Christology of Saint Teresa of Avila
(According to the study P. Ulrich Dobhan OCD The Way of Teresa to Christ,
published in the collection The Way to the Source Teresa of Avila 1582–1982; Patmos Verlag Düsseldorf,
compiled by Joseph Kotschner O.Carm.; processed by Sr. Petra of the Resurrected OCD.)
God reveals Himself to humanity by His completely free choice. Through this revelation of Himself, He addresses people as friends and engages with them, inviting and accepting them into His community. His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the mediator and fullness of the entire Revelation (Dei verbum, 2).
Saint Teresa writes in her Life: “I have always had great respect for Christ. I have always acknowledged, and still acknowledge, that we cannot please God, nor does God grant His graces except through the most holy humanity of Christ, in whom He took delight, as He said … Therefore, do not seek another way … all that is good comes from this sweet Lord” (Life XXII,4,6,7). The spiritual path of Saint Teresa is thus a path to Christ, a friendship with God.
Her early childhood memories, which Saint Teresa recounts in her Life, show strong religious inclinations which, it seems, she received even in the cradle. In any case, her parents greatly supported her in this regard. “My father loved to read good books. He had many in the vernacular for his children to read. My mother made sure to teach us to pray” (Life I,1). This pious environment bore fruit: “… we resolved to live as hermits … I sought solitude to pray my many prayers, especially the rosary, which my mother loved to pray and tried to instill in us” (Life I,5,6). In this way, Teresa very early on—around the age of six or seven—comes into contact with Jesus Christ, pondering the mysteries of His life while meditating on the rosary.
In the religious experience of the child Teresa, there intertwines the image of God, who has become close to us in Jesus Christ, with the image of the invisible, ungraspable God. “We were very moved when we read that the rewards and punishments of the life to come are immense. We often paused at this thought and happily repeated: Forever! Forever! Forever!” (Life I,4). At this point, we must also highlight a characteristic aspect, typical of her, namely her openness to the other “you.” This is evident from her early childhood, and Teresa wrote about it: “As soon as I grew up, I began to recognize the natural gifts with which God had endowed me, and they told me that I had many” (cf. Life I,8). Teresa was a person naturally inclined to connect with others. This trait played an important role in her search for God.
Let us look at her further journey to Christ.
The second phase of Teresa’s life is marked by the search for the true path, the struggle for her vocation. Again, the focus is on new encounters, which, although they do not lead directly to Christ, show her how much she can be fascinated and fulfilled by meeting other people. During her adolescence, Teresa “began to be particular about her clothing and longed to stand out” (Life II,2). She associates with her relatives, despite her parents' disapproval. “My mother suspected the kind of bad influence that (one of the relatives) could have on my frivolity, and therefore she made every effort to limit her visits … I was fourteen years old or a bit more when I grew close to this relative and became an accomplice in her vanity” (Life II,3). After her mother’s death, around the beginning of 1529, Teresa's struggle for her vocation peaks. Her father takes her to the Augustinian convent in Ávila. A decisive moment for her was her encounter with one of the nuns, Donna María de Briceño y Contreras, who told her “that she decided to become a nun when she read in the Gospel that there are many called, but few chosen” (Life III,1). This word from the Gospel also impacted Teresa. Alongside this first explicit encounter with Scripture, there is yet another “christological event,” which intervenes in this period of Saint Teresa's life. “For several years I immersed myself almost every evening before bed in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane; even before I became a nun, because I was told that it would earn many indulgences. I am convinced that my soul gained a lot from this exercise, as I prayed without knowing what it was. Thus, I became accustomed to it and remained faithful to it like the cross I make before I lie down” (Life IX,1). “Without knowing what it was,” she begins to recognize Christ in prayer, thus taking a decisive step towards Him. She realizes that Jesus Christ has personal significance for her, ending each day with thoughts of Him. Her life receives meaning and purpose from Jesus. This assertion is reinforced by another of her own statements—that she indeed envied others when she saw them shedding tears in prayer, while her heart “was so hard at that time that I could not squeeze out a single droplet, even if I read all the suffering of our Lord: and that greatly troubled me” (Life III,1). We can say that the somewhat distant God of her childhood, who “rewards and punishes” (cf. Life I,4), gave way to a personal God, who suffered and died for us in Jesus Christ. What dictates her behavior is no longer fear of eternal punishment or the prospect that after possibly a quick death, she may enjoy God, but love and compassion. Christ enters her life decisively. Externally, this experience is mediated for her by Donna María de Briceño, thus it is also an encounter with a person, (without denying that it surely was a gift of grace). Perhaps we can say that after her stay with the Augustinians, it became clear to Teresa that Christ has a decisive role in her life, although she still did not know in what form she should live her discipleship of Christ, i.e., whether she should marry or go to a convent.
And here, there will again be further meetings with people, which will help her come closer to Christ.
Upon returning home, she reads “good books in her mother tongue” at an uncle's house and from them “understood better the truths that had already captivated me as a child, namely the vanity of things, the futility of the world, and the speed with which everything passes” (Life III,5). From the books she read, Teresa explicitly mentions the letters of Saint Jerome, in which Jesus Christ is presented as the center of all piety. Let us consider that Teresa still had not fully decided to enter the convent, nor had she completely ruled out the possibility of marriage. “I struggled with this for three months” (Life III,6). According to her own words, it is again the suffering Christ on whom she meditates, and thus she gains the strength to decide to enter the convent of the Incarnation. Teresa is clear that Christ will help her; and that when He has “suffered so much for us, it wouldn’t be a big deal if she also suffers a little for Him” (cf. Life III,6). By overcoming her father's resistance, Teresa's struggle for her vocation was outwardly concluded. She was convinced that life in the convent was the surest state for her.
After entering, she evidently feels better: “Good God transformed my former spiritual dryness and filled me with immeasurable comfort. The joy that I am a nun has not left me until this day” (Life IV,2). Despite the inner turmoil with which she began, she was clear that she was in the right place. We can say that the struggle for the correct discernment of her vocation paid off.
However, still, everything was not so straightforward—Teresa fell seriously ill. Many hypotheses arose about this illness; today most experts believe Teresa could not “grow spiritually because she was not aligning herself with the forms of piety commonly practiced in the convent. They took from her the beneficial prayer, meditating on the humanity of Christ” (Efrén de la Madre de Dios). And once again it was an encounter that helped her onward. On her way to Becedas, where she was to undergo a treatment, she stopped again at her uncle Pedro’s house, who had once helped her with good books. This time she read “The Third Alphabet” by Francisco de Osuna, which describes the prayer of recollection. Teresa “took to the path this book urged her to pursue, to love solitude and to confess often … Then the Lord began to bestow upon her many graces; He raised her even to the prayer of quiet and sometimes also to the prayer of union. I did not understand what that was at the time” (Life IV,7). The Lord thus raises her to these forms of prayer, where the will of a person unites with the will of God and is entirely focused on Christ (prayer of quiet); when Christ, living within the person, fascinates him with all his spiritual strengths and faculties, so that all these spiritual powers unite with Him (prayer of union). This way of praying lasted only briefly. Teresa increasingly focuses on Christ, on contemplating His humanity. “In my prayer, I did everything possible to keep Jesus Christ, our Lord and our good, within myself. When I meditated on some event from His life, I expended much effort to picture it in my soul … The Lord did not allow me to think with my mind, nor even to help myself with my imagination; my imagination is so weak that I never succeeded in picturing the human form of our Lord, despite doing everything possible” (Life IV,7).
Teresa’s life is now profoundly influenced by the mystery of Christ. She understood what matters in her life, specifically the living and personal contact with Christ, in prayer that she rightfully defines as “a close relationship of friendship, a frequent conversation between friends with Him, who we know loves us” (Life VIII,5). She begins to discover her most authentic vocation. Although she found a form of prayer that suited her, it was not easy for her to pray this way persistently. “Many days I would rather have done some heavy penance than have gathered myself for prayer” (Life VIII,7). Gradually, she also became increasingly aware that her everyday mundane life does not correspond to what continually emerges anew in prayer. She perceives her life as “a tumultuous sea … I fell and rose again so poorly that I fell again … I can say that my life was the most wretched one imaginable because I derived no pleasure from God, nor did the world satisfy me” (Life VIII,2). It went so far that she grew to have “a reluctance to continue that special friendship with God, which springs from prayer … It seemed reasonable to me to adapt to the majority, to settle for prescribed prayers, to pray vocally, and to abandon meditative prayer” (Life VII,1). Here we clearly see the fundamental characteristic of Teresa’s prayer: it is about friendship; thus, to give up prayer is not a moral offense in the sense of failing to observe a rule, but it is a disloyalty to a friend. Teresa wants to completely belong to the Lord, to be with Him, and thus fulfill the commitment of friendship, for she knows that God loves her still, reaching out to her despite her infidelities. However, she continues to experience how weak she is, how she clings to others, and how unfree she is.
One day, “Jesus Christ appeared to me, looking at me very sternly and letting me know how displeased He was. I saw Him with the eyes of my soul, yet far more clearly than with my bodily eyes, and it has remained engraved in my memory, such that I feel I can still see Him … I was so horrified and confused that I no longer wanted to see the person with whom I was speaking” (Life VII,6).
The significance of this event for Teresa's journey to meet Christ is evident. Everything in her life is distinctly immersed in a christological light. Through this revelation, she understood that she is called to something greater than merely keeping commandments, that her religious life is primarily a completely personal bond with Jesus Christ.
However, the final conversion to Christ was still not completed. She describes her situation as follows: “I longed for life, for I felt that I was not living, but fighting against the shadow of death” (Life VIII,12). The root of her inner fragmentation was, as she herself admits, excessive self-trust.
Another encounter with Jesus Christ finally brings liberation. “One day, when entering the oratory, my eyes fell upon a statue that was placed there … It depicted our Lord covered with wounds; it was so vivid that it deeply impressed me, for it vividly represented how much Jesus suffered for us: in thinking about the ingratitude with which I responded to those wounds, I was gripped by such pain that it seemed my heart would burst. I threw myself at His feet in a flood of tears and begged Him to give me the strength not to offend Him anymore … It seems to me that I was telling Him that I would not rise until He granted me what I was asking for. Surely He must have listened to me, for since then I have greatly improved” (Life IX,1,3).
This began the mystical phase in the life of Saint Teresa; this means that now Christ possesses her completely. This second phase of Teresa's life, from her conversion until her death, can be characterized by the words: Christ comes to meet Teresa. By this, we mean various revelations and calls that are extraordinary signs that Christ has taken the initiative in her life.
When we speak of Teresa's christology, it is necessary to briefly mention her relationship with the Church. In her love for the Church, the authenticity of following Christ is revealed. Just as she is prepared to die for Christ, the friend of her soul, she is also prepared to die for the Church, for she was entirely “willing to undergo a thousand deaths rather than allow anyone to believe that I would break even the slightest church ceremony” (Life XXXIII,5). Christ and the Church are, in a certain way, one and the same for her. “The whole world is on fire, the ungodly yearn to condemn Jesus Christ once again—as it is said—they encompass Him with innumerable insults and seek in a thousand ways to destroy His Church” (The Way to Perfection 1,5). Prayer, suffering, and sacrifice are at her service for the Church. This is a consequence of her friendship with Christ, for He continues to live in His Church. Teresa desires to help Christ with her reform of the order, entering into His mission—to save souls. “I do not care at all if I remain in purgatory until the Last Judgment if through my prayers I save even a single soul! … Never mind the trials that pass away if it involves serving Him who has suffered so much for us … I urge you for the love of God to pray for His Majesty to hear us. I myself have never ceased to ask for this despite my great wretchedness: it concerns His glory and the good of His Church, and all my desires point there” (The Way to Perfection 3,6).
