:
Sweet Love say
Where, how and when.
What do You want of me?

Calvary or Tabor give me,
Desert or fruitful land;
As Job in suffering
Or John at Your breast;
Barren or fruited vine,
Whatever be Your will:
What do you want of me?

Be I Joseph chained
Or as Egypt’s governor,
Davie pained or exalted high,
Jonas drowned, or Jonas freed:
What do you want of me?

Silent or speaking,
Fruitbearing or barren,
My wounds shown by the Law,
Rejoicing in the tender Gospel;
Sorrowing or exulting.
You alone live in me:
What do you want of me?

Yours I am, for You I was born:
What do You want of me.

Learning from Teresa of Avila

A new law school year is upon us and today was the first gathering of the Fall Reflection Series, on the theme of Praying with the Mystics. The first fall reflection series I offered at UST (five or six years ago) was on this theme and I decided to return to it, albeit with a slightly different cast of characters.

The series will have five sessions. The first three, which I will facilitate, are on Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton and Julian of Norwich. The last two, which Jennifer Wright will facilitate (during my Camino walk) will be on Margery Kempe and The Author of the Cloud of the Unknowing.

Today I gave in introduction to the series, talking about what is a mystic, and then giving a reflection on Teresa of Avila. In talking about Teresa, I began by describing some of that qualities that made her so open to hearing God and then talked about her explanation of the soul and its journey to God.

With respect to what it means to call someone a mystic I quoted Ursula Kay, who in her book Christian Mystics, defines a mystic in this way: “A mystic is a person who is deeply aware of the powerful presence of the divine spirit: someone who seeks, above all, the knowledge and love of God and who experiences to an extraordinary degree the profoundly personal encounter with the energy of divine life.” I also shared Robert Ellwood’s definition of mysticism “simply as a contact with the deity. … Mystical experience is experience in a religious context that is immediately or subsequently interpreted by the experiencer as encounter with ultimate divine reality in a direct nonrational way that engenders a deep sense of unity and of living during the experience on a level of being other than the ordinary.”

You can access a recording of the talk I gave here or stream it from the icon below. The podcast runs for 39:43. You can find the handout I distributed (which I refer to near the end of the podcast here.

The Lord’s Prayer

In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, teaching them the prayer we refer to as The Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father.

Teresa of Avila, one of the great Christian mystics, strongly urged her sisters to pray the Lord’s Prayer, teaching them that “all contemplation and perfection are enshrined in this one prayer.” She encouraged them to “take a whole hour” saying the prayer, with a consciousness of to whom they were praying and what they were asking. In The Way of Perfection, Teresa spends a number of chapters giving a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer.

Just to give a flavor of her reflections, her commentary on the first line of the prayer, Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, calls this line “a reward so large that it would easily fill the intellect and thus occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word.” In this first line, Jesus humbles himself in joining us in prayer and making himself our brother. Teresa marvels both at Jesus’ desire that God consider us his children and at the result of that desire: Because Jesus’ word cannot fail and God is obliged to be true to it, God as our Father must bear with us no matter how serious our offense. “If we return to God like the prodigal son, God has to pardon us. God has to console us in our trials. God has to sustain us in the way a parent must. For, in effect, God must be better than all the parents in the world because in God everything must be faultless. And after all this God must make us sharers and heirs with” Jesus.

Try praying the Lord’s prayer as Teresa suggested. Perhaps spend an entire prayer period on one line of the prayer. You may even want to consider taking a look at Teresa’s commentary on the rest of the prayer, contained in Chapters 27-42 of The Way of Perfection (which you can find links to here.)

Teresa of Avila

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Teresa of Avila (St. Teresa of Jesus). I’ve written about Teresa before, as she is one of my great favorites among the Christian mystics. There is so much that is wonderful in her writing that it is hard to pick one thing to share on this day. At the suggestion of my friend Gerry, here is the brief poem known as Teresa’s Bookmark, because it was found written on a card in her prayerbook after her death. In English it reads:

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.

Such a simple statement, yet it means everything. God alone suffices.

[Update: My friend Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda reminded me that, in Spanish, the final line reads “solo Dios basta,” basta being “a word that conveys so much! Basta, enough, suffices, but also ‘it is all,’ as in meaning everything.” Thanks, Maria.

Feet and Hands and Eyes (and Wheelchairs)

My friend and colleague Virgil, who has been active for years in efforts to curb the use of landmines and cluster bombs in armed combat, is spending this semester in Geneva at the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research. From there, is is participating in our Retreat in Daily Living, Praying with the Mystics.

At the end of his week of prayer with Teresa of Avila, he sent me these parting thoughts, occasioned by the prayer we refer to as St. Teresa’s Prayer (Christ has no body now on earth but yours…Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes. You are His Body…). With his permission, I share with you his reflection:

Feet and hands and eyes. And ears. And wheelcheers. I have made some powerful friends over the past few years. Friends who have lost feet and hands and eyes and ears and bodies. While playing, while planting, while trying to make others safe; through innocent activity, or risky behavior on behalf of others. In other cases, their own bodies are intact, but they have lost the whole body and soul of a child or a spouse, who died while they helplessly watched life slip away. Every time I meet my friend Sladjan, he warmly greets me with a smile and thrusts out his plastic hand to shake my hand, my hand which still works as God intended. That plastic hand is God’s hand. Sladjan was a Serbain deminer, nearly killed when he was trying to defuse a Minnesota made bomblet that had failed to explode on contact – he lost both arms, a leg, a most of his hearing. Another friend, Soraj, was ten when a similar bright yellow object he found at a picnic in Afghanistan exploded and ripped off his legs. He father stopped the doctors from euthanizing Soraj out of pity. Now sixteen, Soraj joins Sladjan in sharing their stories with diplomats and politicians and anyone who will listen.

Teresa left out hearts and voices. Yours is the voice with which He speaks. Yours is the heart through which He moves. Oh, and wheelchairs, too.

Now Thank We All Our God
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Martin Rinkart, 1644.

Praying with Teresa of Avila

I metioned earlier in the week that I’m currently giving a Retreat in Daily Living on the theme of Praying with the Mystics. This week the retreatants are praying with Teresa of Avila.

Teresa spent a lot of time teaching her sisters and others how to grow closer to God in prayer. One of the subjects of a lot of her teaching in this regard was the Lord’s Prayer, which she felt should never involve mere recitation of words. To be prayed in an authentic manner, Teresa believed the words must be joined by mental prayer. She refers to this as recollective prayer – reciting a set prayer in a recollected fashion. A hallmark of the prayer is an ongoing effort to keep God in mind, to recall God’s constant presence. (Teresa recognized that distractions would arise in those praying in this way. She urges that when such distractions arise, one gently brings the mind back to God.)

To pray the Lord’s Prayer in this way was something she strongly urged on her sisters, teaching that “all contemplation and perfection” are enshrined in this one prayer”. She suggested they take a whole hour to pray it once, reflecting on and savoring each line.

In The Way of Perfection, she offers extensive commentary on each line of the prayer. Just to give a flavor of the commentary, Teresa calls the first line of the prayer – Our Father, Who Art in Heaven – “a reward so large that it would easily fill the intellect and thus occupy the will in such a way one would be unable to speak a word.” In it, she says, Jesus humbles himself in joining us in prayer and making himself our brother. She marvels at Jesus’ desire that God consider us his children and at the result of that desire: Because Jesus word cannot fail and God is obliged to be true to it, God as our Father must bear with us no matter how serious our offense. In Teresa’s words: “If we return to God like the prodigal son, God has to pardon us. God has to console us in our trials. God has to sustain us in the way a parent must. For, in effect, God must be better than all the parents in the world because in God everything must be faultless. And after all this God must make us sharers and heirs with” Jesus. So in this one first line of the prayer, Teresa finds all of Jesus love for us as well as the humility that allows Jesus to stop at nothing to become one with us.

My invitation to my retreatants for today is that they pray the Lord’s Prayer as Teresa instructed her sisters, spending some time in silent contemplation of each line. The idea is not to engage in a long thought process about the line, but only as much thinking as it takes to find something in the line – a word or an image or a feeling or sense – that connects one to God’s presence and love and to be in that place with God.

Consider trying it…maybe even today.

Enjoy Me

This week I commence giving a Retreat in Daily Living on the theme of Praying with the Mystics. The first person we will pray with is Teresa of Avila.

Teresa wrote some beautiful poems. Here is one I particularly like, called Laughter Came from Every Brick.

Just these two words He spoke
changed my life.

“Enjoy Me.”

What a burden I thought I was to carry–
a crucifix, as did He.

Love once said to me, “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”

And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore in the sky.

After a night of prayer,
He changed my life when
He sang,

“Enjoy Me.”

Sometime we take things so seriously I think we forget how much God just want us to enjoy His love for us, how much He wants us to enjoy just being with Him. The cross is part of our reality as Christians, but if we treat it as the only part, we turn our relationship with God into a burden, something to be endured, rather than something to relish. We would do well to hear the words God spoke to Teresa.

The Parable of the Talents and the Need to Recognize our Giftedness

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the three servants each entrusted with talents “according to his ability.” Two use the talents in a way that yields more. The third buries the talents and simply returns the same talents to the master when he returns. That servant is scolded on the master’s return for not using the talents even in the most minimal of ways.

We are all given certain gifts from our loving God. Not recognizing our own giftedness is an act of real ingratitude. How many of us, when we receive a beautifully wrapped gift, thoughtfully prepared for us by someone filled with love for us, tosses it in the closet without looking at it, ignoring it and forgetting about it?

Yet, that is exactly what we do if we do not recognize and celebrate our own giftedness. We take the beautiful gift our God has given for us, a gift chosen with such care, a gift uniquely suited to us, and toss it aside without a second glance. We throw it in the closet and forget about the gift and the giver. Ask yourself: What is that like for God?

This parable invites us to recognize our gifts, to own them, and to use them for the greater glory of God.

As I was reflecting on this, what came to mind was a story in the writings of Teresa of Avila. She told of a certain nun – a very talented woman – who resolved to become more humble. She decided that whenever a clever thought occurred to her during the Carmelites’ recreation period, she would remain silent. Teresa immediately disabused the nun of that resolution. Her comment: “it is bad enough to be stupid by nature, without trying to be stupid by grace.” Teresa, too, saw the danger of false humility – of not embracing and using the talents our God has given us.