“What is it, my God, that in the soul that seeks to please only You, resting in You leads to weariness?”
(Voice of the Soul to God 2,2)
The history of Christianity knows of a flawed conception in spiritual life that the Church recognized in early times (1st-3rd century) and condemned: dualism. All of its historical views share an attitude that we still encounter today, which can be summarized in the formula: God is good – the world is evil.
“The world” – that refers to people, especially those who touch the heart, it is work and vocation, it is the body with all that moves within it, particularly sexuality, meaning the enjoyment of beauty and joy from it, it is nature and the surrounding world, it is reason and science… in short, it is everything that is “worldly.”
Dualism is an attitude that we aptly call “despising the world and life” in our time. It is still evident today – mostly completely unconsciously – even among spiritual people. It manifests itself in the view that true “total surrender” to God is only possible for those who live outside of marriage and completely and utterly “abandon the world”; the flip side of this is the devaluation of marriage as a less suitable way to live truly with God. It is seen in the excessive valuation of religious life as a better, more intense path and “perfect state” of Christianity or in the term still often used in official texts, “fuller” following of Jesus in spiritual vocations. It is further evident in the view of asceticism, which believes it must suppress every joy from the beautiful and the natural. It appears in the notion that a life focused on God excludes friendship and intimacy with people… In short: dualism is everywhere that a person forgets what the Bible says at the end of the days of creation: “God saw everything He had made, and it was very good.” (Gen 1,31) – and likewise forgets that Jesus preferred to be called a glutton and a drunkard (Mt 11,19; Lk 7,34) rather than walking the lands as a gloomy ascetic.
Such notions were supported by a misinterpreted translation of the phrase found after Teresa's death in her breviary: “God alone is enough.” What Teresa (or John of the Cross, from whom the verses likely originate according to recent findings) meant by her “Solo Dios basta,” we should better formulate in words: “God alone is enough.” For Teresa certainly did not mean to say that a person may only have “God Himself” in their sights, but rather that they can then properly see themselves and the whole world into which the Creator has placed them, properly deal with it, and enjoy it, when they have found a personal relationship with God. “The world” is thus not excluded but properly viewed in the full perspective of a spiritually living person through the relationship with God, who loves all that He has created.
“What is it, my God, that in the soul that seeks to please only You, resting in You leads to weariness?” – this is what Teresa writes in the “original tone” of her experience and conviction! Piety focused only on God leads to “weariness,” leads to restriction; for God Jesus seeks the one who leans with Him towards His beloved creatures. John of the Cross, Teresa's friend and companion, can pray with full joy of life: “Heaven is mine and earth is mine…”
The problem with dualism is that it prevents a true view of reality, primarily also of great spiritual works – such as life outside of marriage, but also marriage, religious life, but also “lay” existence, solitude before God, but also friendship, asceticism, but also joy from beauty and goodness, nature and co-creation, body and soul… And ultimately, dualism is an attitude that hinders the view of God, who in Jesus became truly human and God, and which prevents a person from believing that God truly made everything, even everything in this world, not yet perfect, but good.
Fr. Reinhard Körner OCD
“God has given me the gift to affect my neighbor sympathetically…”
(Life 2,8)
Teresa, the great mystic, “expert” in relation to God, understood it as distinctly good to interact with people and to live in friendship. Without pretension, she could say of herself: “God has given me the gift to affect my neighbor sympathetically, and thus I was beloved by all.” Her everyday life shows that this was indeed the case; yes, she directly longed for human friendship and affection. Love for God and human affection are not opposites for her. This is most clearly manifested in her friendship with Fr. Jerónimo Gracián. Her behavior towards him and others invites reflection on a truly brilliant topic: how love for God and human affection coexist. This contrast is often seen as a contradiction.
It is said repeatedly that nothing should take precedence over love for God, not even the most beloved people. From this view, conflicts often arise that can be devastating in the life of the individual: feelings of guilt, anxieties… No wonder that many people have been driven away from joy in faith and religion by such piety.
With Teresa, it is different. She can say without guilt that she affected her neighbors sympathetically and was therefore beloved by all. This clarity was not given to her from the beginning. Her entry into the convent was motivated by still fearing that her feminine “vanity” and her joy in human encounters would detract from God, and she thought that through monastic life she had to atone for that (cf. Life 3,6).
How did Teresa arrive at such a radical change in her thinking and behavior, to such a completely different perspective?
An important help was the memory of a basic insight from her childhood, that ultimately everything on earth is transient, and nothing has permanence and is eternal; Teresa calls this “the truth of my childhood” (Life 3,5). “Only God endures,” she tells herself later, everything else does not endure. – This realization protected her from throwing herself into relationships with the expectation of absoluteity; for even deeply experienced neighborly affection cannot, she realized, fulfill her ultimate longing: “Only God is enough.”
Furthermore, it helped Teresa that she could believe in God – better yet, that throughout her life she learned that she could trust God – that He loves her as she is. This certainty leads her to the conviction that the fact that she is sympathetic is a gift from God, as an expression of His love for her, which she experiences both herself and through others. She no longer has to see God as a competitor to her relationships with others. Rather, God becomes the one who granted her the experience of being loved and “received” by people, and that this provides her with heartfelt fulfillment; that being loved by people is a sign that she is loved by God.
Both insights together – on one hand, “only God is enough” and on the other hand, that all interpersonal affection is willed and given by God – helped Teresa to true love for people: she could show them affection with an open heart, joyfully rejoice in their affection for her, and at the same time remained free from sentimental dependency.
Being loved by God and by people – and love for God and for people – is not in competition; they are not positioned against each other as “either-or.” Anyone who can believe this like Teresa grows into an integrated personality. A necessary consequence of this is that they will “affect their neighbor sympathetically and will be beloved by all.”
Fr. Ulrich Dobhan OCD
“When a person turns to people, they are most deeply connected to You.”
(Voice of the Soul to God 2,2)
I thought I had read incorrectly when I first encountered these words in one of Teresa's smaller writings (Works, vol. 5): “Oh my Jesus, so great is Your love for human beings that the greatest service is given to You when a person does not turn to You, but to them, for then a person is most deeply connected with You.” To highlight the contrast, let’s formulate the sentence as we might expect it: The greatest service we render to You is when, out of love for You, we leave people and lean only towards You… To this day, the notion is widespread that perfect piety requires leaving the “world” and neighbors in order to devote oneself to God undisturbed and entirely...
Teresa clearly and decisively contradicts this. The alternative of God or people is foreign to her. In her friendly relationship with Christ (which she did not initiate but He did), she recognizes how great His “love for human beings” is. Thus, her life becomes a co-love with Him. All her seeking of God, all her prayer as a friendly being with Christ and in Christ, does not ultimately aim for purely personal intimacy with God, but becomes the foundation from which she lives a friendly relationship with her neighbors. In Jesus, she reveals that God’s interest is not in sacrificing human relationships, but in their deepening and healing.
Piety that is purely focused on the relationship to God is essentially an escape from God and His “love for human beings.” It prevents human maturation, is unsatisfactory to neighbors, and above all, also misses God, certainly the God who has been revealed in Jesus as one who turns to His creatures and seeks those who live with Him – with whose human hearts He can “connect” and unite in love for His creatures.
However, Teresa also warns against so-called “particular friendships” (see: The Way of Perfection, ch. 4). However, she does not turn against true interpersonal relationships, but rather against behaviors that are more of a bond against others in community, thus having little to do with friendship. Such behaviors can indeed be overcome and healed when we pursue friendship with our neighbor based on friendship with God.
Jesus neither resolved love for neighbors in favor of love for God, nor love for God in favor of love for neighbors. Both belong together, even amid their lasting tension. And in this, “love” is not merely a feeling directed toward people in general. Teresa experiences deep, very concrete friendships with women and men. When she could even painfully miss their closeness, it is not a sign of “imperfection”: she was rather aware of how much she herself lives from human affection and how much she needs friendship for her life – precisely for her love for God. She does not exchange God for a person or a person for God – for that would mean abandoning both people and God…
Fr. Thomas Röhr OCD
(Keywords of St. Teresa of Avila (2), Carmel-Impulses, 4, IV, 59, 1994.)
Translated by Dr. Vojtěch Pola.
