When
we read St Teresa, it is impossible to refrain
from noticing the importance she gives to humility. For St Teresa
humility is the foundation of spiritual life and prayer,
without which nothing can grow.
Humility 'persuades the Lord to give us all what we want
from him'; humility 'conquers everything'; humility is truth;
it is only through the growth in
humility that we measure our progress in spiritual life.
These are but a few of the examples Teresa uses to underline,
at various times, the great humility of
Our Lady, and to invite us to understand
its empire over God and to draw us to
imitate the Mother of God. Humility
seems to be the outstanding element that
triggers the Grace of God. According to her beautiful expression, it
allows us to 'checkmate' God!
Here
it is expedient to note that Chess
was very much in vogue in the Spain of St. Teresa's day, and
that she
learned it when she was young before entering religious life. In her
first version of the Way
of
Perfection
called “Manuscript
of Escorial,” in the first four paragraphs of Chapter
16 (see below) she uses the image of chess playing. Out
of consideration
for her nuns, however, and in
order not to leave on record her knowledge of such a worldly game,
thereby
promoting bad habits amongst them, she
tore them out of the manuscript.
The
'checkmate'
allegory,
it
consequently should be recognised,
is so expressive, beautiful and theologically very deep that it has
rightly become famous, and from the time of Fray Luis de León all
the editions have included it, which
is an important reason for us to understand.
The goal of the game of Chess is for one of the two players, using
his pieces, to
corner and capture
his opponent's King.
In this case the King is said to be 'in check', which means
'threatened with capture'. If the King
has no way of
removing
the threat, it
is to be considered 'captured' or 'dead', that
is,
'Mate',
the lucky
player
winning
and the game being
over. Checkmating the opponent thus
wins
the game. Figuratively speaking
then, a checkmate
is 'a
situation in which someone has been defeated'. In St Teresa's own
words
it means: to 'corner' God, drawing Him
to us and conquering Him,
making Him
ours. As can
be seen the
image is very powerful: being able to seduce God, and draw us
into his
grace is reminiscent
of
a “secret of the saints”. The most powerful piece of the game is
called the Queen, which
has the greatest flexibility of
movement
therefore greatly
threatening the
opponent's King.
More
will be explained about this important piece later.
It
is beneficial for us, in our self-pride,
to remind ourselves of this, that God
himself is humble (learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart
(Matthew 11:29)) - indeed it can be said that
He is humility itself! In St. Teresa's
writings she also constantly talks about
spiritual life and progress in it, to attain,
in the fulness of time, Union with God himself! Therefore it
is inevitable for her to insist on humility, increasing
humility being our goal until we are united to the Humble-God.
This, it must be emphasized, entails extreme
vigilance. The more we immerse ourselves
in the spiritual life, the greater is
our need to be attentive to humility. If our
self-awareness reveals to us that there is a struggle, this would
tend to denote that a deeply
spiritual life is distant from us, and
an urgent examination of the state of our humility is vital.
Accordingly St.Teresa states that
humility and knowing oneself go together. How,
then, is our humility to be increased? The
answer is obvious: by seeking the truth about ourselves.
St Teresa even went so far as to coin
the phrase: humility is the
Truth. It must be recognised, above all,
that there is a need for self-discernment regarding all that
comes from God and a need to be grateful
to Him for it.
Spiritual Life bears in itself
an important fact: the necessity to receive an extraordinary number
of graces ! Significantly, in
order to receive these and,
more importantly, in order to keep them,
there is a great need for humility! Rain
falls, it can even fall abundantly, but
who collects the water? The heights of the mountain or the humble
valley?
St.Teresa
deals with this question by writing the book the
Way of Perfection, primarily
in
reply to a request by her daughters of the first
reformed monastery, to write them something on “contemplation”.
This is the origin of the book the Way
of Perfection. It
is already blatantly obvious that “contemplation”
is for St Teresa a pure gift from God, the
essence of the supernatural given to us. In
writing this book she handed on to them a very
significant way of perfection
to follow in order to receive the Grace of God, the
very secret that triggers the Grace of God.
However,
it is interesting to note Teresa's letter to them before writing the
book. Here she indicated that if they wanted her simply
to talk to them about the first steps in prayer, that
is, 'meditation', this could be
easily achieved, as all that was needed was her
guidance on how to proceed, which they could then put into practice
with relative ease. But since they
requested she
talk to them about the Gift of God
(John 4:10) and how to receive it, the matter encompassed
a totally different level of
functioning. The book of the Way
of Perfection becomes,
subsequently, her full answer to their request.
Ironically in
almost the first half of it she seems to address something entirely
different, for
she talks about three virtues, amongst them humility. In fact, the
reader can easily be puzzled by the fact that she fails
to enter immediately into the core
of the subject. In fact this
gives a false impression. In order to
explain her present choice
of subject-matter and
therefore the structure of the book, she
takes the example of the game of Chess. As noted
above above, for
one to win in this game one has corner
the opponent's King
and threaten it. Ingeniously, then, the
entire first half of her book is devoted
by Teresa to 'set
out the pieces of game [correctly]:
“you may be sure that
anyone who cannot set out the pieces in a game of chess will never be
able to play well” (Way
of Perfection 16:1-4).
Thus
in
order to do so, she teaches the
three
fundamental virtues: humility, loving
one
another and detachment. She
stresses that by
practising these virtues with determination and in a 'perfect' way
(as she describes it), that the human being is properly enabled
to
give himself sincerely
and wholly
to the Lord. It is the quality
of the gift of ourselves to Him
that makes the Lord surrender himself to us: He
is conquered or,
in other words, He
is checkmated.
Working on the three virtues
and especially on humility is the direct
means by which we offer ourselves to
Christ, and by this means, it is possible to
attract Him to us. Referring
to these virtues the
saint says: I hope you
do not think I have written too much about this already; for I have
only been placing the board, as they say. [...] But you may be sure
that anyone who cannot set out the pieces in a game of chess will
never be able to play well, and, if he does not know how to give
check, he will not be able to bring about a checkmate. (Way
of Perfection
16:1-4)
It
is at this point that she begins
to entrust to
the reader the
secret of the supernatural encounter with God using the allegory of
Chess, namely,
in
order to win, we need to corner the opponent's King in a way that
totally
prevents movement or
escape and then attack him (checkmate him). At this
juncture
he is 'mate' which means beaten (conquered),
or
as Teresa writes: “[...]
if we play
it
frequently
[exercising
ourselves in the virtues],
how quickly we shall give checkmate to this Divine King! He will not
be able to move out of our check nor will He desire to do so.”
(idem.)
This secret she entrusts
to
us is all together searingly
beautiful and
utterly
audacious, but
in the language of Love – God's language – this is his modus
operandi.
It
is at this very moment that the core of
the secret of the spiritual life and of
the Prayer of the Heart is imparted
to us:
It
is the Queen which gives the King most trouble in this game and all
the other pieces support her. There is no queen who can beat this
King as well as humility can; for humility brought Him down from
Heaven into the Virgin's womb and with humility we can draw Him into
our souls by a single hair. Be sure that He will give most humility
to him who has most already and least to him who has least. I cannot
understand how humility exists, or can exist, without love, or love
without humility, and it is impossible for these two virtues to exist
save where there is great detachment from all created things. (Way
of Perfection 16:1-2)
Our
Lady's humility is the secret of the Spiritual
Life. This humility is not only capable
of receiving God, but is also capable of
holding Him and of
safeguarding all the received Graces, because growth is not
concerned with receiving graces but of
becoming capable of not losing
them.
Here may
we ask God to grant us Mary's
humility, to give us Our Lady herself, to clothe us in
Her garments, like those of a bride, and thereby attract
Christ to make his home in us!
Prayer
“Graciously O Lord, Give me
Our Lady's heart,
so I can have not my humility
but her all-powerful humility,
capable of attracting you to
her,
and alluring you to dwell for
ever in her.”
The
following comprises the text from the Way of Perfection just
paraphrased above:
“I
hope you do not think I have written too much about this already; for
I have only been placing the board, as they say. You have asked me to
tell you about the first steps in prayer; although God did not lead
me by them, my daughters I know no others, and even now I can hardly
have acquired these elementary virtues. But you may be sure that
anyone who cannot set out the pieces in a game of chess will never be
able to play well, and, if he does not know how to give check, he
will not be able to bring about a checkmate.
Now
you will reprove me for talking about games, as we do not play them
in this house and are forbidden to do so. That will show you what
kind of a mother God has given you -- she even knows about vanities
like this! However, they say that the game is sometimes legitimate.
How
legitimate it will be for us to play it in this way,
and, if we play it frequently,
how quickly we shall give checkmate to this Divine King! He will not
be able to move out of our check nor will He desire to do so.
It is the Queen
which gives the king most trouble in this game and all the other
pieces support her. There is no queen who can beat this King as well
as humility can; for humility brought Him down from Heaven into the
Virgin's womb and with humility we can draw Him into our souls by a
single hair. Be sure that He will give most humility to him who has
most already and least to him who has least. I cannot understand how
humility exists, or can exist, without love, or love without
humility, and it is impossible for these two virtues to exist save
where there is great detachment from all created things.
You will ask,
my daughters, why I am talking to you about virtues when you have
more than enough books to teach you about them and when you want me
to tell you only about contemplation. My reply is that, if you had
asked me about meditation, I could have talked to you about it, and
advised you all to practise it, even if you do not possess the
virtues. For this is the first step to be taken towards the
acquisition of the virtues and the very life of all Christians
depends upon their beginning it. No one, however lost a soul he may
be, should neglect so great a blessing if God inspires him to make
use of it. All this I have already written elsewhere, and so have
many others who know what they are writing about, which I certainly
do not: God knows that.
But
contemplation, daughters, is another matter. This is an error which
we all make: if a person gets so far as to spend a short time each
day in thinking about his sins, as he is bound to do if he is a
Christian in anything more than name, people at once call him a great
contemplative; and then they expect him to have the rare virtues
which a great contemplative is bound to possess; he may even think he
has them himself, but he will be quite wrong. In his early stages he
did not even know how to set out the chess-board, and thought that,
in order to give checkmate, it would be enough to be able to
recognize the pieces. But that is impossible, for this King does not
allow Himself to be taken except by one who surrenders wholly to
Him.” (Way
of Perfection 16:1-4)