Teresa of Avila on Prayer
Teresa’s fundamental insight is wonderfully simple but revolutionary. She understood herself in relation to God. God is the Creator, the fount of compassion, mercy and love without limits or conditions. God is calling us into the life of the Mystery of Love and the sea of mercy. Teresa was the creature, sinful but loved and forgiven with mercy and compassion penetrating and blanketing all of her life.Her goal was crystal clear. It was a movement to be one with God, despite her sinful condition. Her deep personal prayer let her experience God as the measure of reality, rather than her personal needs and advantages of a self-centered life.
The sin that Teresa is talking about is not some crass immoral activity. It is the basic distortion of the heart: choosing creatures over God, choosing the lesser gods rather than the true God. Teresa is concerned how we relate to all things and every person. All relationships need to rooted and directed to our pursuit of God. Otherwise, we are living a lie.
All of this found expression in what was transpiring in her daily experience. Her teaching on prayer came from this dynamic encounter between her acceptance of her broken condition and the overwhelming gift of God’s mercy.
While Teresa never tires of emphasizing the importance of prayer, she balances it often with a message of the importance of service and presence to life’s many demands. She always saw Christ in the needs of her neighbors. She insisted that we serve Christ by meeting the needs of all such as “taking care of the sick, helping with household chores, working with the humblest tasks that are all ways of serving the Guest who comes to be with us.” (Way of Perfection 17:6)
Here is a list of some of her most important insights on prayer:
- Self-knowledge allowed her to see herself in relation to God as the Creator and moved her away from the deception of self-centeredness.
- She saw life as the great grace because it is pregnant with the possibility of new love and freedom as one move to the true center in the “give and take” of daily experience.
- She understood the need to accept reality as it is and not as something for us to control. In accepting reality, we are open to the pull of God’s call even if it seems contrary to our plans and interests.
- She saw her problems and difficulties as real opportunities. They were sources of freedom in her pursuit of God even though they appeared to conflict with her personal goals, desires and self-interest.
- She learned to interpret reality by the measure of how it brought her closer to God and not as a source of her comfort, prestige, and power. This is what she meant by “Get Real.”
Teresa’s program of humility, detachment and love for her brothers and sisters is the means to overcome the inner turmoil and disorder, the consequences of sin, within us. These internal disturbances are the dominant obstacles to prayer. They are the product of a divided heart pulling us in many directions. When we do not pray regularly with depth, we short-circuit the entire quest to enter the Mystery of Love and Mercy which is God.
Teresa and Community
I would like to consider Teresa’s message on community by reflecting on two very ordinary gatherings. The first is a Thanksgiving Day dinner. The second is a church meeting to plan the liturgy. The choice of these two meetings is arbitrary. It could be any kind of gathering where people share values and support.Experience tells us that these two meetings hold many possibilities, from truly deep experience of communion to destructive conflicts with all kinds of variations in between.
Teresa’s messages on self-knowledge and charity offer some genuinely helpful insights.
In the first three Dwelling Places of The Interior Castle there is a progressive growth in the early stages of self-knowledge. In fact, this period of growth covers a large span of self-awareness. All the growth is mainly the product of personal effort. In fact, it is basically ego-centric and not God -centered. Nevertheless, as Teresa explains in the third Dwelling Places, there is a growing maturity in accepting our personal sinfulness.
With the switch to the fourth and the following Dwelling Places with the increasing experience of contemplation, God is progressively involved. The light of the divine presence produces an intensely transformative change culminating in the Spiritual Marriage in Seventh Dwelling Places.
The obvious question is, what does this have to do with our two gatherings?
The answer is human selfishness and how to avoid its damaging consequences. The conflicts that arise are almost always the result of a deeply personal agenda that is blind to another point of view. This comes from a lack of self-knowledge.
As we progress in the spiritual journey, development in self-knowledge will bring an ever more powerful inner light to the situation. What once was a bitterly divisive either/or view of the issue now opens up to several reasonable options. It is the gift of wisdom that guides the discussion away from the conflict and towards a reasonable and charitable search for reconciliation and resolution. The driving force of healing and bridge-building emerges from the wisdom figures that enjoy the God-given gift of deep self-knowledge and charity to move beyond self-interest to the interest of others and the community. They bring the light of love and truth to the dialogue
When necessary, they are the first to forgive and call for patience and understanding for all the members of the group. Their goal is a healing love not a self-righteous agenda.
Teresa has a beautiful teaching that displays this curing reality.
“But the safe path for the soul that practices prayer will be not to bother about anything or anyone and to pay attention to itself and to pleasing God…. But let us strive always to look at the virtues and good deeds we see in others and cover their defects with the thought of our own great sins. This is a manner of acting that although we cannot do so with perfection right away, gradually gains for us a great virtue that is: consider all others better than ourselves. In this way with the help of God one begins to acquire this virtue, for it is necessary in all things; and when it is lacking, all our efforts are useless.” (Life 13:12)
