Interpreting St Teresa of Avila (IX)

Patrick Burke, O.Carm.

All her life, St. Teresa suffered from a variety of illness and on her own judgement she wished that those who hear her own account of what she termed ‘the careless life’ ‘would abhor me when they see a soul so pertinacious and ungrateful towards him who bestowed on her so many favours” (Life 8, 1). She described in her writings ‘the failings and risings. . . . in a life so beneath perfection.’ She seems to have had no comforts in prayer and a dread of any intimacy with God. In 1554 she had the experience of being confronted by the Ecce Homo statue of Jesus in His Passion. She was dramatically affected by sorrow for her ingratitude to His love. ‘I threw myself at His feet in tears and implored Him to give me the strength never to offend Him again’ (L 9, 1). She admitted that she profited much from this experience. ‘I think I then said that I would not rise from there until He granted what I was begging Him for. I believe certainly that this was beneficial to me, because from that time I went on improving.’ She began to pray in earnest. She now developed the habit of imagining Christ in His time of suffering and solitude, associating her sufferings and those of others with His, taking refuge in Him, and yet strongly believing that Christ Himself was in need. Of her new found prayer, she wrote later: ‘I only begged Him to pardon my great sins and to give me the grace not to offend him.’

She begins to record that she perceives Christ, as it were, lonely or in need, isolated and fragile as He must have been in the garden at Gethsemane (L 9, 4). In such situations ‘I strove to be His companion there,’ she wrote. As she thought of His sufferings, she desired to wipe away the sweat He so painfully experienced, but never dared ‘since my sins appeared to me so serious.’ She was greatly distracted and acknowledged that she was poor at recollecting images or scenes, no matter how much she read about them. ‘I was like those who are blind, in the sense that they know with certainty the other person is there, but they do not see him’

It was at this time that she got a copy of the Confessions of St. Augustine. Teresa had always been devoted to the Saint, probably because she was a girl at the Augustinian School in Avila, but also because Augustine was a model of the sinner whom ‘the Lord called only once’ and he never looked back. She saw herself as one who ‘had turned back so often that I was worn out from it’ (L 9, 7). She never lost confidence in the Lord’s mercy. As she read the Confessions, she saw herself more and more in them, reflecting her own responses to the favours offered. When she got to the account of Augustine hearing the voice in the garden, it seemed to her, ‘according to what I felt in my heart that it was I the Lord called. I retained for a long time totally dissolved in tears, feeling within myself utter distress and weariness.’ This event which she called her Conversion took place during Lent in 1554. She was 39 years old. From then, her external life showed rapid changes. Pastimes were ignored and more importantly, she began to pray seriously and more contentedly. She later summed up the event: ‘May the Lord be praised who freed me from myself.’ (L 23, 1).

To Interpreting Teresa of Avila Index