P. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.
9. Manuscript C
The third of Teresa's manuscripts was created at the suggestion of the sisters during the time when they realized that Teresa was seriously ill and might pass away soon. Teresa's biological sister Agnes was no longer the prioress, having been succeeded in this office by Sister Marie Gonzaga. On the evening of June 2, 1897, Agnes therefore turned to the prioress. She confided to her that at Agnes's request, Teresa had recorded memories of her childhood and her journey to Carmel two years earlier, and she asked the new prioress to encourage Teresa to continue writing. In an effort to persuade the prioress to this intention, Agnes suggested that now Teresa could write "something more serious," something about her religious life and experiences from her spiritual journey.1 The prioress agreed to this, and Teresa began to write the very next day. When we read manuscript C, it is important to keep in mind that Teresa wrote it during the last four months of her life, as she gradually weakened and her illness progressed.
She approached this task just like when she started writing manuscript A: she was to complete the praising of the Lord's mercy. After the introductory paragraphs, in which she expressed her relationship with the prioress, Teresa elaborated on her discovery of the little way, that spiritual elevator (AS 201–202). Then she mentioned the first coughing up of blood that she experienced a year ago on Good Friday in 1896. She accepted it then with great joy because she longed to meet Jesus face to face soon. But her enthusiastic faith was at that time subjected to a difficult trial that had not yet ended. Teresa lost the joy of faith, heaven seemed unreal to her, she believed only through the force of will, and it was a suffering for her, which she nevertheless tried to offer to God as a gift of love. She likened her state to darkness, as if a wall now separated her from God, no longer a veil. And yet, precisely when she described this, she added the words:
"I have never felt so well how kind and merciful the Lord is."2 "He sent me this trial only when I had the strength to bear it. I think that earlier it would have brought me to despair... Now He removes everything that could be a natural comfort in my desire for heaven..." (AS 208.)3
In the next part of the manuscript, Teresa explains the understanding she received about mutual love.
"At the Last Supper, when (Jesus) knows that the hearts of his disciples burn with more fervent love for him, arising from the fact that he has given himself to them in the unspeakable mystery of his eucharist, this sweet Savior wants to give them a new commandment. He says to them with unspeakable tenderness: A new commandment I give you: love one another. AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, SO YOU MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
And the following sentences from Teresa are a reflection on Jesus’ mercy, although she did not use that word directly. I find three lines of thought here.
"How did Jesus love his disciples, and why did he love them? He could not be drawn to their natural qualities. There was an infinite distance between them and him. He was knowledge, infinite Wisdom, they were poor fishermen, ignorant and filled with earthly thoughts. Yet Jesus calls them his friends, his brothers. He wants them to reign with him in the kingdom of his Father, and to open this kingdom to them, he wants to die on the cross..." She draws from this how she should love the other sisters in the monastery. "When I meditated on these words of Jesus, I understood how my love for my sisters is imperfect. I saw that I do not love them as the Lord God loves them. Now I understand that perfect love consists of
- bearing with the faults of others,
- not being surprised by their weaknesses,
- encouraging the smallest deeds of virtue that we see in them“ (AS 215).
In Teresa's manuscript, the text is not divided using bullet points, but I have intentionally highlighted it here in this way for our understanding. Teresa lists three specific examples of perfect love (I would have appreciated if she had listed even more). And notice: in all three cases, it is about love for the weak, clearly the weak. Thus, it is a merciful love. I dare not say that perfect love is identical with mercy. Perhaps it is a bit more complex. But certainly, thanks to Teresa, we realize that the dimension of mercy forms an important part of true love.
The second thought expressed by Teresa is: "But above all," it is thus about something equally important: "I understood that love must not remain closed at the bottom of the heart." This means: love must be expressed, it must come out of the heart in the form of deeds. Here, Teresa returns to the biblical analogy: "Jesus said: 'When a lamp is lit, it is not put under a bowl, but on a stand, so that it gives light to everyone in the house.' I believe that this light represents love, which must illuminate, bring joy, and not just to my dearest, but to everyone in the house, excluding no one." Who do we most often exclude from our love? Those who are inconvenient for us, whether by "always wanting something" or by being needy, unfriendly, ungrateful, conflicting... To not exclude even these people from our love means to again be merciful.
The third thought that Teresa expressed here relates to Jesus' requirement, his commandment, that we love others as he loves. This is, in contrast to the Old Testament commandment, which says that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, a huge leap in difficulty. And when we know our weakness, we might say: that is beyond our strength! However, in her great trust in Jesus, Teresa wrote: Lord, I know that you do not command anything impossible. You know better than I my weakness, my imperfection; you know well that I could never love my sisters as you love them, unless you yourself, Jesus, love them again in me. Thus, an impossible demand becomes achievable if we accept the assumption that Jesus dwells in us and he will act in us with his love. This faith and trust changes the perspective so fundamentally that Teresa then wrote about this commandment that it is for her a grace, and she confessed her love for this commandment! Because she no longer regarded this commandment as a command but as Jesus' promise and assurance: I will be in you and I will love in you. Let us complete the citation of her words: Because you wanted to grant me this grace, you gave the new commandment. - How I love it! It gives me the assurance that it is your will to love in me all those you command me to love!... Yes, I feel it, when I show love, it is Jesus who acts in me. The more I am connected with Him, the more I also love all my sisters. (The word all was not emphasized by Teresa this time, but from the context it is clear that it is important here.)
And then Teresa recalled specific examples of how she practiced love for her sisters. How she overcame her antipathy towards a certain sister and how, when someone unjustly accused her, she preferred to run away rather than defend herself harshly or be troubled over trivial matters. These passages from her notes became famous.
Teresa's merciful love sprang from her firm faith that she herself was loved with a merciful love. "Now I no longer marvel at anything, I do not worry when I see that I am weakness itself. On the contrary, I boast of it and every day I expect to discover new imperfections in myself. When I remember that love covers a multitude of sins (Prov 10:12), I draw from this rich mine that Jesus has opened before me." And she continued in her reflection on Jesus' requirement that we love our enemies. Teresa applied this to those who are unpleasant to us or who discourage us by being antagonistic.
In recounting her insights from communal life, Teresa also mentioned God's patience. This too is an aspect of God's mercy. "At that time, the Lord made it clear to me that there are souls on which His mercy tirelessly waits, to whom He gives His light only gradually. Therefore, I have guarded against hastening His hour and patiently waited until it pleases Jesus to call forth that hour" (AS 227).
Since February 1893, Teresa had been designated as an assistant to the novice mistress in caring for the "professionally" youngest members of the community (in terms of physical age they were older than Teresa). Further in manuscript C, she described to the mother prioress what this service taught her. We recognize that despite all her emphasis on mercy and surrender, Teresa was not a soft-hearted person, and the novices considered her strict! First, she realized that she must not lead others automatically along the path that is her own, but the one that Jesus desires for them.
"But that is not even the hardest part. Most of all, it costs me to observe the faults (of the entrusted sisters), even the slightest imperfections, and to wage war on them to the death. (...) A thousand times rather would I receive criticism than make it to others. (...) I know well that your lambs find me strict.
If they read these lines, they would say that it does not seem to cost me the slightest to run after them, to speak to them strictly and to show them how their beautiful fleece is soiled, or to bring them a light tuft of wool they have torn on thorns in the path. The lambs can say what they want. Deep down, they feel that I love them with true love..." (AS 230)
It is really good that in our reflection on Teresa's emphasis on mercy, we do not overlook her ability to be strict, and deliberately so. To this, here is another quote about her service to the novices.
"Sometimes I cannot help smiling in my spirit when I see what a change occurs from day to day. It is magical... They come and say to me: 'Yesterday you were right to be strict. At first, it shocked me, but then I remembered everything and saw that you acted very justly...'" (AS 231)
When Teresa shared her further experiences in caring for the spiritual growth of the novices, she did not forget the fundamental tone she wanted her writing to carry. Therefore, when she described how God sometimes allows her to experience valuable humiliation, she added with gratitude:
"Oh, how great is His mercy! I will be able to sing of it only in heaven... Beloved mother, when I try to start praising this infinite mercy here on earth, I must tell you about one great benefit I drew from the mission you entrusted to me."
And she narrated her experience, which now – when she is terminally ill – she associates with the care shown to her by both the superior and the nurses: "When I thought of all this, I told myself that I must have such compassion for the spiritual illnesses of my sisters as you have, beloved mother, when you care for me with such love." Teresa had long noticed that "the most saintly sisters are the most loved," meaning that others are willing and selfless towards them, while towards sisters who have complicated personalities, others are restrained, avoid their company, and fear their reactions. Referring to the selflessness of the superior towards her, Teresa said: "I must seek in recovery, in times of speaking, the company of sisters who are less pleasant to me; I must be a merciful Samaritan to these wounded souls."
She was well aware that she often would not receive gratitude for this. But that was not why she did it. She wanted to fulfill Christ's call to mercy: "to please Jesus and to respond to the advice He gives in the gospel perhaps in these words: 'When you host a banquet, do not invite your relatives or friends, so that they may not also invite you back, and so you will be repaid. But invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. Your Father, who sees what is hidden, will repay you.' And then she wrote her memory of how in the novitiate she took on the thankless role of accompanying a sick, frightened, and touchy Sister Petra to the refectory and how she managed to serve her joyfully then.
Because she realized that by recounting this memory she had disrupted the chronology of her narrative, she justified herself: "Beloved mother, perhaps you wonder why I write to you about this small act of love that happened so long ago. I wrote this because I feel that I must praise the Lord's mercy for it. He left me a memory of it like a fragrance that urges me to cultivate fraternal love. I sometimes remember certain trifles that are like a spring breeze for my soul” (AS 239). This is a beautiful guideline for us to similarly keep in mind what the Lord God has once more significantly addressed us and encouraged us.
Then Teresa wrote about her two spiritual brothers who were priests. In the following paragraphs of her manuscript, she paraphrased Jesus' high priestly prayer from the Gospel of John and prayed for those whom God entrusted to her. "I simply want to pray that one day we all meet in your beautiful heaven" (AS 246). She was convinced: "Your love has preceded me from my childhood, it grew with me, and now it is a depth whose depth I cannot fathom," thus how great God's mercy towards her was. "... here on earth, I cannot imagine a greater love than the love you delighted to bestow on me without any merit of my own" (AS 247).
The last entry in her notebook is not an intentional conclusion to her writing; simply, there never came the moment later when she gathered the strength to write again. The last thing Teresa wrote in this manuscript is a confession of humility that she learned from the pages of the gospel, a confession of absolute trust that God is merciful and will not refuse forgiveness to anyone who asks for it. And thus, "by chance," this third manuscript of Teresa ends with the word love.
"Yes, I feel it, even if I were to have on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go with a contrite heart and throw myself into the arms of Jesus. For I know how He loves the prodigal son who returns to Him. Not because God, by His mercy, has prevented and spared my soul from mortal sin, do I lift myself to Him with trust and love!" (AS 249.)
10. Mercy and Justice of God from Saint Teresa’s Perspective
We often perceive these two concepts as irreconcilable: either I will be just (in the sense of strict, demanding, uncompromising) or merciful (in the sense of forgiving, letting it go). Similarly, we attribute this to God. Let us quote two places from Teresa's writings about justice and mercy as divine attributes.
The mention of both of these divine attributes appeared already in manuscript A when Teresa shared her enthusiasm for the act of consecration to merciful Love. For Teresa, God's justice does not mean strictness. To be just here seems to have once been expressed by the phrase "to be right" (to something or someone). Justice means a proper relationship to some standard, claim, obligation. Thus, we speak of a just price, wage, just punishment. Hence weights symbolize justice. When we reflect on God's justice, we automatically relate it to God's perfection. To pray justly then, means to pray perfectly, because God is perfect. Surely you already sense the consequences this conception might have.
But Teresa related God's justice to our capacity, to our (in)ability. Teresa knows well that we are fragile. And God knows it too. She wrote:
"Yet I understand that not all souls can be the same. There must be various kinds, so that each divine perfection can be particularly honored. He has given me His infinite mercy, and through it, I perceive and honor other divine perfections! ... Then it shows me that all shine with love, yes, it seems to me that even justice is clothed in love (and perhaps even more than any other attribute)... How sweet is the joy in the thought that the Lord God is just, which means He takes into account our weaknesses, perfectly knows the fragility of our nature! What should I then fear? When the infinitely just God has so kindly forgiven all the sins of the prodigal son, should He not be just to me, who 'is always with Him'? ..." (AS 171)
Thus, for Teresa, the fact that God is just means that God takes into account our weakness. In other words, that God being just is the same as God being merciful.
Similarly, Teresa expressed herself in a letter to Father Roulland on May 9, 1897 (DT 226), when she considered the deaths of martyrs and death in general:
"I know that a person must be very pure to appear before the perfectly holy God. But I also know that the Lord is infinitely Just, and this justice, which frightens so many souls, is the reason for my joy and my trust. To be just does not mean just to punish the guilty strictly. It is also the recognition of honest intentions and the reward for virtues. I hope just as much for God's justice as for God's mercy. Precisely because God is just, 'He is compassionate and full of sweetness, slow to anger and abounding in mercy.'4 For He knows our frailty, remembers that we are only dust. As a father shows tenderness to children, so the Lord has compassion on us"...
(To be continued in the next issue.)
