Teresa’s Prayer

Call to Acceptance

“Be not afraid” or similar wording, appears as a Scripture verse over three hundred times in the Bible.  It always reveals a sense of God’s presence.

Teresa understood this loving providence as the foundation of reality.  It is the center of her message in her famous bookmark prayer.  The prayer is an invitation into the mystery of God’s loving presence.  It invites us to accept life as it is.  For Teresa life draws us into God’s love.  Life is the greatest grace.  Jesus revealed this this power of acceptance when he prayed in the Garden, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” (Lk 22:42)

Letting go of the illusions of our control of reality is a central part of Teresa’s teachings.  Letting go and letting God in a surrender of accepting our life situation is a centerpiece of Teresa’s message.  This evolves from a persistent growth in our spiritual maturity.  Most of us have a long way to go.  We need to continue the struggle. We can only make our way one step at a time.

This acceptance does not make us robots.  We have responsibility to live life to the full with integrity and authenticity.  We do this by developing our talents.  We need to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving.  Eventually we will confront the arbitrariness and dark side of reality beyond our control: sickness, inequality, prejudice, fractured relationships and countless other dimensions of life that we just cannot cut and paste to resolve the problem.  Slowly we learn that the problems are not the problem.  The issue is how we respond to the problems.  This is the critical role of acceptance.

We all find ourselves somewhere on the journey.  When life with its many harsh challenges comes in at a level beyond our present state of acceptance, the beautiful prayer goes out the window in the storm of our anxieties and fears.  Letting go of the illusion of our control of reality, the fundamental message of both Teresa’s prayer and her program, is the centerpiece of our spiritual maturity and most of us are just not there yet.

I remember a glorious moment when I was twelve years old.  The White Sox, my favorite baseball team, was on an extended winning streak that marked the demise of several decades of mediocrity.  During this winning streak I created a surefire way to help them win.  While I listened and they needed help I knelt on the couch and stuffed my head into the corner of the couch.

My sisters told me I was crazy but the Sox kept winning, until they lost.  My failure to help the White Sox was the beginning of a long and continuing passage of learning I could not control reality.  I painfully withdrew from my stuffed head posture and more painfully accepted the fact that the Yankees were a better team.

I have spent the rest of my life creating much more sophisticated processes of trying to control reality but all have been equally futile in the end.  I suppose you would describe it as strong-willed, close minded, ideological and even an unrealistic dreamer.  The one thing they had in common was a lack of acceptance and a passionate desire to make reality fit my terms.  I think I share this practice with most people.

Teresa’s prayer is an invitation to get real, to be open to life in all its brokenness and limits as well as its beauty and wonder.  This is where we encounter God not in the illusions and deceptions of our self-centered heart.

The values of a consumer society tend to be a great distortion of reality.  Take youth as an example.  Youth is not a priority in God’s agenda.  We all are not getting younger and that is God’s plan.  Otherwise the clock would be changed.  We often are conflicted between staying young and facing the reality of preparing for an older future.   Acceptance tells us to get the life insurance but also to be open to that aging future with its myriad encounters with our limits.  Being real goes far beyond having the right financial plan.

Reality presents a context where the tension between good and evil, love and hatred still offers us many choices we would rather not have.  Yet the gospel message is quite clear.  God tells us there is life in the midst of death.  “For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it. (Mk 8:35)

Our problems and tragedies offer an unceasing possibility of new life.  God has the last word.  It is not hatred but love, not prejudice and isolation but inclusion and reconciliation, not violence but peace and not death but life. This last word revealed in Christ crucified and Christ Risen penetrates all of reality.  This is why the way forward is to accept life in all its expressions.

Teresa’s program, revealed simply but beautifully in her famous prayer, is embedded in acceptance.  She calls us to simply embrace reality whether its setting is of hope or ambiguity.  She is clear that life is as it is, not as we want to be.  Life holds the seeds of our ultimate joy and fulfillment “May nothing disturb you” because in the end God has a better plan.

Accepting reality boils down to accepting it on every level of life: acceptance of self, acceptance of others and acceptance of God.  “Everything passes.  God does not go away.  Patience can attain anything.”

Teresa spells out this acceptance in her teaching on the virtues of detachment, humility and charity.  Detachment is self-acceptance; humility is acceptance of God and fraternal charity is acceptance of others.

Humility is the truth.  This virtue helps us see our total dependence on God as our Creator.  We are the creatures, sinful and broken.  Humility is the acceptance of this complete reliance on a loving and merciful God. As we grow deeper in prayer there is slow revelation of self that is consumed in every manner of self-absorption.  Humility helps us to face this painful self-knowledge. As humility grows we begin to see more clearly that all good things come from God.

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 detachment 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 draws us into a freedom from 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 unrelenting 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.

In Teresa’s program there is a spiral of growth in the dynamic relations of the virtues, prayer and acceptance.  They mutually support each other’s growth along the way into the mystery of our loving God who calls us in the midst of life.  He, who has God within, lacks nothing.

In the five steps of dying one finally arrives at the peaceful surrender in accepting the reality of death.  In Teresa’s prayer and program we are called to the same acceptance.  In this surrender we are blessed with the beginning of heaven here and now.  God is enough.