Por Isaías A. Rodríguez
Life
Some say
that after the Virgin Mary, no other woman has influenced the Church as much as
Saint Teresa of Jesus. Here are some of the words that usually accompany the name
of the saint, - ecstasy, poet, mystic, religious, God, feminist, passion, reformer,
meditation, visionary, delirium, wisdom ... She is a sure point of reference on
the spiritual path.
There were times when there were still scholars and
doctors who asked themselves if the woman was "a human being", when Teresa de
Jesús, with as much passion as intellectual clarity, undertook the reform of Carmel.
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born on March 28, 1515. She was the fifth
of twelve brothers; the two older ones, from a previous marriage of their father,
who when he became a widower married in second marriage with Beatriz de Ahumada.
In addition to the children, Teresa's house was full of books, one of Alonso Sánchez
de Cepeda's greatest hobbies. From there, he knew from a very young age the cavalry
deeds and especially the life of the saints.
So much did her rapport with
these stories come, that at the age of seven he tried to escape with her brother
Rodrigo to become a martyr in Moorish lands. Her adventure ended before he could
cross the walls of the city surprised by her uncle. Frustrated her dream of martyrdom,
the brothers spent their afternoons playing at being hermits in the home garden.
Her joy and restless spirit suffered a severe setback in 1528 with the
death of her mother, when she was just 13 years old. But far from being discouraged,
Teresa then asked the Virgin to adopt her.
Things became complicated again
with the arrival of adolescence. At the age of 16, her father decided to intern
her in the school of the Augustinians, Santa María de la Gracia (1531-1532), when
he saw that the young woman flirted with one of her cousins. His idea was not
that his daughter were a nun. In fact, when Teresa proposed that option to him
in 1535 - at the age of 20 - his father opposed it.
But Teresa, who had
always been a determined woman, fled the house and entered the Carmelite convent
of La Encarnación, where she lived for 27 years. After entering the order, fell
ill, went into a deep coma and was shrouded in open burial three days, and then
three years unable to walk. In our times, this situation would be considered as
an unequivocal sign of non-vocation to religious life. In Teresa it was all the
opposite. In the midst of suffering God gave her the prayer of stillness
and sometimes with the prayer of union (4, 7).
When she returns
to the convent she spends three years in the infirmary. The medical care is totally
insufficient. She resorts to heaven and especially to St. Joseph, through whose
intercession she regained health (6.5). The recovery of health instills in Teresa
the desire to live, to relate, and to go from "vanity to vanity". It is the stage
from 26 to 35 years (1541-1550).
The death of his father Alonso provokes
a very deep loneliness: "Great evil, a single soul" (7, 20). Feels in that moment
how God wakes her up and gives her light in the midst of darkness.
The
reading of the Confessions of Saint Augustine and the unexpected encounter
with a much wounded image of Christ (9, 1), in Lent of 1554, led to the age of
39, what is known as his "conversion". The encounter with the Christ left her
totally disturbed (9, 1). "I wanted to cleanse him of that painful sweat ... and
threw myself close to him, with great tears, I begged him to strengthen me once
and for all so as not to offend him" (9,1). The result was: "It seems to me that
my soul gained great strength" (9, 9); she has "the new feeling of the presence
of God in her" (10, 1). "He was inside me or I was all engulfed in him" (10, 1).
From here, Teresa understood the centrality of Jesus Christ in her life. "Christ
is the doorway to all the secrets of God" (22, 6).
However, although it
is the one [conversion] that almost all writers talk about, it was not Teresa's
definitive "conversion" that would arrive two years later, around the feast of
Pentecost in 1556, at 41 years of age. He recounts extensively in chapters 23
and 24. Let's see only a few passages: "I started the hymn [Veni, Creator] and,
as I was praying it, I had a rapture so sudden that it almost took me away from
me [...]. I understood these words: I no longer want you to have conversation
with men, but with angels [...]. That has been fulfilled well, that I have never
been able to settle in friendship or have consolation or particular love, but
rather to people who understand God and seek to serve Him "(24, 5).
From
there follows a series of mystical experiences and visions. One of the most determinant
of his life took place in the autumn of 1560. It is a vision of hell. This experience
motivates her to be more faithful to her religious vocation and to create a convent
with a new style of serving God and living the fraternity, which will be the convent
of San José, in Ávila.
After this convent come many more, until completing
17. Not without difficulties and even much hostility, also from the Inquisition
itself, which considered her suspected of belonging to the sect of the illuminated.
The alumbradismo more than an intellectual or theological heresy, was a
pseudomistica. The whole society was very sensitive: there had been flagrant cases
of deceit and falsehood, such as the falsified Magdalena de la Cruz, or that of
Blessed Piedrahita, or Sister María de San Domingo. What the alumbrado
wanted was to present himself as a saint, gain relevance in society, create fame
and then, with that fame, do what he wanted: get a good position, get close to
the greats of Spain get economic benefits and even more obscene and bastard things,
how to achieve sexual favors.
In that Spain nobody was free of suspicion.
Who would not be, if even Bartolomé de Carranza, archbishop of Toledo and primate
of Spain, had been imprisoned! He was the patriarch of all Spain, because to the
territory of the Iberian Peninsula you had to add America, Naples, Sicily, Genoa
... Not even free from suspicion was Fray Luis de León, one of the most eminent
theologians of the time. By translating the Song of Songs from Hebrew,
bypassing the prevailing ecclesiastical norm of respecting the Vulgate,
he spent five years of imprisonment. Both were imprisoned by Inquisitor Rodrigo
de Castro Osorio, a cold, calculating, absolutely aseptic, rationalist man. He
did what the inquisitor general, Diego de Espinosa, did not even dare to do.
Teresa
died on October 4, 1582, aged 67, in Alba de Tormes. She was beatified by Paul
V on April 23, 1614 and canonized by Gregory XV in 1622. Paul VI appointed her
doctor of the Church in 1970; the first, of the current three. The other two are:
St. Catherine of Siena and another Discalced Carmelite, St. Therese of the Child
Jesus.
Jesus Sanchez Adalid (priest novelist) has said that the life of
St. Teresa is exciting; on her many novels could be written. Teresa brings together
all the reality of the sixteenth century: the beginning of the Golden Age of Spanish
letters, the Counter-Reformation, the discovery of overseas territories, the Mediterranean
wars, the battle of Lepanto, the siege of Malta, the looting of Rome. All that
is in Teresa's mind.
Works
Leaving aside the poems, in general
od popular roots and improvised, sung and even danced, in the rest of his literary
production we can differentiate, on the one hand, Life with autobiographical story;
the Way of Perfection, which is aimed at religious communities; and those
in which he recounts his inner experience, such as the Meditations on Songs
and The Interior castle. And book of The Foundations.
The
book of Life
When the book of Life fell by chance into the
hands of Edith Stein in the summer of 1921 - the well-known Jewish philosopher,
a disciple of Husserl - in the house of her friend Hewig Conrad Martius one night
after the death of a mutual friend, she opened the book and could not close it
all night, until it was finished. At that moment he exclaimed: "This is the truth".
Her conversion to Christianity led her to become a Carmelite nun. Today we venerate
her as Saint Teresa Benedicta de la Cruz.
In the field of literature,
Fernando Lázaro Carreter affirms that Teresa of Avila, with the book of her Life,
"also founded in the letters", because it initiates in the history of Spanish
literature the genre of the "autobiography of the spirit". In the case of Teresa,
the autobiographical perspective is not only a literary genre, but a confessional
choice. She places in the foreground the personal testimony of the lived experience,
reflected and assimilated.
Damaso Alonso said that "Teresa is the people
and speaks like gold."
Miguel de Unamuno affirmed that "the Spanish language
enjoyed and knew God by Teresa de Jesús".
The book of Life was written
by the saint twice. The first, in the magnificent palace of Luisa de la Cerda,
Toledo (1562), at 47 years old. The second, in the very poor cell of the recently
founded convent of San José (1565) at 50. Lost the first manuscript, we only have
the second one.
Written intentionally anonymous: without cover, without
author's name, without title or date or place of composition, without names of
agents or recipients; the only ones mentioned throughout the work, Fray Pedro
de Alcántara, Father Francisco de Borja, and the "Father Maestro Juan de Ávila";
in anonymity also the letter sending the manuscript on the last page. And she
asks that before giving it to Maestro Juan de Ávila, a copy of the book is made
so that no one recognizes his handwriting.
When it was edited, Fray Luis
de León entitled it: The Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus and some of the mercies
that God made to her, written by herself at the behest of her confessor, to whom
she sent and directed it. "Towards the end of her life, the author writes:
"I entitled this book 'of the mercies of God'" (Cta. 415.1: of 1581), and in other
places she speaks of it as, Book of Life; Big Book; My soul.
Teresa
writes her book at the suggestion of Inquisitor Soto, "he told her in 1564 to
write everything and all her life, without leaving anything, to the Maestro de
Ávila who was a man who understood much about prayer".
The manuscript
was denounced to the Inquisition in 1574 by the intriguing princess of Éboli,
Mrs. Ana de Mendoza, who mocked the book, read it to her maids and friends, and
put it in the hands of the inquisitors, accusing it of being a heresy.
Finally
it is Domingo Báñez who delivers the manuscript in Madrid to Inquisitor Soto,
the same one who had suggested to the Saint to write it in 1564. The Inquisition
asks Báñez to censor the manuscript. He read it, wrote down and approved. He feels
a little disgusted with the "visions and revelations" (as the saint herself was
sometimes discomforted by extraordinary phenomena); but he is firmly persuaded
that he is not a "deceiver" woman; "She speaks so plainly, good and bad, and with
so much desire to succeed, that he does not doubt her good intentions". But he
adds: "That it was not convenient for her to go public in this book while she
lived, but to keep it in the Holy Office until we see her rest of the story of
this woman." It was strangely kept by the Inquisition, until after Teresa´s death.
Anne of Jesus got it back in 1586 and placed in the hands of Fray Luis de León
who edited it for publication two years later in Salamanca 1588. The autograph
is in the Escorial.
For this reason, Father Gracián, a Carmelite, adviser
to the saint, considers it definitively lost and suggests that she write it again,
but without autobiographical references. The saint obeys and, surprise! Composes
the Interior Castle.
Also in 1588, the book reappears in Barcelona
in a pirate edition, "Jaime Cendrat's house". And before a year has passed, Fray
Luis reissues it in Salamanca, by Guillermo Foquel himself, in 1589. It is translated
into Italian (Rome 1599), into French (Paris 1601), into Latin (Mainz 1603), etc.
The Teresian autograph has been reproduced twice in facsimile; in Madrid, in 1873-74,
"by the Catholic Fototipográfica society, under the direction of Dr. Vicente de
la Fuente"; and in Burgos in 1999, under the direction of Tomás Álvarez: three
volumes; facsimile the first, "paleographic transcription the second" and "historical
note the third" (Edit Monte Carmelo).
The initial years of the existence
of Life were, therefore, hazardous. "The truth suffers, but does not perish,"
Teresa wrote in a letter to the Carmelites of Seville (3-5-1579) with a great
phrase of the many that come out suddenly when taking the pen.
So Teresa
writes by mandate of her confessors, but it is enough to be a little attentive
to the reading of the work so that one immediately realizes that she is pretending
something else. In the last lines of the work we discover the character of the
book: to communicate "this my ruined life" (40, 24). With this he wants "that
for me something should be praised to the Lord" (40, 24) and she wishes to "engross
the souls of such a high good" (18, 8).
The book of Life is not an autobiography
- in the strict sense of gender - although it evidently speaks of herself in relation
to other people and to God in the context of her place and time. To be a biography,
there is a lack of facts and a description of the general environment, even if
it gives extraordinarily eloquent brushstrokes. It is a prayer book where Teresa
speaks and writes also for that God who has made Teresa's little story a story
of salvation. She is praying when she narrates. Discovers her inner motives, her
soul. In fact, when she gives the book to her confessor, she says: "Here I give
you my soul." It´s her soul, her personality, what she is stripping. What she
claims to emphasize in her writing is not her external life, but the action of
God in her. God has always been present in her life.
Teresa's work is
narrative theology, speaking of God in the thread of some facts and not so much
according to a doctrinal scheme. Jesus is the center that places everything, a
focus of light that illuminates everything, a friend that never fails. Without
the reality of Jesus, the life of Teresa and that of the book of Life would be
like an illusory unfolding. She is called Teresa de Jesus and he shows himself
as Jesus of Teresa.
The book of Life is the most personal, the most alive,
dynamic and communicative coming from the pen of the mother. It is the one who
best identifies with Teresa and who best presents her to us. Despite the centuries
that separate us from its writing, continues talking today. It speaks of God,
of the supreme and personal Reality, of the most sacred humanity of Jesus Christ,
of Truth and of Mercy. And it does with humility and gratitude. Teresa is aware
that the gifts received from God are not exclusively personal, but have an orientation
towards the common good of the Church.
From the light received in the
vital encounter with Jesus Christ (9, 1), Teresa reads her life as providentially
guided by God; she is and feels herself an immediate recipient of God's love.
Writes as she says in the prologue "to the glory and praise of the Lord." Teresa
wants to speak well of God, to "bless" him, and to evangelize others, to show
that God is good, heals, forgives, encourages, saves. The existence of Teresa
is deeply penetrated by the apostolic and evangelizing dimension. Her Life is
a testimony of the power and goodness of God.
One of the values received
and transmitted by Teresa is that of friendship: human and divine. Her idea of
God is that of a God-friend. Jesus Christ: "What a good friend you are, Lord!"
(8, 6). "He is a true friend" (22, 6).
Definition of prayer as: "Nothing
else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently
to be alone with Him who we know loves us" (8, 5). "God deals with the soul with
so much friendship and love that you do not suffer to write" (27, 9).
Division
of the book:
1. Narrative chapters from 1 to 10: Period of her
life. Memory of the family home (1-3).
Teresa gets inspiration from the reading
of patristic wisdom:
St. Jerome (3, 4 and 7). Reading his letters
is what encourages her to take the final step. She received the advice and text
from his uncle Pedro Sánchez de Ahumada. The radicalism of Jerome must have shaken
her to the point of daring to take such an important step. It may be that the
reading of Jerome also put her in touch with models and characters of the female
monasticism he directed, that is, the presence of women in the spiritual life.
Through the letters she also knew the world of the desert.
St. Gregory
the Great (5, 8; 30, 10; 31, 11). The Morales about Job. A work of
great influence on medieval and modern spirituality, and read by Teresa in the
Castilian version of Alonso Álvarez de Toledo (1527), where she not only could
connect with the suffering biblical figure of Job, but also receive important
spiritual contents and even teaching for the life of prayer.
St. Augustine
(9, 7-10; 13.3; 40.6). The confessions. Teresa has seen herself in
at the model of the converted sinner that was offered here. Teresa situates the
reading of Augustine at the moment of what is considered his first conversion
(1554), being already a nun in the Incarnation of Ávila (9, 7) and having access
to a Spanish version of the Augustinian book by Sebastián Toscano and published
in Salamanca. In that reading, she observes the coordinate of grace/sin, divine
call/infidelity that responds to a scheme inaugurated by Augustine with such success
and that Teresa tries to repeat, at least in what is considered the first part
of his autobiographical writing (1-9). ). Not only was she attracted by the example
of the holy converts (King David, Paul, Magdalene), but also in Augustine she
had something specific, that of a text where the successive steps of his encounter
with Christ were told in detail, as also happened to Teresa.
"I am very fond
of St. Augustine, because the monastery where I was secular was of his order and
also because I was a sinner, that in the saints that after being so the Lord returned
to Himself I found much consolation" (9, 7).
This can lead us to think that
our writer in certain moments loads the inks too much and that in her look towards
the past she can exaggerate by wanting to transmit a posteriori what really was
not so much. She was not a sinner like Augustine and did not need such a radical
conversion.
Another aspect that Teresa may have received from the Augustinian
saying is the dialogical meaning of her written narrative, as she already states
from the beginning. She has in mind some specific recipients of his writing, the
group of people whose opinion she has subjected his spiritual life and, above
all, the Dominican García de Toledo, whom he addresses from time to time, as if
the story was organized in a form of continuous conversation. But the dialogical
sense reaches in her mind, in addition to those possible readers, a more important
interlocutor, because her personal history conceives it as a drama that is resolved
between a YOU and a ME. This interlocutor always present is God. And that is why,
very often, the story changes tone and becomes a climate of prayer that allows
a spontaneous exit of acclamations, invocations, thanksgiving, petitions, etc.
In other words, she is praying.
Therefore, it can be said that Life is a prayer
book where she also speaks and writes for that God who has made Teresa's little
story a story of salvation.
John Cassian, the monk of Marseille, transmitted
the spirituality of Eastern monasticism in the West through two titles: The
Institutions and Monastic Collations. The primitive monasticism (Antonio,
Paul hermit, Euphrosyne, Hilarion ...) always fascinated Teresa, if only because
of what had happened to the Carmelite tradition that, being a medieval order that
arose in Palestine, was looking for more ancient, oriental backgrounds and biblical,
especially in the world of the inhabitants of the desert.
In Cassian's Collations,
as Maria Bautista says in the process of beatification, she liked to read, even
at night, the anecdotes and lives of the ancient Fathers of the Desert, of which
she certainly did not take the extreme nature of many of their vital options.
It also receives light, through the exercise of the interiority of Francisco de
Osuna, (4, 7). For the practice of the sacraments (4.7, 5.9, 6.2-4). For the devotion
and devotions of the Church (6, 6: devotion to the Virgin (1, 1) (1, 6) to Saint
Joseph (7, 8), all wrapped up in the transcendent love of the prayer life.
2.
Doctrinal chapters from 11 to 22: the initiation and configuration of the
experience with Christ (These chapters are added later to give an understanding
of the graces that will follow from chapters 23-31).
What can she do for the
Lord? "To be as such" is the Lord's will, and he loves her as "servant of the
Lord" (11, 1).
Vegetable garden and watering method:
a. Extracting water
from the well with cauldron (ascetic phase) (11-13). Four tips: decentering from
things and focusing only on Jesus Christ; the cross from the beginning; avoid
mirages; the spiritual master
b. To draw water from the well by turning the
crank of a water wheel and by aqueducts: (mystical phase: prayer of stillness,
"recollection prayer", "prayer of divine tastes" (14-15).) This is a phase that
no one "can gain through any efforts they can make" (14, 2) .When the downs come
"do not abandon the prayer" (15, 3). "If you do not leave it, God will bring you
to the port of salvation" (15, 3).
c. To channel the water of the river or
of the font (spring) (mystical phase: the faculties can no longer work (16-17).)
We must leave ourselves completely in the arms of God (17, 2).
d. The water
irrigates the garden as rain from heaven (mystical phase: union prayer) (18-19).
Irruption of God's communication: rapture. The soul is conscious of living on
earth, but she finds herself as dead. The effects of this prayer are presented
in chapter 19. And it speaks of "tears of joy" (19, 1), of "courage" (19, 2),
of the understanding of one's own life in the light of the mercy of God (19, 5).
The fruit of this prayer is the "deep humility" and perceives how absurd it is
to dedicate life to money and pleasure (20).
3. Chapters from 23 to
31: the new life of extraordinary graces. New book, because the protagonist will
be God himself (23, 1).
The entrance of Teresa into the mysterious
world of mystical experience occurs at the beginning of 1554, at 39 years of age;
this is how she exposes it in Life (cc 23 to 31). From the sporadic mystical experiences
and very brief previous ones (10, 1), Teresa went to mystical states where "Her
Majesty began to give me very ordinary prayer of stillness, and often of union,
which lasted a long time" (23, 2).
"The Lord said to me: do not be sorry,
for I will give you a living book" (26, 6). In this way she puts into the mouth
of God one of the sharpest and very few criticisms against the inquisitorial policy
that were launched from within the Spanish monarchy (Teófanes Egido).
Let's
say something about the grace of the transverberation. Teresa will refer to that
mystical phenomenon several times. Let's see what she says in Life, since it is
the most brilliant description (29, 13-14):
- "The Lord wanted me to see this
vision sometimes ..." A celestial being intervenes, an angel "very beautiful",
"face so fiery ..." and brandishes in his hand a "long golden dart", and "at the
end of the iron seemed to have a little fire" "seemed to put (the dart) by the
heart sometimes and that I came to the bowels" with love and pain, in the soul
and body, "and left me all burned in great love of God." With "great pain", "very
great pain", "he made me give those moans". But "not corporal pain but spiritual,
although the body does not stop participating something, and even a great deal".
"The days that this lasted, I walked as if in a daze: I desired neither to see
or to speak, but to clasp my suffering close to me, for to me was greater glory
than all creation."
"The loving exchange that takes place between the soul
and God is so sweet that I bet Him in His goodness to give a taste of this love
to anyone who thinks I am lying.
All this is lived by the wounded person,
in full consciousness, without ecstasy. Teresa will repeat that the wound "is
not where the pain is felt here, but in the very deep and intimate soul". Teresa
being a person who has suffered and used to great pain, she cannot help it then
but give great cries. "I saw a person that I truly thought was dying ..." But
the wound was not for death but for the crucible of love. It serves to drain the
spirit of all impure scum and prepare it for the final encounter with God.
Few
mystical episodes of Saint Teresa have had the resonance that in the most varied
sectors has had the grace of the dart.
3. Chapters 36 to 40: how she
lives then and contemplates the eschatological horizon of his life.
Vision
of the blessed in heaven (38, 1; 39; 22-23).
Vision of the Holy Spirit (38,
9-11).
Feeling inside "in the breasts of the Father" (38, 17-18).
Vision
of the souls that are condemned (38, 24-25).
Vision of the devil (38, 23).
Vision of the souls that are saved (38, 27-31).
God responds to your requests
(39, 1-5).
Revelation of the mystery of the Trinity (39.25).
Vision of
the ascent to the heaven of the Virgin (39, 26).
She longs for consummate
union with the Lord, but she knows how to wait. Triple lesson: a) The discovery
of the "divine truth" that entails the desire not to speak but of very true things
(40, 3). b) The meeting of the wonderful and clear light of Christ (40, 5-6).
c) The verification that God is "like a very clear diamond" and this diamond is
"much greater than the whole world" and that "everything we do is seen in this
diamond", because "he encloses everything in himself" that "there is nothing that
comes out of this greatness" (40, 10). "May it please the Lord that I did not
err in doing so since my intention and desire to succeed was to do what is right
and to obey and that through me He might receive some praise, which is what I
have been beseeching Him for many years. Since I do not have the deeds that praise
Him, I have dared to recount this dissipated life off mine" (40, 24).
Evaluation
of the Book
The great Theresianist, Tomás Álvarez, makes the following
evaluation of the book of Life. "It is the most dense and richest of the Teresian
writings. And it occupies a position of high value in the concert of Christian
spirituality or even universal. Among the most valuable aspects of the book we
can highlight two: one literary and the other doctrinal. Namely:
On a
merely literary level, Life is an incomparable document of the Castilian
language at the middle of the 16th century. Teresa is a faithful witness of the
evolution of the language at that time. Her narration, and even the graphic picture
of the autograph, is a true reflection of the language spoken by the people in
the heart of Castile, at a time when almost all of the books reflect rather the
cultured language with its Latinizing propensity. The inflections of the story,
the assembly of the narrative planes - the external and the mystical introspective
- the pathos of the story in certain trances, make it absolutely original.
But
its religious value is much higher. The story of Teresa testifies with force and
clarity the presence of God in her life. Affirming that loving presence is the
supreme reason of the entire book. For that, she writes, not to make literature,
but to inform the reader -believer or not- that God has made Himself unequivocally
present in her life. Suffice any passage: "I often marveled to think of the great
goodness of god and my soul delighted in seeing His amazing magnificence and mercy.
May He be blessed by all, for I have seen clearly that He does not fail to repay,
eve in this life, every good desire"(4, 10)".
Obras consultadas
Álvarez,
Tomás: Diccionario de Santa Teresa, 2ª edición, Monte Carmelo, 2006, Burgos.
Álvarez, Tomás: St. Teresa of Avila, 100 Themes on Her Life and Work,
-translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, ICS Publications, Washington, DC. 2011.
Maroto,
Daniel de Pablo: El teresianismo, teología, espiritualidad y moral, Monte
Carmelo, 2015, Burgos.
Sancho, Javier y Cuartas Rómulo: El Libro de la
Vida de Santa Terea de Jesús, Actas del I Congreso Internacional Teresiano,
CITeS, Monte Carmelo, 20112, Burgos.
The Collected Works of St. Teresa
of Avila, translated by Kieeran Kavanaugh and Oilio rodrígue, Volume I, ICS
Publications Washington, DC. 1976
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