From the Pastor’s Desk
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
One of the towering figures of the Christian mystical and contemplative tradition is the extraordinary 16th century Spanish nun from Avila, Spain -- St. Teresa of Jesus. Highly gifted “both naturally and supernaturally”, her extensive writings covers the remarkable struggle of the Christian endeavor toward union with God. “Her writings”, says author Julienne McLean, “reveal a powerful and penetrating honesty and intimacy, a complete integrity, an essential pragmatism and compassion, but above all, a deep humanity that has hardly been surpassed in the whole corpus of Christian mystical literature.”
Yet, her walk with Jesus began like it does for many of us. Her attachment to her sins and the allurements of the world acted like anchors chained to her legs, keeping her from advancing in her spiritual life. She struggled to serve “two masters”, in the language of this Sunday’s Gospel reading. St. Teresa writes:
I was living an extremely burdensome life, because in prayer I understood more clearly my faults. On the one hand God was calling; on the other hand I was following the world. All the things of God made me happy; those of the world held me bound. It seems I desired to harmonize these two contraries—so inimical to one another…. In prayer I was having great trouble, for my spirit was not proceeding as lord but as slave. And so I was not able to shut myself within myself (which was my whole manner of procedure in prayer); instead, I shut within myself a thousand vanities.
For nearly twenty years, she struggled in her quagmire of vanity. She was careless with regards to sin, especially indulging in useless gossip with people who visited her in the convent. Her attachment to her venial sins and other worldly pleasures kept Teresa from increasing her desire for God. In many ways she was like the rich man who asked Jesus, “’Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” (Luke 18:18) The answer shook the honest and earnest man to the core. He strove to follow God’s will by keeping the commandments but failed where it mattered most, namely in his heart. He simply could not give himself completely over to the Lord. “’How hard it is,” Jesus said, “for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!” The rich man, like St. Teresa, simply could not let go of the world.
In an act of pure gift from God, the future saint was given the grace to detach itself from worldly affairs. If she continued to give Jesus half her heart, she’d be adrift in the abyss of spiritual mediocrity. For that reason, she exhorted her fellow nuns in the convent to uproot all worldly distractions in her book The Way to Perfection:
The whole point is that we should give ourselves to Him with complete determination, and we should empty the soul in such a way that He can store things there or take them away as though it were His own property. And since His Majesty has the rights of ownership, let us not oppose Him. And since He doesn’t force our will, He takes what we give Him; but He doesn’t give Himself completely until we give ourselves completely.
In Christ,
Fr. Brian J. Soliven
