The readings today are perfectly suited for the celebration of the saint whose feast it is: Teresa of Avila. "All creation is groaning as it awaits in hope its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the Lord." "Your words, Lord, are Spirit and Life." "Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing!"
Teresa understood and lived out these words to the maximum.
She was born in 1515 in a small town near Avila, Spain into a large, aristocratic, Castilian family with Jewish ancestry. She entered the Carmelite monastery in Avila in 1535 at the age of twenty. She was subject to a series of illnesses – some of which were very intense. It was while convalescing from one of them that she meditated on an image of the wounded Christ and underwent a spiritual conversion. She wrote: "When I fell to prayer again and looked at Christ hanging poor and naked upon the Cross, I felt that I could not bear to be rich. So I besought him with tears to bring it to pass that I might be as poor as he."
Over the course of the next thirty years Teresa did just that: she became truly poor and even though she never had day in her adult life that she did not feel ill – she went about doing what she believed God wanted her to do (even having mystical conversations with him – getting her directions directly from God). Teresa learned early on not to ever not do anything out of fear – fear of lack of resources or lack of stability of health, fear of rank of opposition - for if it was God's will – he would supply always what was lacking in the project.
And so, she ended up founding over twenty convents for her Carmelite sisters, and with the help of St. John of the Cross – helped to reform the whole Carmelite Order – making them less worldly and more in line with true monastic principles! Teresa knew that apart from Christ she could do nothing – and she basked in the light of his presence, his help and his consolation. She had deep and constant devotion to the Blessed Eucharist which was her mainstay throughout her adult life!
Under obedience to her superiors, Teresa wrote "The Interior Castles" – her spiritual masterpiece on contemplative prayer and union with God. It outlined the stages that a soul goes through to achieve total union (marriage) with God! It was a classic from it first printing! The bottom line is that contemplation is a gift from God. We can approach God only insofar as he allows us to approach him, and gives us the tools in order to do so! Of ourselves, we truly are nothing, and can do nothing!
Teresa died on October 4, 1582 at which time the scent of lilies could be found in the air around her. She was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622 along with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier and Philip Neri, and was the first of two women named Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
Today, let us pray humbly with Teresa that "nothing will disturb us, nor frighten us - as all things pass away; It is God alone who never changes. Let us remember that patience obtains all things, and that he who has God finds he lacks nothing – for GOD ALONE SUFFICES!"
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