Saint Theresa

“ No nun can go out. It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can alone, under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see her friends, especially in case of illness. As this convent is one of the chief Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior residing in it. We have several foreigners,--among them a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one who directs the music in the chapel."
"Ah!" said the general, feigning surprise: "she must have been gratified by the triumph of the House of Bourbon?" ”

“ The ineffable world thus retains all its mystery; warned by the allegory, we imagine splendors beyond all which it presents to us; we feel behind the beauties which are opened to us, the infinite which is concealed; and the ideal city, vanishing as soon as it appears, ceases to resemble the material Whitehall imagined for Jehovah by Milton. Read the arrival of the pilgrims in the celestial land. Saint Theresa has nothing more beautiful ”

“ He declared that human beings needed long life for the perfection of art. He complained that as soon as he had begun to perceive the beauty of the world he was called upon to die. [47]
Theresa or Teresa ("Saint," Spanish nun, author of a number of devotional books, a visionary of whom many wonderful miracles are related. She was canonized by Pope Gregory XV.) , 1515-1582. "Over my spirit flash and float in divine radiancy the bright and glorious visions of the world to which I go." ”

“ The voice of the Mother Superior had become low and meditative; and, though resting on the bowed head, her eyes seemed fixed on events long past. After the silence of a few moments she continued in a brighter tone:
"But, my child, I know the reason of your unhappiness. I have warned you that excessive ardor would leave you overwrought and nervous; that you were being carried too far by your ideals. You live too much in your sympathies and your imagination. Patience, my little St. Theresa! No saint was ever made in a day, and it has taken all the centuries of the Church to produce its martyrs. ”

“ She then retired to her country house at Pastrana, and from there carried on such a campaign against the nuns and persecuted them so cruelly that Theresa, weary of it, ordered the Prioress to leave the convent with all the nuns, taking nothing with them that had been given by the Princess. "The beds," says the saint in her "Book of Foundations," "and the little things that the nuns themselves had brought, they took away with them, leaving the village people very sad. ”

“ There, as elsewhere, the devotee who sought to progress faster toward heaven than suited the paces of her fellow-travelers was reckoned a troublesome enthusiast, till she got far enough in advance to be worshiped as a saint.
Sister Theresa, the abbess of this convent, was the youngest daughter in a princely Neapolitan family, who from her cradle had been destined to the cloister, in order that her brother and sister might inherit more splendid fortunes and form more splendid connections. She had been sent to this place too early to have much recollection of any other mode of life ”

“ Money, he fell fairly in love with the dove-like eyes and saintly ways of Theresa. Theresa was therefore what her father would have called "out of the swim." She looked tolerantly upon her mother's little gatherings of poets en herbe, artists who were great to their friends, patriots hunting for constituencies, orators who had not yet caught the speaker's eye, and persons who had tried success in all these various paths and failed. She looked on them tolerantly, but her soul was not in them; it floated above them in a purer atmosphere. ”

“ The sense of the reality of divine and unseen things in Teresa’s life of prayer is simply miraculous in a woman still living among things seen and temporal. Her faith is truly the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Our Lord was as real, as present, as near, as visible, and as affable to this extraordinary saint as ever He was to Martha, or Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or the woman of Samaria, or the mother of Zebedee’s children. ”

“ She was full of impulse and had a soul desirous of better things. Not for a moment did the thought dawn on her that these good women might be made useful in their generation. A woman is hardly ever an innovator, and the notion of innovation never entered the mind of Theresa. The only course that she could take was to make the enclosure of the nuns strict, and to impose silence on their flow of silly talk. Consequently she brooded on the idea of a reform, and a reform in this direction.
Theresa returned to the Encarnacion after a serious catalyptic attack, on Palm Sunday, 1537. ”

“ Teresa and addressed her thus: "Know that those souls are most pleasing to My Heavenly Father, that are tried by the very greatest afflictions and sufferings!" From that time, the Saint conceived such a love for suffering that she found no consolation but in bearing it; and when she was without any trouble, she was disquieted, and even said that she would not have exchanged her trials for all the treasures in the world; and she often had upon her lips those beautiful words, "To suffer, or to die." ”

“ That, indeed, is the function of the seer,—poet, prophet, or philosopher. But if only these see life in all its panoramic vastness, there are others who at least splash at a ten-league canvas, and insist on having real figures to draw from, whether saint or sinner. ”

“ Theresa with the treasures of thy divine love! grant, that like her, we may love and suffer all things for thee, and in union with thee : that we may gain souls to thee, and secure our own, by the faithful observance of our holy rules ”

“ When she reached the docks a sailing ship was in the river, following a little tug with a reproving grace, under which she hid her limitations from herself. There were men looking over her side and waving farewell with such attractive foreign gestures that Theresa stood close to the water's edge and gazed, with her hands tightly clasped behind her. The wind acted like a great fan on her hair, stirring it at its roots and flinging its long red fingers all about her head, thrumming, too, on her short skirts, lifting them with a twist, and whipping her tight-stockinged legs. ”

“ Some scene of bliss gone by;—
Bright lips too bright to wither,
Warm hearts too warm to die.
Till, as the dream comes o'er me
Of those long vanished years,
Alas, the wine before me
Seems turning all to tears!
FAREWELL, THERESA! (VENETIAN AIR.) Farewell, Theresa! yon cloud that over
Heaven's pale night-star gathering we see,
Will scarce from that pure orb have past ere thy lover
Swift o'er the wide wave shall wander from thee.
Long, like that dim cloud, I've hung around thee,
Darkening thy prospects, saddening thy brow;
With gay heart, Theresa, and bright cheek I found thee ”

“ But there is no limit to the types of sanctity which the Creator is pleased to unfold before His Creatures. To many, on reading for the first time the story of Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, it came almost as a shock to find a very youthful member of an austere Order, strictly retired from the world, engaged in hidden prayer and mortification, appearing before us to reveal to the whole world the wonders of the close intimacy of friendship to which her Divine Spouse had been pleased to call her. ”

“ At any rate, I would be if I did not revere and love and imitate such a saint of God. Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit: given sin and salvation and prayer and a holy life; and, with many drawbacks, Teresa’s was just the life of self-denial and repentance and prayer and communion with God that we should all live. It is not Teresa who is to be bemoaned and blamed and called bad names. p. 25It is we who do all that to her who are beside ourselves. It is we who need the beam to be taken out of our own eye. Teresa was a mystery and an offence ”

“ He teaches too, and he composes. Some day he'll be heard of, now that he has some one to believe in him. Do be glad. And won't it be lovely to be so near each other still? Next door, Terry! He is coming to see Father to-morrow, but I shall tell him to-night, only it had to be you first."
Theresa was meditative. "It seems a mad notion."
"Mad! It's perfect! To be so sure of each other, to feel so safe! Oh, Theresa, I'm ashamed of all the sillinesses I've done. Letting other men touch me, and fancying I liked them! But he knows. He knows everything. ”

“ I will set down for the satisfaction of the devout reader, the words of ever blessed Theresa, the glory and foundress of the discalceated Carmelites, to whom he was sometimes ghostly father, of whom she confesseth to have received much spiritual comfort; whose authority, by reason of her renowned sanctity, and living at the same time with him, is without control. ”

“ Fortune now seemed to favor Maria Theresa everywhere. In Italy, too, events had shaped themselves to her advantage, and at the close of the year 1742 she could look cheerfully into the future, although the sky was not entirely cloudless; for in Italy there were many knots to be untied that only the sword could loosen. ”

“ They saw the cell which Angelico had ornamented with the loveliest painting. And there, before the Virgin who, in the pale sky, receives from God the Father the immortal crown, he took Therese in his arms and placed a kiss on her lips, almost in view of two Englishwomen who were walking through the corridors, consulting their Baedeker. She said to him:
“We must not forget Saint Anthony’s cell.”
“Therese, I am suffering in my happiness from everything that is yours and that escapes me. I am suffering because you do not live for me alone. ”

“ Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness; and even the best professional sainthood of former centuries, pent in as it is to such a conception, seems to us curiously shallow and unedifying.
Take Saint Teresa, for example, one of the ablest women, in many respects, of whose life we have the record. She had a powerful intellect of the practical order. ”

“ An apology from Theresa was almost more alarming than a scolding. "No, no, dear, I quite understand," Mrs. Morton said in haste, while Basil smiled slowly, a little stiffly, conquering uneasiness with love.
In the smoking-room, Theresa sat down emphatically and spoke with great decision.
"I'm horrid to your mother," she said.
"You are not very nice."
"She raises the devil in me!"
"Theresa!"
"It's true. I wanted to throw the wine-glasses about, I wanted to dance on the table. She always makes me feel like that. What am I to do? How are we to live peaceably together?" ”

“ The wavering colour came back to Theresa's cheeks. She looked pityingly, adoringly, at her mother, and then her brain seemed to swell with reckless anger.
"I'll never love!" she cried, "because I must trust where I love, and men—men are so faithless! Oh, I know!" She ceased, trembling, watching her slim, shaken wrists. She heard laughter.
"Is this books, or Bessie?" And then, as Theresa raised her face, "Terry! What has happened? Nothing to you—or Grace?"
"No, no, dear, it's just the things I hear about. Truly." She was on her knees, stroking her mother's face, aghast at her own carelessness. ”

“ Theresa was as guileless as any being of mortal mould may be; but even the most artless woman cannot be altogether free from some touch of instinctive artifice—that innocent and gentle guile is to woman what nature has bestowed on all, even the humblest of its creatures, her true weapon of defence, her shield against the brute tyranny of man. And Theresa was a woman. She replied, therefore, without an instant’s hesitation, although her voice did falter somewhat, and her cheeks burn, as she spoke⁠—
“That you are angry with me, cousin Durzil.” ”

“ The landscape hereabouts is only so much sky, snow and lumber without her.”
“We miss her, too,” replied Sister Theresa. “We have less to do!”
“And still I protest!” I declared, rising. “Sister Theresa, I thank you with all my heart for what you have said to me,—for the disposition to say it! And this debt to the estate is something, I promise you, that shall not trouble you.”
“Then there’s a truce between us! We are not enemies at all now, are we?”
“No; for Olivia’s sake, at least, we shall be friends.” ”

“ A boyish love of mystery and mischief might probably have had its share likewise in his strange conduct, and a sort of self-pride in the skill with which he managed his plot, and worked the minds of older men into submission to his own will. Lastly, to compel Theresa to this sacrifice of her sense of duty and propriety, to this abandonment of principle to passion, appeared to his perverted intellect a mighty victory, an overwhelming proof of her devotedness to his selfish will. ”

“ It is a bold woman that would squeeze Heaven into a pigeon-hole.
Theresa stopped in front of the gardener’s chair. Theresa’s surname had been blown away from her with the first Atlantic wind. So had the shining system in her yellow hair. So had most of her land conventions. She was not a thing of the ocean, but a thing of the ocean liner. She had immediately become Everybody’s Theresa. I could not say that everybody loved Theresa, but I know that everybody felt they ought to. ”

“ And old Bishop Palafox’s tribute to Teresa is far too beautiful to be withheld. ‘What I admire in her is the peace, the sweetness, and the consolation with which in her writings she draws us toward the best, so that we find ourselves captured rather than conquered, imprisoned rather than prisoners. No one reads the saint’s writings who does not presently seek God, and no one through her p. 12writings seeks God who does not remain in love with the saint. I have not met with a single spiritual man who does not become a passionate admirer of Santa Teresa. ”