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is essential
RETURNING
TO WHAT IS ESSENTIAL
IN OUR CHARISM AND SPIRITUALITY
1. What is essential in
the Rule of St Albert
2. What is essential in
Teresian experience and teaching
3. Essentials of the experience
and teaching of St John of the Cross
4. What is essential in
the charism and spirituality of the Teresian Carmel
2. What is essential in Teresian experience
and teaching
43. Our Holy Mother was always innately very gifted for interpersonal
relationships and friendship. Her own experience lies at the
source of our vocational identity in the Church. She was centred
on God, "caught up" by him and in him, the Trinitarian
mystery. Her conscious awareness was totally occupied with
the Divine Persons (God) which launched in her a strong and
vivid interpersonal relationship, immersing her in the life
of intra-Trinitarian relationship. She experienced the presence
and nearness of the Father. "All one need do is go into
solitude and look at Him within oneself". In her Spiritual
Testimonies she speaks to us about her experience of the Father
who drew near to her and spoke very pleasant words. "Among
them, while showing me what He wanted, He told me: 'I gave
you My Son, and the Holy Spirit'".
44. By assuming our human nature through the working of the
Holy Spirit, the Word of God, our Holy Mother tell us, not
only assumed our frailty, work and limitations and thus understands
our weakness, but he also reveals the direction and the limits
of our divine filiation: our human condition and, because
of this, he is a companion and true friend: "We are not
angels but we have a body. To desire to be angels while we
are on earth.... is foolishness... and in times of dryness,
Christ is a very good friend because we behold Him as man
and see Him with weaknesses and trials and He is company for
us". For this reason St Teresa was opposed to the opinion
of many theologians who demanded that one leave aside the
humanity of Christ in order to be able to ascend to higher
grades of contemplation. She states strongly that there is
never need to separate oneself from Christ's humanity.
According to Teresa's teaching, following Jesus under the
action of the Spirit also implies accepting our human nature
and living it as a grace, as a vehicle of grace. This also
means experiencing its limitations and weaknesses. To become
like Christ is also to become human, or if you wish, to become
a person, to be a person.
45. Naturally, St Teresa teaches us as well that, joined
to this process of humanization, there happens a process of
divinisation. She also defines for us this combination of
the human and divine. All Teresian asceticism searches for
liberation and the strengthening of the human, the adornment
of the person, so that we can be transformed into signs and
instruments of the Man-God and the God-Man: "the holier
they are the more sociable they are with their Sisters....be
affable, agreeable, and pleasing to persons with whom we deal".
Teresa communicates to us her delightful discovering of God
and his demands that reach into the core of our human relationships.
According to her, the fact that God became human, opens the
way for us and makes possible our own humanization, that is
carried into the humanization of every structure, always for
the service of persons, as Vatican II reminds us: "the
human person is and ought to be the beginning, the subject
and the object of every social organization". In her
project of renewing Carmel, Teresa was totally committed to
this alleviation of structures. She managed to pass from a
rigid, hieratic attitude, to a gospel humanism: "understand,
my father, that I am a friend of intensifying virtue, but
not rigour, as will be seen in our houses". St Teresa
always defended tolerance and humanism in structures and in
applying laws, since "a weighed down soul cannot serve
God well".
46. Joined to the experience of Father and Son, St Teresa
was aware of the presence and action of the Spirit in her
life. "It seems to me the Holy Spirit must be a mediator
between the soul and God". He it is who guides the life
of persons and communicates the faith to them, as to the Apostles.
He accompanies us in prayer and lets us experience the presence
of the Father and Son.
47. Her journey, as expressed in the way she lived and much
later in what she taught, consisted of prayer, considered
as friendship. It is the "means" and "place"
par excellence of her experience of God. St Teresa emphasises
the importance of encounter with the Lord in silence and solitude,
yet, though already in the fulness of union with God, she
could write "the Lord walks among the pots and pans".
God communicates himself by many paths, not only when we are
"off in some corner".
Prayer is the centre and axis of her spiritual message. Understood
as friendship it extends to the whole of life, and leads to
being God's friends. For this reason, when she presents her
teaching on prayer she insists on being: "what we must
be like". She also speaks of the recreation of being
(fraternal love, detachment, humility equalling truth) as
"things that are necessary for those who seek to follow
the way of prayer".
48. This approach allowed her to give instruction on life
in community, another extremely essential point in the experience
and teaching of Teresa. She compares her communities to the
group of the Twelve surrounding Christ and calls them the
"college of Christ". It is the Lord who "brought
us together here". Community arises because the Lord
summons it and brings it together for a collective gift to
him: "to give ourselves to the All entirely and without
reserve". He makes us into relatives of one another.
In this way we become a new family: "You will not find
better relatives than those He sends you". Right from
the beginning, this prayer-as-friendship is centred on Christ
Jesus. In him, the "living book", she learned "the
truths" of God's nature and our own, of our call to "being
conformed" to him. It must be emphasised that Teresian
humanism springs from this very point.
49. Consecrated persons are transformed into friends and
spouses of Jesus, and must be a gift for others: in the Church
and in the world. Prayer, for St Teresa, is not reduced to
a few moments, let alone locking us up in ourselves. Thus
she educated her nuns to: "dedicate themselves to the
good of souls and the increase of His Church". "Those
who truly love this Lord and know their own nature",
their own self becomes a gift. It is not the gift of self
that sanctifies, rather it is in giving oneself that one becomes
sanctified. In this way they are "fighting for Christ".
Mary is the supreme expression of the Carmelite vocation:
"you have such a good mother", we ought to "live
our lives as true children of the Blessed Virgin", then
the reform is "Our Lady's cause". We are "her
Order".
50. This intimate experience of the three divine Persons
and their action in ourselves and in history is vivid and
nourishing in prayer that is friendship with the Trinity.
Humanism rises out of the incarnation of the Word. Communion
is a proclamation of the Gospel when it is fruit of the presence
and action of the Spirit stimulating the mission to proclaim
the Good News of salvation and to live in faith (humility-truth),
hope (detachment) and love.
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Taken from the INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS, DISCUSSION
DOCUMENT FOR THE 2003 GENERAL CHAPTER: "JOURNEYING WITH
TERESA OF JESUS AND JOHN OF THE CROSS,
SETTING OUT FROM ESSENTIALS" DISCALCED CARMELITE GENERAL
DEFINITORY, NAIROBI 2001. Full text available at: www.ocd.pcn.net
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