Treats
- of how the necessities of the body should be
disregarded and
- of the good that comes from poverty.
Do not think, my sisters,
that because you do not go about
trying to please people in the world
you will lack food.
You will not, I assure you:
never try to sustain yourselves
by human artifices,
or you will die of hunger, and rightly so.
Keep your eyes fixed upon your Spouse:
it is for Him to sustain you;
and, if He is pleased with you,
even those who like you least
will give you food,
if unwillingly,
as you have found by experience.
If you should do as I say
and yet die of hunger,
then happy are the nuns of Saint Joseph's!
For the love of the Lord,
let us not forget this:
you have forgone a regular income;
forgo worry about food as well,
or thou will lose everything.
Let those whom the Lord wishes
to live on an income
do so:
if that is their vocation,
they are perfectly justified;
but for us to do so, sisters,
would be inconsistent.
Worrying about getting money
from other people
seems to me like
thinking about what other people enjoy.
However much you worry,
you will not make them change their minds
nor will they become desirous
of giving you alms.
Leave these anxieties to Him
Who can move everyone,
Who is the Lord
of all money and
of all who possess money.
It is by His command
that we have come here
and His words are true--
they cannot fail:
Heaven and earth will fail first. [14]
Let us not fail Him, and
let us have no fear that He will fail us;
if He should ever do so
it will be for our greater good,
just as the saints failed to keep their lives
when they were slain for the Lord's sake,
and their bliss was increased
through their martyrdom.
We should be making a good exchange
if we could have done with this life quickly
and enjoy everlasting satiety.
Remember, sisters,
that this will be important
when I am dead; and
that is why I am leaving it to you in writing.
For, with God's help, as long as I live,
I will remind you of it myself,
as I know by experience
what a great help it will be to you.
It is when I possess least
that I have the fewest worries
and the Lord knows,
as far as I can tell,
that I am more afflicted
when there is excess of anything
than when there is lack of it;
I am not sure if that is the Lord's doing,
but I have noticed
that He provides for us immediately.
To act otherwise would be to deceive the world
by pretending to be poor
when we are not poor in spirit
but only outwardly.
My conscience would give me a bad time.
It seems to me
it would be like stealing
what was being given us,
as one might say;
for I should feel
as if we were rich people
asking alms:
please God this may never be so.
Those who worry too much
about the alms that they are likely to be given will find that sooner or later
this bad habit will lead them
to go and ask
- for something
which they do not need, and
- perhaps from someone
who needs it more than they do.
Such a person would gain
rather than lose by giving it us
but we should certainly be the worse off
for having it.
God forbid this should ever happen,
my daughters;
if it were likely to do so,
I should prefer you
to have a regular income.
I beg you, for the love of God,
just as if I were begging alms for you,
never to allow this to occupy your thoughts.
If the very least of you ever hears
of such a thing happening in this house,
cry out about it to His Majesty
and speak to your Superior.
Tell her humbly that she is doing wrong;
this is so serious a matter
that it may cause true poverty
gradually to disappear.
I hope in the Lord
that this will not be so and
that He will not forsake His servants;
and for that reason, if for no other,
what you have told me to write
may be useful to you as a reminder.
My daughters must believe
that it is for their own good
that the Lord has enabled me
to realize in some small degree
what blessings are to be found in holy poverty.
Those of them
who practise it
will also realize this,
though perhaps not as clearly as I do;
for, although I had professed poverty,
I was
not only without poverty of spirit,
but my spirit was devoid of all restraint.
Poverty is good
and contains within itself
all the good things in the world.
It is a great domain-- I mean
that he who cares nothing
for the good things of the world
has dominion over them all.
What do kings and lords matter to me
if I have no desire
to possess their money, or
to please them,
if by so doing I should cause
the least displeasure to God?
And what do their honours mean to me
if I have realized that the chief honour
of a poor man
consists in his being truly poor?
For my own part, I believe
that honour and money
nearly always go together, and
that he who desires honour
never hates money,
while he who hates money
cares little for honour.
Understand this clearly,
for I think this concern about honour
always implies some slight regard
for endowments or money:
seldom or never is a poor man
honoured by the world;
however worthy of honour he may be,
he is apt rather to be despised by it.
With true poverty
there goes a different kind of honour
to which nobody can take objection.
I mean that,
if poverty is embraced for God's sake alone,
no one has to be pleased save God.
It is certain
that a man who has no need of anyone
has many friends:
in my own experience
I have found this to be very true.
A great deal has been written
about this virtue
which I cannot understand,
still less express,
and I should only be making things worse
if I were to eulogize it,
so I will say no more about it now.
I have only spoken of
what I have myself experienced and
I confess
that I have been so much absorbed
that until now I have hardly realized
what I have been writing.
However, it has been said now.
Our arms are holy poverty,
which was
so greatly esteemed and
so strictly observed by our holy Fathers
at the beginning of the foundation
of our Order.
(Someone who knows about this
tells me that they never kept anything
from one day to the next.)
For the love of the Lord, then, [I beg you]
now that the rule of poverty
is less perfectly observed
as regards outward things,
let us strive to observe it inwardly.
Our life lasts only for a couple of hours;
our reward is boundless;
and, if there were no reward
but to follow the counsels
given us by the Lord,
to imitate His Majesty
in any degree
would bring us a great recompense.
These arms must appear on our banners
and at all costs we must keep this rule--
as regards our house, our clothes, our speech,
and (which is much more important)
our thoughts.
So long as this is done,
there need be no fear,
with the help of God,
that religious observances in this house
will decline,
for, as Saint Clare said,
the walls of poverty are very strong.
It was
with these walls,
she said, and
with those of humility,
that she wished to surround her convents;
and assuredly,
if the rule of poverty is truly kept,
both chastity and all the other virtues
are fortified
much better
than by the most sumptuous edifices.
Have a care to this, for the love of God;
and this I beg of you by His blood.
If I may say what my conscience bids me,
I should wish that,
on the day when you build such edifices,
they [15] may fall down
and kill you all.
It seems very wrong, my daughters,
that great houses should be built
with the money of the poor;
may God forbid that this should be done;
let our houses be small and poor in every way.
Let us to some extent resemble our King,
Who had no house save
the porch in Bethlehem
where He was born and
the Cross
on which He died.
These were houses
where little comfort could be found.
Those who erect large houses will, no doubt,
have good reasons for doing so.
I do not utterly condemn them:
they are moved by various holy intentions.
But any corner is sufficient
for thirteen poor women.
If grounds should be thought necessary
on account
- of the strictness of the enclosure, and also
- as an aid to prayer and devotion, and
- because our miserable nature
needs such things,
well and good;
and let there be a few hermitages [16] in them
in which the sisters may go to pray.
But as for a large ornate convent,
with a lot of buildings--
God preserve us from that!
Always remember that these things
will all fall down on the Day of Judgment,
and who knows how soon that will be?
It would hardly look well
if the house of thirteen poor women
made a great noise when it fell,
for those who are really poor
must make no noise:
unless they live a noiseless life
people will never take pity on them.
And how happy my sisters will be
if they see someone freed from hell
by means of the alms
which he has given them;
and this is quite possible,
since they are strictly bound
to offer continual prayer for persons
who give them food.
It is also God's will that,
although the food comes from Him,
we should thank the persons
by whose means He gives it to us:
let there be no neglect of this.
I do not remember
what I had begun to say,
for I have strayed from my subject.
But I think this must have been the Lord's will,
for I never intended to write
what I have said here.
May His Majesty always keep us
in His hand
so that we may never fall. Amen.
________________________
FOOT NOTES:
[14] An apparent reference to St. Mark xiii, 31.
[15] In the Spanish the subject is in the singular:
P. Banez inserted "the house",
but crossed this out later.
[16] St. Teresa liked to have hermitages
in the grounds of her convents
to give the nuns opportunity for solitude.
