St
Teresa's 'second conversion' remains central in her life and teaching
to the point that in the her autobiography she draws a golden
divide : time before her second conversion and time after it.
Before her conversion it's her life alone and afterwards it's Jesus'
life in her.
This
momentous event in her life is so important that it gives meaning to
all that will follow: her powerful spiritual growth, the foundation
of the first reformed monastery, not to mention the foundation of
many other monasteries. Throughout her life and writings she will
then repeat the key lesson she learned from her conversion.
We
often hear her talking about her sins and God's mercy towards her.
This is not a figure of speech or a pious attitude, or random words:
it is the simple truth. Her conversion is, in fact, what we call a
'second conversion', bearing in mind that she is, of course, already
a christian and a nun. This conversion concerns going from a normal
'traditional' christian life to entering into a day to day personal
relationship with the Risen Lord.
This
conversion happens to her when she is thirty-nine years old, having
first entered the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila (Spain) when
she was only twenty years of age. It should be borne in mind, here,
that the two reasons for which she entered would not be sufficient
nowadays for a girl's acceptance in a monastery: first, she had a
very dear friend of hers already inside this particular monastery and
secondly she feared committing mortal sin. Why mortal sin? She knew
very well that she was attractive and entertaining; in fact many
cousins were attracted to her. She also was aware that she was weak
and feared falling into mortal sin. Of course there are plenty of
other implicit reasons: one of them is her great devotion to Our Lady
whom she adopted as a mother after the death of her own mother. In
fact the Carmelite order is known to be the Order 'of Our Lady'.
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| Incarnation Monastery (Avila) |
On
the surface, however, her religious life seemed good. She was a
spiritual person, observant, faithful to religious life. But seen
from the perspective of the heart or the emotions, she was failing to
belong totally to Christ-The-Groom. She was not, curiously, totally
aware of this lack. This could seem strange considering her way of
life where she used to meet people in the parlour and talk to them
about prayer, mental prayer at that. She was capable of entertaining
people concerning the spiritual life for hours.
Revealingly
her emotions were not totally in the hands of Christ, liking as she
did to talk, entertain, thereby clinging to these relationships.
Indubitably no sin is being committed here, especially according to
today's criteria. But Christ does not look at the external part of
our behaviour, rather he sees into our heart, and it's our heart that
He is waiting for!
One
has to say that the Lord has been patient with her – almost twenty
years – then He took pity on her, wanting to change her. Blessed be
Him Eternally for His Mercy!
The
modern reader, consequently, would not see a problem with what she
was doing since, when looked at superficially, she is not committing
any sin. We know as well that she would never have sinned knowingly
on purpose. It must be remembered that it is for this reason that she
entered the monastery: to avoid mortal sin. So if there is no
apparent sin, where is the problem? Which 'conversion' does she need?
After all, she leads a good monastic life and through it she
glorifies God! The fact remains, however, that she was blind until
the Lord, with His merciful Grace, showed her from within, in her
heart and emotions, what was lacking, what she was not giving to Him.
Her heart in fact was divided, even worse, it was scattered
about,veering outwards rather than being focused inwards on God. The
relationships she was having, talking about God, were certainly
straightforward, but at the emotional level, her heart was geared
outwards, her emotions being involved with them. Seen from
Christ-The-Groom point of view, she was not totally His, certainly
not in all her emotions.
Being
in the monastery does not mean that one finds oneself automatically
praising only God. One needs to be with Christ in order to receive
all the Graces He wants to give us and grow until we reach Union with
Him and the fullness of Charity. Monastic life does not mean only to
refrain from sinning and fulfilling somehow or other the duties of
our state of life. It goes infinitely deeper than that. Seen from
this perspective, then, her vision of Christian life, Monastic life
and of her duties was impoverished. Her understanding of Christ was
limited, especially what He was seeking, what He was waiting for from
her, what he awaits from each one of us: all of our heart given to
him - our emotional heart included. Today one would use the word
'eros', recognised also as the second lower half of our heart that we
often keep for the love of human beings.
St.
Teresa often takes the time to explain in different places in her
writings this turning point in her life. In fact we can only
understand her life and achievements through it, for it will trigger
a powerful spiritual life, an abundance of graces.
The
Lord was patiently waiting for that change to happen, and it was not
happening. She just was not seeing it! This is why, afterward, she
will feel the constant urge to mention it and to sing the Mercies of
the Lord who not only waited for her patiently, but who gently showed
her what He wanted from her: all of her, all her emotions, every
fibre of her being, all for Him and Him only! It is only after doing
so that the torrent of his graces was triggered! And then, a new life
started, another Teresa started to emerge, the Teresa 'of Jesus'!
From that moment on, as she states in the book of her Life, it is the
story of the life of Jesus in her.
On
the one hand I am sure that for the modern reader the difference is
minute between the way she was leading her life and what Christ
wanted from her. On the other hand, one has to sincerely admit that
for us human beings (including consecrated people) if we apply her
criterium (giving everything including our emotional heart), very few
would be 'saved'! Or, in other words: if we follow her reading and
understanding of the light that Jesus showed her applying it to
everybody, many things in the Church would have to change!
St
Teresa gives a huge importance to this point and it is to be feared
that it might be easily overlooked. According to the criteria of
christian moral life, we all agree that she was not committing any
sin, not even a fault against her state of life! Indeed, filtered
through the eyes of moral theology, there is no formal sin. But what
we are learning from her is that all christian life does not lie in
moral theology. God sees the heart of the human being, but
unfortunately the human being does not understand himself! As Saint
Augustine said: we search for God in the external world! God searches
for our heart, internally. Teresa was unconsciously searching for God
outside of herself, in the relationships she was having. No formal
sin was committed but she was ignorant, especially of God's ways and
how to reach Him, or better said: how to be reached by God, how to
really open the door to the heart in order to receive the abundance
of his graces and then grow until we reach Union with Him. "The Saint, who in that period felt deeply in tune with the St Augustine of the Confessions, thus describes the decisive day of her mystical experience: “and... a feeling of the presence of God would come over me unexpectedly, so that I could in no wise doubt either that he was within me, or that I was wholly absorbed in him” (Vida, 10, 1)." (Pope Benedict XVI Catechesis, on St Teresa)
Note: What is the light that St Teresa's conversion sheds on today's state of Theology? God asks us at least two questions when, through her conversion, He challenges our way of viewing Theology today.
- Does today's teaching in moral theology speak in a practical way about 'Union with God'? No, it does not.
- Does Christian Moral life still seem to consist only in the fact of avoiding sin i.e. being in a state of Grace? Indeed it does.
These are very important questions and the common answers to them do not give evidence of the salt of the Gospel. Therefore if we continue to reduce Christian life this way, St Teresa's life will become incomprehensible to us, as, will be ,categorically, our understanding of Christian life in toto. We need fewer superficial criteria and more thorough filters, or rather a more refined filter: Spiritual Theology, or the teaching of the Church on Spiritual life. The reason here is fundamental: it reaches the core of our christian life. It shows the real goal of christian life, that is, union with God; it shows the decisive step to take to reach it hardly mentioned today, that is, giving Jesus the lower part of our heart (see also next chapter) and finally, as we will see later, it shows, in practice, the means to reach the Goal through practising virtues and the Prayer of the Heart.
It
is not clear, as yet, whether we have or have not given our heart,
our emotions to the Lord!
The
Lord Himself is a prime exemplar of using various circumstances and
means to shed his light in St. Teresa and show her what He wanted
from her, what she was denying him! As mentioned above, she was
reading (during Lent of 1554) the Confessions of St Augustine
and was struck by the beautiful passage where he mentions his misery
and error in choosing the wrong direction while searching for God:
exteriorly instead of interiorly.
“Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, and I without, and there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not. You called, and cried aloud, and forced open my deafness. You gleamed and shine, and chase away my blindness. You exhaled odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after You. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.When I shall cleave unto You with all my being, then shall I in nothing have pain and labour; and my life shall be a real life, being wholly full of You.” (Saint Augustine, Confessions, X, 27, 38)
Reading
this passage for St Teresa was a decisive moment posing many
questions as it did: where is God ? Is he without or within his
creatures ? Can he be found through an intellectual quest ?
Is he in one's relationships with others (one can easily call this
'love of neighbour', to legitimise it) ! Where is one's heart ?
The Gospel says : your heart will be where your treasure
is (Matthew 6:21)! And who is our Treasure?
We
do not see God, He is unknown to us, but our real Treasure, this
immensely deep Well, those abundant Living Waters is Christ! And
Christ is the Groom, the Beloved of our heart! Where is Christ? Is He
outside? This is what St Teresa thought! And during this Lenten time
of 1554 Teresa is to be found touched by Christ during this reading
of St Augustine. The result is a dramatic change touching the very
core of her being: he is not to be found outside, but there he is,
inside of her, in the depths of her heart. She searches for him yes,
but now searches for him in her heart of hearts. Henceforth she will
learn to never leave him alone in her heart!
It
is through this reading that she receives one of the few electric
jolts the grace of God will use to return her to Himself. This one
will make her become altogether aware of the greatness of the human
being and of her former error! Yes the human being is great, immense;
she will later get to discover the inner beauty that the soul will
recover by growing in Christ! The baptised person is like a living
and ambulatory Tabernacle! Now, not as before when all her energy and
emotions were outward bound, the grace of God used this passage of
St. Augustine's to turn Teresa powerfully toward God dwelling within
her.
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| Large scale representation of Christ at the Pillar |
The
other jolt given by the Grace of God is when her eyes meet the eyes
of Jesus! This is worth all the treasures of the world. Having our
eyes make contact with Jesus' eyes! In His mercy, Christ used a very
small polychrome statue of Christ at the Pillar to pour forth his
Grace to touch her and talk to her – with all the pain that He
suffered because of her and for her. But mainly it is his gaze that
touched her. Christ, at the pillar with his hands tied to it, covered
in wounds, turning his head toward her, looking at her, into her
eyes! When the two gazes meet – by the grace of God – the beauty
of Christ, his love for her, moved her soul, her heart, deeply, moved
everything within her. Everything seemed to vanish, all the external
attachments she had sought, all that she had undertaken, all the
beauties of creation disappeared in an instant in the face of the
power of his Love, of his Gaze, of his Beauty! This beauty is capable
of dramatically changing the entire world, directing it toward
herself! This Beauty acts – by the Mercy of God – as a very
powerful magnet! And this only is enough!
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| Christ appearing and talking to Teresa |
Christ
himself, now, will accomplish and finish the inner conversion. This
will be the final jolt. One day, He will speak to St Teresa,
summoning her not to be busy with the outer world but to direct her
“busyness” only to him. He seems to say to her the words: 'Stop
speaking to human beings !' He wanted her totally for himself !
Christ is absolute in his dealings with us ! He wants it all !
There are no half-measures ! He has an immense thirst, a divine
thirst to give himself to us, but in order to do so, He needs us to
be entirely - absolutely entirely - his. Not even a drop of our being
cannot be his ! Christ's love is radical, but He fills us in a
royal way ! His way of giving himself to us, the abundance of
his graces, the beauty of the gift of Himself are beyond our wildest
imagination ! Only by putting Teresa's belief here to the test
will the unbeliever see the truth of it - he will never repent doing
so.
The
indisputable reason can now be understood why St Teresa repeatedly
underlines in her writings the divine equation of spiritual life: if
you want to receive Him totally, in all the royal abundance of the
Gift of Himself, you need to give him everything, to entrust
everything into his hands!
This
decision can be taken right now, by the Grace of God:
"Lord
I am weak,
Lord
my heart is spread outward busy with many things
but
I would like to belong to you totally,
I
offer you all that is dear to me
like
Abraham offered you his only child,
I
put it in your hands,
and
then I offer myself to you, entirely to you.
Make
of me whatever you want."
Sadly,
it must be recognised, that three minutes after we offer ourselves,
we take back our freedom. This is why this act of offering oneself
will be repeated various times afterwards in Teresa's life. In like
manner one should now repeat it often, because God created us capable
of free will and therefore capable of offering ourselves to him.
Amazingly every minute of free will is an equal opportunity to love
Him again and again and to be loved by Him.
One
cannot fathom how much this gift of ourselves to Him has 'power over'
him. It is like a huge magnet that attracts and seduces Christ. He is
encouraged to abandon himself to unheard of things: He pours out his
Grace in abundance!
All
this I, however, remains a matter of experience. It has to be checked
out first hand!
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