This month we jump forward from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century. We move from Persia to Spain. We also change our perspective from that of a male Sufi mystic to that of a female Christian as we look at some powerfully touching poetry of a woman of remarkable courage and spiritual insight.
Born in Gotarrendura (Avila), Spain on March 28, 1515, Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was the daughter of a wealthy and prominent Toledo merchant and his second wife. One of thirteen children, she was born less than twenty years after Columbus began opening up the New World, and only a couple years before Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, so she lived during a time of intense religious turbulence and massive global change.
Sixteenth-century Spain was definitely neither a time nor place that paid much attention to women. Yet, Teresa managed to make her voice heard. She was a mystic and a religious reformer who founded seventeen convents and two monasteries, authored seven books, wrote 450 letters, and assorted poetry, and became revered as one of the outstanding masters of Christian prayer. She was a woman of undeniable courage and is rightly known to have achieved remarkable religious and political reform. Better known as Saint Teresa of Avila, she is undoubtedly the most influential female saint in the Western world and one of the towering figures of Christian history.
Teresa died on October 4, 1582 at age 67. Founder of the Discalced (shoeless) Carmelites, she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1622, only 40 years after her death. And in 1970 Teresa was declared a Doctor of the Church for her writings and teachings on prayer. She was the first woman (and only one of two) to be so honored in this manner.
Teresa’s early life is fascinating, and shows a decided proclivity toward the mysticism for which she became known. She was known to have a vivid and charismatic personality and could be both charming and impossible, depending on the circumstances.
Her paternal grandfather, Juan de Toledo, was a converso, a Jewish convert to the Christian faith. But, he was condemned by the infamous Spanish Inquisition for returning to Judaism. However, her father, Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda, was wealthy enough to buy a knighthood, and he was able to successfully assimilate himself and his family into proper Christian society.
One story about Teresa is that when she was five she convinced her older brother that they should become martyrs. She wanted the two of them, in her words to, “go off to the land of the Moors and beg them out of love for God, to cut off our heads there.” The two were actually already on the road out of the city before they were spotted by an uncle who bought the two would-be martyrs home.
Teresa, motivated by her fear of purgatory, chose to become a nun by the time she was twenty. He religious path was opposed by her father, but Teresa disobeyed him and ran off to the Carmelite convent in Avila.
Within a year, however, she became deathly ill and her father had to take her back home. Her condition continued to worsen until she fell into a coma and was even thought to be dead. Teresa did recover, although her convalescence was long and extremely painful. For three years she was even paralyzed from the waist down.
After she recovered sufficiently, Teresa returned to the convent although her spiritual life was lackluster and superficial, at best. This was at least partially due to the lax conditions of the convent. The strictness of the Carmelite rule had gradually softened over the years to the point where the convent outside Avila much more resembled a women’s boarding house than a place of worship and prayer.
Much of the nuns’ time was spent entertaining visitors and gentlemen callers. And although Teresa’s natural charm brought her much attention, the lax conditions were certainly not conducive to spiritual growth.
Around the age of thirty-nine Teresa’s life was changed forever when she happened to glance at the image of the suffering Christ on the cross. That vision of “the sorely wounded Christ” filled her with a loathing for the mediocrity of her spiritual state, and she immediately vowed to devote herself to a life of prayer and devotion.
Very quickly she moved into a period where she began to experience the sensation of God’s love and inner transformation. This was a time when she focused more and more on the passion of the Christ. It was these ecstatic experiences which was the motivation for her to begin reforming her Carmelite Order.
Her new community, known as the Discalced Carmelites, was known for the strict poverty which was one feature of Teresa’s reform. The nuns were to live entirely by alms and what they could produce by their own labor. Other hallmarks of the order were a rigorous schedule of prayer and a vegetarian diet.
Teresa’s close companion and fellow reformer, know as St. John of the Cross, was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for two years for their efforts to revitalize the Church. Little Pots of Honey will look at the life and poetry of St. John of the Cross in next month’s column.
St. Teresa’s poetry expresses a beautiful understanding of the closeness of God to all of creation, and God’s deep desire for intimacy with every aspect of that creation. As she writes in the poem “He Desired Me So I Came Close,” Teresa realized that we are made perfectly, and God says to each of us, “Please come close, for I desire you.”
I Will Just Say This
We
Bloomed in spring.
Our bodies
are the leaves of God.
The apparent seasons of life and death
our eyes can suffer;
but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright:
they are God
Himself,
we will never perish
unless He
does.
He Desired Me So I Came Close
He desired me so I came close.
No one can near God unless He has
prepared a bed for
you.
A thousand souls hear his call every second,
but most every one then looks into their life’s mirror and
says, “I am not worthy to leave this
sadness.”
When I first heard His courting song, I too
looked at all I had done in my life
and said,
How can I gaze into His omnipresent eyes?”
I spoke those words with all
my heart,
but then He sang again, a song even sweeter,
and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence
God showed Me His compassion and spoke a divine truth,
“I made you, dear, and all I make is perfect.
Please come close, for I
desire
you.”
Laughter Came From Every Brick
Just these two words He spoke
changed my life.
“Enjoy me.”
What a burden I thought I was to carry—
a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore
in the sky.
After a night of prayer, He
changed my life when
He sang
“Enjoy Me.”
Not Yet Tickled
How did those priests ever get so serious
and preach all that
gloom?
I don’t think God
tickled them
yet.
Beloved---hurry.
Your Playmates
I was born for you’
what do you want of me, dear?
Look at all that has come from your wish:
the forests, the streams, the mountains
the fields, every creature;
are these not your
playmates?
Do we give you comfort, God,
in Eternity?
We were born for You; don’t be shy, Beloved.
Just tell us what You want
but in a language that makes us smile.
Feeling Desperate
The
earth
and
sky will open their purse for you
and your life will
change
if with all your heart you say these words each day,
“Teach me, dear God, all that you
know.”
One night I walked through the streets feeling
desperate, in need of
alchemy.
A hooded priest passed by where there were no lamps.
I could not see his face, I only heard these words that he
kept repeating.
“Teach me, dear Lord, all that You know.”
I knew a treasure had
entered my
soul.
The Sky’s Sheets
When He touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets,
the way other
lovers
do.
the earth’s weave
of clay.
Any real ecstasy is a sign
you are moving
in the right
direction,
don’t let any prude tell
you otherwise.
Desire In Her Soul
I wanted
to hold Him as an infant,
what woman would not find that desire
in her soul?
Yes, I wanted to hold Him when He was so in need,
that He might cling to me with
all His strength for
protection.
I never thought of the sun as being maternal
but is there anything that does not
nurse light?
One day I was carrying my wash, one day I was carrying bread,
one day I was carrying a small goat,
and all of them became
my Lord.
I collapsed
on the ground the first time this happened,
the first time the universe
suckled
me.