Santa Teresa

“ 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. ”

“ Why should you not introduce Santa Teresa to her daughters in Edinburgh? For her daughters they are, so soon and as long as they live in self-knowledge and in self-denial, in humility and in meekness, and especially in unceasing prayer for themselves and for others. p. 2And I am not without some assurance that in this present lecture I am both hearing and obeying one of those same locutions that Teresa heard so frequently, and obeyed with such instancy and fidelity and fruitfulness. ”

“ But, while that was not to be, it is the immense talent, and the unceasing toil, and the splendid faith and self-surrender that Teresa brought to bear on her intramural reformation; and, all through that, on the working out of her own salvation,—it is all these things that go to make Teresa’s long life so memorable and so impressive, not only in her own age and land and church, but wherever greatness of mind, and nobleness of heart, and sanctity of life, and stateliness of character are heard of and are esteemed. ”

“ Santa Teresa is not only a glorious saint and a splendid figure in the annals of religious thought: she ranks as a miracle of genius, as, perhaps, the greatest woman who ever handled pen, the single one of all her sex who stands beside the world's most perfect masters. Macaulay has noted, in a famous essay, that Protestantism has gained not an inch of ground since the middle of the sixteenth century. Ignacio Loyola and Santa Teresa are the life and brain of the Catholic reaction: the former is a great party chief, the latter belongs to mankind. ”

“ Let us turn from such an unpoetical scene as this, which that cheerful prison presents, to the convent of Santa Teresa, the most celebrated of all the ten or fifteen nunneries now in operation about the city of Mexico. In a cold, damp, comfortless cell, kneeling upon the pavement, we may see a delicate woman mechanically repeating her daily-imposed penance of Latin prayers, before the image of a favorite saint and a basin of holy water. ”

“ In Santa Teresa's case the sign is present. An uninquiring world may choose to think of her as a fanatic in vapours and in ecstasies. Yet it is she who writes, in the Camino de Perfección:—"I would not have my daughters be, or seem to be, women in anything, but brave men." It is she who holds that "of revelations no account should be made"; who calls the usual convent life "a shortcut to hell"; who adds that "if parents took my advice, they would rather marry their daughters to the poorest of men, or keep them at home under their own eyes." ”

“ The soul enjoys undoubting certitude; [197] the faculties work without effort and without consciousness; the heart loves and does not know that it loves; the mind perceives, yet does not know that it perceives. If the butterfly pauses to say to itself how prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, and it drops and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us."
And, as Santa Teresa excelled in spiritual insight, so she has the sense of affairs. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But most of these paintings are neglected, and so falling to decay that it is pitiable to look at them.
The Santa Teresa, however, has few ornaments. It is not nearly so large as the Encarnacion, and admits but twenty-one nuns. At present there are, besides these, but three novices. Its very atmosphere seems holy, and its scrupulous and excessive cleanness makes all profane dwellings appear dirty by comparison. We were accompanied by a Bishop, Señor Madrid, the same who assisted at the Archbishop's consecration; a good-looking man, young and tall, and very splendidly dressed. ”

“ It was a succession of serious illnesses, taken along with her father’s scrupulous care over her, that brought Teresa back to the simple piety of her early childhood, and fixed her for life in an extraordinary devotion to God, and to all the things of God. When such a change of heart and character comes to a young woman among ourselves, she usually seeks out some career of religion and charity to which she can devote her life. ”

“ Follow after charity, and begin with Santa Teresa.
p. 18Forbid it, mighty Love, let no fond hate
Of names or words so far prejudicate;
Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood
Of baptism blends them all into one blood.
What soul soe’er in any language can
Speak heaven like hers, is my soul’s countryman.
But the greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer. ”

“ My tears ought to be tears of blood. My heart ought to break. But Thou, Lord, hast borne with me for almost twenty years, till I have had time to improve. And all that it might be better known to me who Thou art and what I am. Woe is me, my Maker! I have no excuse, I have only blame. Let Thy mercy, O Lord, rest on me. Other women there have been who have done great deeds in Thy service, but I am good only to talk: all my goodness ends in so many words: that is all my service of Thee, my God. ”

“ It is open to any man to scoff and sneer at Teresa’s extraordinary life of prayer, and at the manifestations of the Father and the Son that were made to her in her life of prayer, and some of her biographers and censors among ourselves have made good use of their opportunity. ”

“ However, every one knew that Santa Teresa was safe enough, and that even if some bold spirits climbed up the steep path on the land side no great number could come on at the same time and so carry the place by assault. ”

“ Grant that I may use this word ‘love’ with regard to Thee alone, since there is no solidity for my love to rest on save in Thee. The soul has her own ways of understanding, and of finding in herself, by certain signs and great conjectures, whether she really loves His Divine Majesty or no. Her love is full of high impulses, and longings to see and to be with and to be like God. All else tires and wearies out the soul. The best of created things disappoint and torment the soul. God alone satisfies the soul, till it is impossible to dissemble or mistake such a love. ”

“ Till I remembered Goodwin’s classical passages about defecated prayer, and understood something of what is involved and what is to be experienced in pure and immediate communion with God. And, then, from all that it surely follows, that no one is fit for one moment to have an adverse or a hostile mind, or to pass an adverse or a hostile judgment, on the divine manifestations that came to Teresa in her unparalleled life of prayer; no one who is not a man of like prayer himself; no, nor even then. I know all the explanations that have been put forward for Teresa’s ‘locutions’ and revelations ”

“ There is nothing in all the world wherewith to buy the shedding abroad of Thy love in our heart, but our heart’s love. If, however, we did what we could, not clinging with our hearts to anything whatsoever in this world, but having our treasure and our conversation in heaven, then this blessedness would soon be ours, as all Thy saints testify. God never withholds Himself from him who pays this price and who perseveres in seeking Him. He will, little by little, and now and then, strengthen and restore that soul, till at last it is victorious. ”

“ For my education and protection my father sent me to the Augustinian Monastery, in which children like myself were brought up. There was a good woman in that religious house, and I began gradually to love her. How impressively she used to speak to me of God! She was a woman of the greatest good sense and sanctity. ”

“ It was a zeal without knowledge; but there can be no doubt about the sincerity, the single-mindedness, and the strength of the zeal. For forty as hard-working years as ever any woman spent in this world, Teresa laboured according to her best light to preserve the purity and the unity of the Church of Christ. ”

“ Yes, quite as good as Cervantes! yes, quite as good as Goldsmith!—I have caught myself exclaiming as I read and laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks. This is literature, this is art without the art, this is literary finish without the labour: and all laid out to the finest of all uses, to tell of the work of God, and of all the enterprises, providences, defeats, successes, recompenses, connected with it. The Foundations is a Christian classic even in Woodhead’s and Dalton’s and David Lewis’s English, what must it then be to those to whom Teresa’s exquisite Spanish is their mother-tongue! ”

“ For myself, I wish no other prayer but that which improves me in virtue. I would fain live more nearly as I pray. I count that to be a good prayer which leaves me more humble, even if it is still with great temptations, tribulations, and aridities. For it must never be thought that because a man has much suffering, therefore he cannot have prayed acceptably. His suffering is as incense set forth before God. Tell my daughters that they must work and suffer as well as pray, and that it is the best prayer that has with it the most work and the most suffering. ”

“ Their Lord deals with them as with strong and valiant men, appointing them travail and trouble here, that they may fight for Him the good fight of faith, and only come in for the prize at the end. And, after all, what greater mark of a high election can there be than to taste much of the cross? Whom the Lord loveth, in that measure He lays on them His cross. And the heaviest of all our crosses is a life of sanctification and service without sensible consolation.
(9) Over-familiarity in Prayer.—He was a man of a powerful understanding. ”

“ The old woman still sharply surveyed her mistress as she observed, "I cannot abide that Donna Maria; she speaks the thing which is false."
"Teresa!" Inez began reprovingly; but the old domestic tyrant would have out her say.
"I heard this very morning that Donna Maria boasts that she possesses a silver reliquary holding a lock of the blessed Santa Veronica's hair" (here Teresa crossed herself devoutly) , "a reliquary once belonging to Philip the Second, our most Catholic [Pg 119] king,—the saints have his soul in their keeping!" ”

“ They should know that when I was shunning prayer because I was so bad, my badness became more abandoned than ever it had been before. Rely on the waiting and abounding goodness of God, which is infinitely greater than all the evil you can do. When we acknowledge our vileness, He remembers it no more. I grew weary of sinning before God grew weary of forgiving my sin. He is never weary of giving grace, nor are his compassions to be exhausted. May He be blessed for ever, amen: and may all created things praise Him! ”

“ And those servants best put their Lord’s money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments. It was this that first drew me to Teresa. ”

“ Friendship is best kept up, even among men, by frequent visits; and the more free and defecate those frequent visits are, and the less occasioned by business, or necessity, or custom they are, the more friendly and welcome they are.’ Now, I have sometimes wondered what took Teresa so often, and kept her so long, alone with God. ”

“ The nuns of the Santa Teresa and of other strict orders, who live sparingly, profess the most severe rules, and have no servants or boarders, enjoy a universal reputation for virtue and sanctity. They consider the other convents worldly, and their motto is, "All or nothing ”

“ And as knowledge extends, and love, and good-will; and as suspicion, and fear, and retaliation, and party-spirit die out among us, the truth about Teresa and multitudes more will become established on clearer and deeper and broader foundations ”

“ And if in these reflections the soul be seized with the Presence of God, then the whole soul is regaled as I have described. The heart is filled with relenting. Tears also abound. In this way does the Divine Majesty repay us even here for any little care we take to serve Him and to be with Him. The life of prayer is just love to God and the custom of being ever with Him. ”