Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life.
In 1921, the brilliant Edith Stein, herself a student and assistant of famed philosopher Edmund Husserl, while on summer holiday picked a book at random from her hosts’ library to pass a quite afternoon. Engrossed, she read it through without break, stating simply, “This is the truth.”
The next day Edith purchased a Catholic catechism and missal, and was baptized by the New Year. As her conversion unfolded, she became a professor and writer, drawing crowds to her lectures, a translator of Thomas Aquinas, and eventually, a Carmelite nun. Jewish by birth, she died at the hands of the Nazis in 1942. The catalyst of this reversal was Saint Teresa of Ávila’ (1515-1582) autobiography, The Book of Her Life.
The spiritual journey is a passover, a transformation to the highest degree of glory to which each of us are destined by God. The Book of Her Life is a beautiful stained glass window on the long, fiery path to beatitude walked by this Spanish mystic and Doctor of the Church. Bluntly honest, it is filled with self-deprecating humor as Teresa tells of trial upon trial (mostly caused by self-misdirection and the misdirection of others) to the development of her own unique genius.
Throughout it all, what comes across clearly, is the need for humility and fortitude in prayer. “Torn to pieces” by sin and helplessly “bound”, we are, says the Saint, like a person trying to carry on separate conversations with two different individuals at the same time, wholly absorbed in neither. This state of personal division is evident to anyone who attempts to recollect themselves even for ten minutes of focused devotion before God.
To begin to practice prayer is to accept the truth about ourselves, and with courage in the face of adversity to turn repeatedly to God in simple faith. Ignoring the onslaught of memory and imagination, we persevere nonetheless, because “we know that God always understands us and is always with us.”
So often we tell ourselves that prayer is difficult and frustrating. Prayer is not difficult, nor should it be frustrating, since it is essentially what we are at the deepest and truest level of our being. What causes fatigue is accepting without evasion the truth that we are not who we are meant to be, and that our lives are spent escaping the knowledge of this reality. Prayer is the slow, painful process of reintegration and realignment of ourselves to God, who is Truth.
“Everything comes to an end,” writes Teresa. Grace will conquer increasingly within us space for the Divine Life as we yield to the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. Humility will turn us around, as it raises us to greater heights of perfection, and fortitude will bring us into a peace that surpasses all understanding.
“In the sight of Infinite Wisdom, believe me, there is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge of the world.”
