Marie Štechová
This of the most feminine women always needed a strong counterpart to masculine influence, stimuli, and support in the spirit of a man, so that she could internally balance the great spiritual tension of her life.
One must seize their religious vocation in the absolute sense, so that it is not merely a toil, searching for distractions. Thus, she drags on until the year 1555 (she is 40 years old!). She is awakened by the sight of the tortured Christ. Jesus shows her the way. Not people, not the world, not books. The immense life flowing from Christ captivates and consumes her. It breaks down the walls of human caution. She charges against God. Not passivity, but active cooperation with God. In 1559, she makes a vow: to always do what is most perfect for the soul in the given circumstances. This vow will make her a saint. This period includes the miracle of transverberation (piercing of the heart) (August 27).
Teresa observes around her in the monastery of the Incarnation how great things of God can be killed by small human things if the soul is not on guard. How even a religious order can be seized by slackening, even if the rule seems to be not transgressed and evil does not seem to be observable. Precisely spiritual vocation requires a decisive: either – or! Either want perfection, and then want it absolutely, without reservations – or make it more bearable humanly, but spiritually weaker. The Carmel of her time no longer had cloisters – its parlors often became literary salons, where both politics and social events were discussed. In such an atmosphere, scattered souls could not concentrate on prayer and contemplation – the world continually pressed upon them. These monasteries were not truly God's, God hardly ever found souls in solitude there, in that true inner solitude from which alone every strong and full religious life is born. The original Carmel – the order of Our Lady – is what Teresa constantly thinks about now. The original Carmel, where the soul had only one companion: God. God and the soul! The soul entirely close to God. –
She knew that the remedy could only come from within. “It would be an excellent means for them to give them a good confessor… It is a terrible job to want external order, if there is no one who cares about the internal.”
To surround God with prayer. Religious life: The soul breaks into life in God. The path to life is the path of love. And in it, everything is action. “Not much knowledge, but much love.” Love is the creation of the entire extent of the soul. It is the central nerve of the construction of Christian life – that is: the immortal life of the soul. And the growth of the immortal soul is not something cheap. The essential form of human life – as St. Teresa sees it – is tragic in nature. We sinners! Who will free us from this mortal body? she constantly asks. Y sin amor todo es nada! Without love, everything is vanity! A person who does not love is, in her eyes, morally formless. He is not involved in unity with God and with the universe, has no share in the fullness of life. He is incapable of understanding either God or man. Just as Jesus redeemed us by His sacrifice, His suffering, His blood, so we must walk the path of sacrifice, suffering, even blood for the immortal glory of our soul. And it is precisely this reality that a person does not want to acknowledge. It is precisely before it that he constantly closes his eyes. He would often be willing to acknowledge the soul's immortality and highest value, but he is not willing to pay for it.
Prayer is the service of love. The Lord calls to service and also assigns service. St. Teresa warns against any mechanization of the spiritual life, against slavish imitation of others. She likes to compare the soul to a dwelling, a palace, a castle, whose lord is God. It is primarily necessary for the soul to recognize this sovereignty. Recognition of God's sovereignty – it cannot be beautiful declamations. To fulfill God's will is a complete inner surrender to God, when we experience our own nothingness as a full reality, when we do not want to lean on its decayed foundations. The will of God is something that true humility hears and by which true love is guided. It is the willingness to follow inwardly. And all of this is already prayer. Yes, even only breathing with such a desire is prayer. – The main thing, however, is that we dedicate ourselves entirely to God as His possession and remove all obstacles. This is the condition, this is what He lays down and to which He has the right. And I also do not know how else He could act, for He is a friend of order. If we do not clean the palace of lowly people and ordinary things, how could He enter with His court? (The Path to Perfection).
In the book The Fortress Within, she shows us where the first great enemy of the soul is. It wanders in the ditches of the fortress, on the periphery of the world – on the outskirts of life. The quiet whistle of the Lord calls her to the inner chambers of the fortress, but she does not hear. “There are souls so sick and so accustomed to getting involved in external things that they cannot enter within themselves. Horrific are the wiles and tricks of the devil to keep souls from recognizing themselves and finding their paths” (The Fortress Within). “The soul is so absorbed in the things of the world, so immersed in its goods or honors or occupations of this world, that even if it wanted to recognize and taste its beauty, the world does not give it. It seems that it cannot even rid itself of so many obstacles. After external enemies, internal enemies come. It is ourselves with our self-love, our prejudices, and our expansiveness. “One must completely give up trust in oneself and transfer it all to God.” The freedom of spirit is nothing other than “finding God in all things” (The Book of Foundations). Thus also in suffering. In order for life not to be a miserable dragging through this earth, but a gathering of strength for supernatural and eternal life, it must spiritually process everything, the entire substance of life that is before it and in it. God gives freedom. He gives it both in pain and in happiness, but primarily in suffering. This has primary purifying value for us. Without suffering, the life of the soul would be shallow. If it wanted to avoid it and if it hesitated to bear it, it would rid itself of what ensures the spirit its freedom and mobility. It would become faint, slack, and succumb to its cowardice. A person who avoids suffering and who resists bearing it internally lies. He gives wrong names to the values of life. Only when we pass through the fire of war can we speak of battle. Let no one ever speak of it who cowardly runs away from every reality! It is a veiled pride that does not want anything that is unpleasant, that does not want to bear anything heavy, that does not want to labor on anything hard, that does not want to admit its defeats, its smallness, its wretchedness. A heroic soul awaits wounds from God! It accepts them without cowardly lamentation, yes, thanks for them, requests for them. “And so it asks for suffering, but first for the grace to bear it. I want to suffer, God, because you suffered. Your will be done on me however!” (The Life). Only the eternal Sculptor knows why and how the rough block of our being must be worked on so that it may one day bear the image of the immortal beauty of its Creator.
St. Teresa is a first-class teacher of asceticism. Our spirituality and corporeality require precise balance, so that neither spirit is disproportionately lifted nor body disproportionately asserted. The laws of this inner connection between matter and spirit are so precise that even the slightest deviation creates disharmonies. Weak spirituality is that which either entirely ignores the body (the materiality in us) or subjugates itself to it. Bringing our corporeality under the dominion of the spirit is the proper work of asceticism. When we observe the desires of the body, we see that all mortification must begin against them. For example, the mortification of the senses. So many impressions pass through the eyes and ears that they could paralyze the spirit if we do not promptly defend ourselves by denying it most of these impressions. From the greed of the senses, spiritual avarice can quickly become a danger. A person throws himself on everything he finds on his life journey and drags into his lair every carcass. The poor in spirit only takes what he needs for the free movement of the spirit from everything. The results of good asceticism are always spiritual: lightness of spirit, its easy detachment from matter, its permeability to influences of God's grace – that which the saint called “consent to God's will.” It is always given only after such laborious work of the soul. St. Teresa wants nothing easy, nothing simple. The path to perfection is not something easy and cheap either. Every spirituality, when examined by her gaze, always revealed whether it was true or false. Whether it was veiled sensuality and crawling before oneself, or real work on spiritual life. The entire mystical work of St. Teresa is a hymn of love, just as her whole life was. Love transforms what is lowly and wretched within us. Love is the expansion of our being. Jesus was the most incredible reality of her spiritual life.
The mission of Carmel is to be a fortress of prayer – for all souls.
