123: St Teresa of Avila 2/16: St. Teresa's Conversion: The meaning of her life

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'.

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.

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!

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!

98: The power of Lent

The Grace of Lent Tide

It is of utmost important to understand the changes that happen at the beginning of Lent, throughout it, until we reach Easter Sunday.

Lent starts with a ritual of great humility: having some ashes put on our forehead, often in the form of a Sign of the Cross, accompanied by a word from the Priest that invites us to embark on the Journey of spiritual combat and warfare.

All the Community gathers humbly that day, in order to receive the Seal of that starting point. It is not a sacrament, but it is a sign of a deep grace, “the grace of Lent”. During that intense time of Lent, God seems to double His Grace for us. If during the year He seems to lean more on us, i.e. on the results of our last Lenten period and Easter Grace, during Lent He seems to redouble His grace in order for us to dig deeper. Our journey is a journey of spiritual growth, transformation, sanctification and it goes in circles, but at each turn we go deeper, like a helix (coil); each year, we go up a gear, and Lent is the moment when we change gear. This is why it is important to live Lent fully. In order to do so we need to become aware that God is giving us this redoubled Grace.

Doubling His Grace

Often we call Lent a “time of conversion”, and conversion means to leave creatures, abandon them, and go toward the Creator. Right? Of course it is about opening ourselves (because of God and with God) as well to God in our brothers and sisters. It is still “conversion”.

I would like to focus on another word: a spiritual deepening.

Turning to God, to Jesus is fundamental. But it is important not only to turn to Him, as if the rest of the whole year were spent away from Him, but to go deeper in our relationship with Him. And God's Providence sets up for us this very special time of Grace called Lent.

Discovering/deepening Friendship with Jesus

One of the great ways/means that God uses to reach us in Lent is through the abundance and power of His Word. Scripture is here to help us deepen our relationship with God. Let us remember that we are constantly crossing from one state to another: from the state of a Slave who doesn't know the will of his Master to a Friend who gets to know the will, feelings, behaviour of his Friend. That's a change and a half I would say. Who changes us? Who transforms us? Jesus' Word for us. This is why the main and first activity of Lent is to sit down, take time to listen to Jesus, preferably on a daily basis, in order to undergo this deep change.

The powerful grace of Lent is here to help give us a little push in order to sit down, be quiet, pray, ask and beg in order to listen to the word of our Friend, Jesus, who wants to share with us his thoughts. This can't happen without the Help of the redoubled Grace of the Holy Spirit. So imagine God, from on high, doubling the amount of the Holy Spirit he is pouring out.

Mary the Mother of Our New Heart

One person we hardly mention during Lent is Mary, while often the Feast of the Annunciation occurs during Lent and this is very meaningful. Why? Because the Annunciation is the embodiment of the renewed Grace of Lent, where we sit down, and want to listen to Jesus, to God, to his word. In Lent God wants to renew our heart, he removes some stony parts of our heart to put more human flesh into it. This human part comes out of Mary's Oven, where the Holy Spirit works renewing us. We need to seek the new heart, and this new heart is at the image of Mary's heart, even more: it is made by the Holy Spirit in her womb.

Let us listen to the description of this deep operation that God performs in us cyclically in our life, during Lent: “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:24-27)

The Holy Spirit Gathers Us Up

God “gathers” us, this is the Grace of Lent. If you keep quiet you'll sense this discreet increase in the Grace of God, and will start to sense in which sense it goes: it gathers us up. Not “all of us”, but all the parts of our being. In fact we are divided by all that attracts us outside, our energy is scattered here and there. The Grace of God “gathers us”.

It Gathers us closer to God... who dwells in us. And in order to do so, in order to get us closer to us, it has to make us bear more of a resemblance to God: we need a new heart, a heart of flesh moved by the Spirit of God.

How does this happen? With the Powerful guidance of the Word of God. We are rational beings, we have a mind, and this mind guides us everyday. But is the light of the mind purely a natural light? Are all the thoughts and desires that move us from God? Are they inseminated by God's Light? It is very important to understand that the best thing that can happen to us is to receive the Word of God's light in our mind, heart, feelings, imagination, visions and dreams. It is like allowing the Sun to rise on the land of our mind.

A person who never allowed the Light of the Sun to shine on his land can't imagine the difference. This is why God gives us a redoubled grace during Lent to bring us from the land of darkness (our mind left alone) to the land of the Sun, Jesus, where the soil of our Mind is inseminated by the Light of the Word of God. This is a unique experience that shows us that the Lord is not only Risen, but that he is living amongst us.

Without the Holy Spirit, this experience can't happen.

Not guiding, but Being Guided

In Lent we are constantly crossing from being without a Guide to having a Guide, a Shepherd, Jesus himself. We often live our life being the boss of ourself, even if we are Christians and very committed Christians. We are the boss of ourselves. This is not correct. We do even manage Jesus, and tell him where we are going, and he has to make it work, otherwise we will get upset with Him. We take him in our car, beside us and we hold the driving wheel, decide, drive, and he has to sit quietly and make it happen. Is that normal? Not at all. We need to discover this new way of doing things: having him as our real guide, learning to sense him (with the spiritual senses that the Holy Spirit make grow in us), to listen to him, to prefer him, to be patient for the right moment, to allow Him to guide us, and be happy for being with him having him as our only Treasure in life.

Jesus' Love

It is not only about being guided by Jesus, but learning to enter deeper into Jesus himself, discovering his love for us and learning that new reality: that life is worth it because of him because of having him as our unique love. We then start to learn how to love him “with all our heart, all our mind, all our strength”. Loving Him in himself, and not loving him because of what we can get of him. He is not only our Creator, not only our Redeemer, he is our love, the only love, the one that gives meaning to our lives.

Under Jesus' Guidance

As we said, in order to be under his guidance, we need to sit down, and be quiet, ask for the Help of the Holy Spirit, open the Word of God on today's pages (the Reading of the Mass). What will the word of Jesus do to us? Well it will change us from the old creature (old man) to the new creature, made by Jesus on the Cross, coming out of his side, coming out of Mary's womb.

The Word of God, meditating on the Word of God, being in the presence of Jesus, allowing His word to enter within us, we discover its operation: it removes the masks, the fancy dress (costume, disguise) we are wearing, and brings truth into our lives. It removes this double life in us, the inner one and the outer one. The word of God pierces the surface of the outer skin we put on and reaches the depths of our being, our heart, touches us, and makes our heart blossom under the action of the Grace of the Holy Spirit, make us take one step forward in the unification of our being (inner and outer).

The spiritual Senses

One of the most important characteristic of the new way of life with Jesus is the growth in us of “spiritual senses”. This reality is often mentioned by the Fathers of the Church and the Mystics. In fact, our new inner being develops under the new Action of the Holy Spirit. Our new being, received in Baptism and in Confirmation, wakes up, and develops in a specific way: new senses develop in our inner being and their function is to allow us to listen, see and sense Jesus in our lives. Our soul, as the image of our body, develops new capacities, senses, antennas, that allow us to receive Jesus' Spirit (the Holy Spirit), inner guidance. Indeed, our new inner Master is the Holy Spirit: He explains to us Jesus' words, He reminds us at the right time of Jesus' words, He connects us with Him, He gives to our conscience new senses, making us “feel” Jesus' emotions, desires, and guidance.

Lent time, being the time where we deepen our relationship with Jesus, is the time where the Holy Spirit develops our inner being. It is important to take him as our real inner Master and listen to Him, or better said: ask him to help us hear Jesus' words, sense and follow His guidance.

Certainly that deeper opening toward Jesus will open us to his body: our brothers. We can't claim to love him if we neglect him in our brothers and sister. So a greater attention to him in them will increase.

Which Direction?

Where would this new faithfulness to Jesus take us? It will make us much more docile and flexible to Jesus' will and guidance. It will make us more humane. It will help us fulfil our normal daily duties in a better way. In fact, it is not leading us astray on a new and strange/unknown path, I mean in the daily basis of our tasks. We will still have 24 hours/day to live, we will still sleep 6-7-8 hours a day, we will still eat, rest and meet our friends, we will still work, have the same duties at home, but paradoxically everything will change. The exterior frame might not change (it might!) but the interior frame will change. It is like when you fall in love: you have somebody in your life. This person is with you all the time, makes the sun brighter and the evening more beautiful. It gives you a new taste, a new meaning. Wouldn't you call this: happiness? A long lasting one? A real one? Yes, indeed.

Conclusion: The Power of Lent

Is Lent doing all this in our life? Can it?? Welcome Lent, welcome the Grace of Lent!

In fact, the core of Lent is Jesus; He is doing all this. His Passion, Death and Resurrection does all this. Lent is a series or Graces we receive, that will prepare us to receive the Big Grace of going in a new way through the Passion-Death-Resurrection of the Lord. We will then be able to Rise more with him and in him.

Let us thank God for increasing his grace in us in Lent, let us embrace Lent, let us be unified by its grace and unique purpose: getting closer to Jesus.

69: The deep meaning of Creation 1/..

By « deep meaning » I frankly think of the “mystical”, “spiritual” meaning. 

You might be surprised, but Philosophy doesn’t address the act of creation itself. Why? Because it supposes a "Creator" and a knowledge about this Creator. And this requires the grace of “faith”, i.e. a superior Light.

So if we really want to understand "Creation", "Nature", all what is created, including ourselves as creatures, we need to accept to make a leap of faith.

Paradoxically, we can touch with our hands all the created things, but we can’t touch with the same hands the Creator. The Creator is certainly bigger and much more beautiful than his Creation, therefore, we need something bigger than our hands to grasp Him. By definition, He transcends his creation, He is of a different nature.

In this post I am not dealing with « proving » that a Creator exists… It is about trying to discover the meaning of Creation.

For that, we have two classical questions :

1- « why are we created ? » and 2- « what is the goal of the Creation of this world ? »

And we have two classical answers that go like that:

1- We are created by God, out His of love for us, we are created in order to know Him and Love Him (and be known and loved by Him).

2- The rest of Creation is there to help us fulfil that Goal (know Him and love Him).

The human being is created "by God" and "for God". You might object: "this is too selfish from God’s part". Well the human being is created “at the Image and at the resemblance of God”, capable of entering in a personal relationship with God. He is created free, as God is free. Free even to say “yes” or “no” to God Himself. In fact, you can only love if you are free. You can’t be forced to love. It has to come from you, not from outside of you.

How the human being is created?

Before Creation (don’t ask me right now “when did it happen?”) we were – as a thought, as a project, as a dream – in God's Mind, in His Thought. We were imagined as sharing His Life, His Love, breathing from the same very “Life” of God.

He Created us according to His Thought, according to what he foresaw and dreamt about us.

Many people think wrongly that the story of “Creation” as it is told in the Book of Genesis (Gn 1-3) is a bit out-dated. I do not share that opinion. For people who want to gather scientific information about planet earth, the Milky-way galaxy, etc., they did open the wrong book. But, for people who are trying to understand "who is God" and "who is the Human being", and "what is the purpose of life", the stories you find in the Bible, especially in first chapters of Genesis, are simply a Golden Mine.

Creation of Eve

For instance, the « days » of Creation are not “days” (we can’t have “days” before having the “sun”), but they still describe the formation of the Human being, who is the highest point on earth, the meeting point between earth and heaven. Man is at the meeting point of two triangles, one from below pointing upwards and one from above pointing downward.

Man is the achievement of the visible Creation, the point where it is aiming, he summarises in himself all Creation, he has in himself all aspects of the visible Creation: water (mineral), vegetation (vegetal), and animal. But he goes further and transcends them.

The Jewish mystical tradition always considered the first chapters of Genesis as being very deep and kept their explanation for people after 40 years old, since they enclose a deep mystical meaning. “mystical” in the sense that it discloses many aspects of the meaning of who is the human being, and who is he in relation to God, and to the intimate relationship with God.

(to be continued)