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Spirit of Wisdom
A Homily for the Feast of St Teresa
Our feast day readings (Wis 7:7-14, Rom 8:14-17, 26-27; John 7: 14-18,37-39a)
speak of the Spirit and Wisdom: Understanding is an incomparable gift,
the Spirit quenches the thirst of the one of comes to Jesus,
and everyone who receives the Spirit is a beloved child of God.
God's gift is so abundant that the words of the psalm became
Teresa's joyous litany; my heart sings with joy to the living God.
I will sing forever the mercies of the Lord.
Yet when the Lord began to reveal himself to her it was a disturbing time for Teresa.
Her confessor assured her she was deluded and possessed.
She persevered in seeking understanding
through open, honest dialogue with theologians and experts.
So committed to this search was she that she left her monastery
and lived for three years with her friend Doña Guiomar Ulloa
so she could benefit from the Jesuits opposite
and spiritual directors like Francis Borgia and Peter of Alcántara as they passed through.
Curiously she did not seek any Carmelite directors, pious men as these probably were,
but from truly competent theologians and spiritual directors,
Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans.
Teresa reflected on her life with costly honesty.
Wisdom is not magic it grows from out of our human experience
when it is reflected on and understood.
Teresa was a woman gifted in the ability to relate well with others,
so that often what began as professional interviews became friendships
in which there was genuine mutuality.
She learnt but she also inspired and taught the experts.
She needed to give an account for them of her life and mystical graces
and so began her career as a writer.
Her books, as spiritual and literary classics,
have inspired people over the centuries.
In 1970 she received the ultimate seal of approval as a doctor by the church:
one who not only has been taught by the church but teaches the church.
Ironically enough, she had barely died when well meaning friars and theologians
attempted to systematise and objectify her thought
to make it fit contemporary methods of ascetical and mystical theology.
I can remember being told just how womanish and distracted was Teresa's prose.
Teresa was not understood as a narrative and symbolic theologian,
who expressed her theology
in a moving autobiography,
parables and symbols like the ways of watering a garden or
Christ's dwelling places within the human person.
For those early modern theologians
the personal symbols
became an impersonal, scientific system.
That way of thinking fitted very well with early modern scientific culture
but it has problems today.
The irony is that today Teresa's books are still in print
but who reads any of the books of the 17th Century Carmelite school,
or even of the misogynist founder of fundamental theology Melchior Cano,
except for historians?
Wisdom is vindicated in her children.
The Cistercians of the Strict Observance had a Chapter last month (September 2002)
at which they declared their great surprise that nearly all the communities
of monks and nuns were in a precarious situation.
This is the reality of most religious orders and dioceses in our country,
our own included.
And indeed it would seem of the Christian family
in the post-modern world of continuous rapid change
where it is felt to be imperative that you do not cut off your options
by making a definitive commitment.
Today, people are interested in relationships not theories,
stories and humour, personal experience
and the timely rather than any attempt to be timeless.
How are we to live in this precarious situation when our institutions seem to be failing us?
My suggestion is we learn from the approach of Teresa
For whom precariousness was an opportunity.
All her brothers went to America and were in dangerous frontier situations, some in irregular relationships;
the church had recently been split by the Reformation,
in Spain the fear of division and of Jewish converts,
marginalised people like Teresa and fuelled the fires of the Inquisition;
her own community of the Incarnation was divided, like all Spanish society, into rich and poor.
Teresa realised the value of her own experience of God's healing love.
She began with herself but she sought help, she did not go it alone,
she did not pretend everything was all right or could soon become be fixed,
she refused to accept a strategy of denial.
So she consulted the very best advisors
and was supported by friends at home and outside the community.
She distanced herself from the Incarnation without abandoning it
when she went to live with Doña Guiomar.
She had the boldness to begin something new that addressed the needs of the time
rather than fighting to reform good people and the existing monastic observance.
Her idea of holiness was different from that which was congruent with the culture.
She rejected both aristocratic complacency
and the opposing extreme of wild asceticism
and obsession with strict external observance.
She valued instead faith, hope and love and the humane virtues.
Her humanism comes out strongly in her letters.
Her warnings are just as relevant today for people in dysfunctional situations:
Do not overwork and exhaust yourself even in good causes;
make sure you get sufficient rest;
keep healthy, eat well and observe proper hygiene.
She utilised the Galenic psychology of her day to discern how to treat those who claimed to have visions (more time to rest and more to eat as well as forbidding them excessive prayer).
She was not threatened by but utilised the human sciences.
She wanted her sisters to speak only to angels
but they did not have wings.
They were very human:
theologians, learned apostles and friends of God.
In fact in dealing with such conversations she made the Constitutions of her nuns more liberal than those of the unreformed.
If it was matters of conscience were being discussed then the face veil was to be removed and the companion sister was to leave the room to ensure privacy.
Her communities were to flourish in an atmosphere of trust whereby the sisters could be open with their prioress who was also a real spiritual director to the sisters.
What other monastic reformer do you know who insisted on the place of recreation in the life of her communities?
Recreation was relaxing and fun.
It included music, song, dance, jokes, yarns, and skits.
Quite simply without joy and affection there is no Teresian spirit.
In the precarious situations we find ourselves in the Spirit moves us as he moved Teresa
to be good friends of Jesus
and to live together joyfully in communities of true friends.
Rather than being depressed by precariousness of her family situation,
her community and Church
Teresa trusted in God,
discerned his will with the help of experts and friends
courageously did what the Spirit inspired
and in all circumstances sang the mercies of God.
She was fully human, fully alive,
to the glory of God.
May the Spirit she received, guide us who today celebrate her feast.
May we always join her song of gratitude to God.
Greg Burke ocd
Varroville
15 October, 2002
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