“It tires me more to cause God pain than to tire Him by forgiving me.”
(Life 19,13)
A strong motive that moved Teresa to enter the convent was “the fear that she was on the way to hell” (Life, chap. 3). She thought that “the religious order was the best and safest for her” to escape this danger. However, she did not yet know at that time that a person can neglect God in the convent just as anywhere else – no “spiritual program” can protect one from this.
What lay behind this motive for her life decision was nothing but sheer fear, provoked by her image of God, which later appeared to her as an insult to God. Such an attitude, moreover – as Teresa had to recognize – only supports self-deception and pretense, for with such a God, one is reluctant to admit guilt and the inconsistencies of one’s own heart, suppresses them, or ultimately condemns and lashes out at in others what one bears within oneself; one shirks responsibility for one's own life and agrees with those who always seek blame in others.
What can free one from this bondage of religious fear that stifles life and makes coexistence unbearable? How can one save themselves from all those “demonic images of God” that still torment people today and instill in them a sense of being “unredeemed”?
Teresa found the way out after many years of struggle and suffering. In contemplating the human Jesus, on which she would later place such emphasis when instructing her sisters, she encountered another God. From a rather “hostile” God, He became the God of friendship, with whom she was “often and gladly together” and of whom she knew, “that He loves me” (Life 8,5). Before this God, who had the human face of Jesus, fear could give way to trust.
However, the time of imperfections and offenses did not end there. Teresa lived with the truth that no person on earth can become an angel. Yet she could continue to accept the reality of her humanity and live with it. It was a redemption for her from the inhuman compulsion to be constantly vigilant against sin when she realized: “It tires me more to cause God pain than to tire Him by forgiving me.”
Today, we often hear the objection that such an image of a merciful God leads people rather to not take account of their actions and to act according to the motto: God will forgive anyway, so it doesn’t matter what I do. Does Teresa not indeed provoke such an attitude? – She could never accept such a consequence. Neither fear of God nor thoughtless “generosity” has anything to do with Teresa’s experience of God. Because both attitudes are signs of a lack of faith and ultimately a lack of relationship with God. A person who has found a friend in God cannot think like this. They can no longer do whatever they want. And even when, due to human weakness and limitations, which remain until death, even when such a saint commits an injustice, their confidence remains that God understands and does not hold a grudge. They then know of “happy guilt,” which the liturgy sings about during Easter, wherein trust drives away the darkness of fear.
P. Thomas Rohr OCD
“Christ is even in the kitchen, amid the pots.”
(Foundations 5,8)
Throughout the history of Christian faith, there exists a misunderstanding that cannot be eradicated: “spiritual life” is supposedly a time period that a person devotes to prayer, contemplation, and other “spiritual exercises,” that is, a daily time (usually rather short) that forms the religious framework of the much larger working segment and leisure time. This notion is still prevalent among Christians in the convent as well as among clergy and laypeople. The consequences have become evident; they often manifest in the anxious question: “How much time must I devote to spiritual life to be a good Christian?” as well as in the fact that even fervent believers spend the “normal” part of their daily work seemingly “without God”...
In her “Book of Foundations,” Teresa wrote a sentence that provides a clear and poignantly strong answer to the century-old theological question of the correct relationship between prayer and work, “action” and “contemplation”: “Christ is even in the kitchen, amid the pots.” I experienced a light when I first encountered these words – on a slip of paper, with unmistakable humor.
With this, Teresa wanted to tell her sisters that “spiritual life” cannot be reduced to hours of prayer and contemplation, but that the ordinary day in its entirety and fullness can be experienced spiritually. The key phrases in her writings that more closely describe such a way of life are “friendship with Christ” and “interior prayer.” Who can understand faith as a life in relationship, seeing Christ as a friend and companion on the journey, finds that even ordinary, “profane” daily work wishes to be not only surrounded by prayer and “dedicated” to God but also shaped with God. How one can accomplish this, Teresa’s “father of my soul,” John of the Cross, gladly described with the term “loving attention to God”:
I think of the fact that God is here (even though hidden from perception) – in the “kitchen” just as in the “prayer corner” or in church – I turn to Him, I consciously say to Him “You, God”…; I linger with Him at times of prayer and I go to work with Him, I make my decisions with Him, I laugh with Him and cry with Him…
When Teresa speaks of “interior prayer,” she means nothing else than this one word from the tradition of faith. She does not understand it to mean a special form of prayer, such as contemplation, prayer with texts, etc., but rather a conscious inclination toward God “from within,” regardless of whether it follows an external form or this or that way of praying; it is a quite simple “acting” of the soul, which anyone can actually easily carry out, which during the time of prayer transforms “performing prayer” into prayer and during the life and work of the day into “the work of communion”...
Teresa probably did not think that not only among her sisters in the convent but also among many people today, whether they are stirring in any pot, she could show through this small sentence the way to a new way of life.
P. Reinhard Körner OCD
“Prayer is like lingering with a friend...”
(Life 8,5)
Many people have difficulties with prayer. It is primarily distractions that weigh upon them, lack of time, the stress of everyday life… We might think that this is only the case today – in our rapidly experienced time of noise, restlessness, and a flood of stimuli. This is only partially true, as even believers of earlier times, among them saints like Teresa of Avila, had similar problems. For nearly twenty years, Teresa experienced her life as a “stormy sea.” (Life 8,2). She suffered greatly from this inner turmoil and distraction during prayer: “For many years, I very often paid attention to whether the time of prayer to which I was committed would soon be over, I paid more attention to the hours than to other good things; and very often it occurred to me that there was no more difficult penance than to collect myself and pray” (ibid. 8,7).
People who experience such difficulties in prayer often receive the advice: “You must try even harder and be more consistent! You should avoid all opportunities for distraction! You should add prayer to the Holy Spirit every day!” Often this only leads to an increase in problems and intensifies feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and fear. It is no wonder that someone might not want to hear anything more about religion and the church, about prayer and piety, and ends up abandoning it all – and may then feel finally free. Such advice is based on the assumption that prayer is primarily a duty that must be fulfilled daily. We can ask again what image of God lies behind this! Does God really need our prayer performances? Is He forced by our religious exercises and offerings to help us? Is it a God to whom we must give something in order to receive something in return? – When people end such a God, they do well!
Even Teresa’s image of God underwent various transformations throughout her life. The decision to enter the convent was still strongly motivated by fear of God, but she already sought a personal relationship with God before her entry into the convent by bringing to mind the human Jesus: “I tried, as best I could, to imagine our greatest good and our Lord very vividly, and this was my way of praying” (ibid. 4,7). She thus attempted to focus her “image of God” on Jesus, as portrayed in the gospels, and in this way she found a new way to pray and to live. Her endeavor for a new relationship with God was perhaps also rooted in her personality, as she confesses: “God granted me the gift of influencing my neighbors sympathetically, and thus I was favored by all” (ibid. 2,8); such a person who knows friendship and affection can hardly relate to a distant God and a rather formalistic piety. Thus Teresa came to the conviction that He, “the great God, was indeed also a man who did not shrink from human weakness, but understands our pitiful condition… I can speak with Him as with my friend, although He is still Lord” (ibid. 37,5).
A God who does not shrink back, but understands! From this realization, we can now properly understand Teresa’s famous definition of prayer: “Prayer is nothing other than lingering with a friend, with whom we often and gladly meet, simply being with Him, because we are certain that He loves us.” In the face and presence of such a God, inconsistencies and distractions play no role; with Him, there is no reason for feelings of guilt and fear; with such a God, it can even happen that a person makes mistakes and sins. Then the assurance that we are accepted and loved by Him just as we are will certainly contribute more to avoiding shortcomings and sins than well-meaning advice for greater consistency and the multiplication of prayers. No wonder Teresa gives this advice: “Whoever has begun with interior prayer should not abandon it, even if they still do so much wrong, because prayer is the remedy by which one can be saved, while without it, everything is much worse; whoever has not yet begun with it, I beg in the love of the Lord, not to give up so great a good; in doing so, nothing is lost, only gained” (ibid. 8,5). Thus, it is important to live first and foremost in friendship with God, striving to linger with Him like a friend.
Here it is clear that it is not correct to understand prayer mainly as refueling or as a counterbalance to many demands of everyday life. That would not be an unintentional “lingering with Him simply for the sake of being with Him,” but would already pursue some purpose. Naturally, the aimless and unintentional lingering with Him also becomes a way to recharge new strength and balance duties in one's vocation and everyday life, but it should only be aimless and unintentional lingering that protects us from falling into performance pressure and not making prayer another duty, which we might then easily feel as a burden. Moreover, such aimlessness is an expression of true friendship; everything else would mean that we would subordinate prayer and thus God to human goals.
P. Ulrich Dobhan OCD
(Key words of St. Teresa of Avila (2),
Carmel Impulses 4, II, 5–9, 1994.)
Translated by Dr. Vojtěch Pola.
