We have come to a point in life where we are fundamentally dissatisfied. We are willing to take the spiritual journey more seriously. We begin to pray. At first, most often, it is easy enough and comforting. However, the very thrill of victory draws us into the agony of defeat. There is a price to pay. This leads us to the fundamental problem ambivalence. We see the spiritual journey as important but it has to work in the context of our clear personal commitments. We are not anxious to shatter our Schedule, to give up too much time, change our priorities and especially address our relationships good and bad.This is the heart of the problem. Behind the call to pilgrimage to God is a God who wants more. We will slowly realice the divine price tag goes way beyond our wildest dreams. Prayer brings us face to face with the ambiguity of the human condition. Our heart is pulled in many directions: between the divine and mundane, between the body and the Spirit, between trascendent and the transient, between surrender and control.
Prayer reveals the depth of our fragmented heart. These contradictions often hinder and even consume our prayer time. The tapes of our hurts play over and over in our mind, the pull of our attachments and the fear of change between begin to make prayer a troublesome challenge. We all have our non-negotiables, the things we do not intend to change. God often surfaces these specific ítems in prayer, usaully only one at a time. This is not a pleasant time. Often we escape the confrontation in the confort of our distractions.
There is need for order at a personal level. This comes slowly from prayer. Yet prayer needs the support of personal change in our life. This is where the program or Teresa fits in. She insists that humility, detachment and charity are essential virtues throughout the prayer journey as its foundation.
The dilema is that we need prayer to grow in humility, detachment and charity. Our commitment to pray then is a dynamic relation between the virtues changing how we live and prayer strengthening these very same virtues. There is a mutual growth cycle that deepens the two factors to the final goal of integration.
The three virtues lead us to a profound sense of acceptance of all aspects of our life. This is the beginning of withdrawal from the trap of ambiguity that plagues the human experience. This acceptance tends to bring order within our life. We accept our relity in all its ambivalence, confusión and brokeness. This acceptance which is the root of humility, detachment and charity opens us to the call of love and away from the lies of selfishness, misuse of God’s creatures and hostility to our sisters and brothers.
Prayer brings growth in the virtues. The virtues bring Peace and openess to enrich the prayer. The two gradually convey a growing sense of order and Peace within the human heart.
Detachment is placing all God’s creatures in the right order. It is a basic acceptance of ourselves. We gradually see the distortions of a fragmented heart that are constantly manufacturing false gods under our control which, in turn, create illusions of self-importance. The gift of detachmente can free us from something as overwhelming as an addiction to drugs or alcohol or as simple as giving up a favorite TV show or football game to help someone. Detachment is a basic freedom anything and everything that offers an obstacle to doing God’s will.
Charity is the proper acceptance of others. As much as Teresa treasured prayer she was insistent that love for our brothers and sisters was the index our spiritual growth. For her the inner journey is validated and measured by the quality of our interpersonal relations. This love is the essential condition for movement towards the center where God awaits.
It is hard to pray when the heart is laden with personal hurts and disrespect for our dignity. When we bring the distortions of our addictions, great and small, to pray it is a painful task to center our heart on God. When our heart is consumed with animosity and anger, prayer happens with difficulty if at all.
Humility, detachment and charity bring a growing sense of order and peace. They produce an ambience open to the sacred and nourish a freedom from all the divisions flowing from our fragmented heart. The virtues do not eliminate the problems in our life. They do, However, help us cope with them in a more serene and accepting way.
This is the center of Teresa’s program. It is a call to live in a way that expresses the truth of humility, the freedom of detachment and the wonder of love for all. This produces peace that nourishes a deeper prayer which, in turn, generates a growth in accptance of our reality in humility, detachment and love for all God’s children.
While inner peace is the goal, it is only achieved in spiritual warfare. The battle between prayer and life is relentless in its demands. The virtues are weak in the beginning but gradually grow with the help of prayer. Prayer seeks this growth to prop up its staying power in the battle against its own inner turmoil. Meanwhile, we slowly gain a measure peace that help us with the myhem of life. The process of the mutuality of growth between the virtues and prayer continues for ever deepening levels of mutual support.
In all of it something special is happening. There is a new and free self that is evolving out of the dynamic. This personal transformation flows from a new relation of the self in humility, to our possessions in detachment and to others in love. This is our goal until God gets serious and takes over in contemplation to finish the personal transformation.
