Teresa did not have the language and many of the insights about adddiction that Gerald May enjoyed. Through the gift of modern science and medicine, May has gifted us with a truly liberating message about the the dominance of addiction in the human experience. Yet Teresa, through the depth of her mystical wisdom, offers some effective and penetrating guidance for those struggling with addiction in our day.
This great Carmelite saint tells us prayer is the key to this journey. Teresa offers a program to help us to pray. For her, prayer is always a loving encounter with God who transforms and purifies us preparing and opening us for final destiny, union with God. To strengthen this prayer, Teresa insists on a program based on humility, detachment, and charity. These three virtues have a dynamic relation with prayer. They bring an order to our life. This order helps us to pray. At the same time, prayer helps us to grow in these life-giving virtues which, in turn, help us to battle our addictions.
The Three Virtues: Humility, Detachment, and Charity
Humility: Teresa repeats regularly that humility is the truth. Our fundamental reality is that God is the Creator and we are the creature. Humility lets us embrace this certain truth.
For Teresa, humility is not about a loss of self-esteem. This is a dishonest and damaging misuse of humility. Such a state is disturbing and conflicted. Teresa, on the contrary, says, “Humility does not disturb or disquiet however great it may be; it comes with peace, delight, and calm…this humility expands the soul and enables it to serve God more.” (W. 10.2)
To know and embrace the humble truth about ourselves is a source of our freedom. This is the same freedom that comes with withdrawal from addiction. We slowly begin to see more clearly who God is. This realization is the essential source of our humility. We also see the truth about ourselves with the gift of this virtue. Humility opens us up to the necessary personal conversion that leads to constant growth in self-understanding. It lets us grasp the wonder of God calling us into the Mystery of Love even in our broken state with all of our addictions.
Detachment: By detachment Teresa means that we must put all things in their proper perspective. We need to relate to all things in a way that they bring us closer to God. This particular relationship, that hobby, our cell phone, our favorite entertainments and all of our other possessions will either bring us closer to God or be a barrier in this search. The effects of original sin, often displayed in our addictions, drive us to make certain creatures our idols. In our culture, one of the great forces pulling us away from God is in the hunger for security. The three false gods in this deceit are possessions, power and relationships. Detachment attacks this perversion of reality, destroying the obscurity of our deceiving hearts.
True detachment reveals our fundamental longing for God and sets our heart free. Jesus’ gospel teachings about detachment all are about learning to love. Only when things are seen in the right light, with a detached heart, do they open the way to God. Otherwise, things are used only to prop up our selfish agenda, contrary to our goal, to seek God.
Teresa had no problem with the world. Its richness and beauty’s true meaning, however, shine out most clearly when creation helps us in our search for God. She had arrived at this vision of detachment as part of her long spiritual journey, dominated by her struggle with her addictions. Detachment allowed her to possess herself in a way that made her free of all things in the pursuit of God.
Charity: Charity is the proper acceptance of others. Love expressed in charity for our sisters and brothers is the index of our spiritual growth. For Teresa, the authenticity of our spiritual journey is measured by the quality of our interpersonal relations. This neighborly love moves us towards the center where God awaits.
This call to communal love is an exceptionally difficult barrier and challenge on our spiritual journey. Our selfishness most often is an expression of our addictions. Our self-absorption has incredible power to twist things to our advantage. We easily fall into a pattern of self-righteousness. Teresa understood this well. She said, “Beg our Lord to give you this perfect love of neighbor. Let his Majesty have a free hand, for He will give you more than you know how to desire because you are striving and making every effort to do what you can about this love.” (IC.5.3.12)
Teresa has a simple example of how profound this practice is in ordinary life. She says if there is a person that we find difficult, we should go out of our way to support and help that person. If that individual receives praise, we ought to rejoice as if the praise is for us.
The journey to God is an interaction between these three virtues and prayer. We need to pray to be humble, detached, and loving. This is especially so if we are going to break loose of our addictions. This process is the work of a lifetime. It is a slow, steady development with little leapfrogging ahead. A necessary, incessant determination is at the heart of this fundamental calling to walk with Jesus.
