CHAPTER 16 of The Way of Perfection St. Teresa of Avila Describes - the difference between perfection in the lives of contemplatives and in the lives of those who are content with mental prayer. Explains - how it is sometimes possible for God to raise a distracted soul to perfect contemplation and - the reason for this. This chapter and that which comes next are to be noted carefully. [45] |
I hope you do not think
I have written too much
about this already;
for I have only been placing the board,
as they say.
You have asked me to tell you
about the first steps in prayer;
although God did not lead me by them,
my daughters
I know no others,
and even now I can hardly have acquired
these elementary virtues.
But you may be sure
that anyone who cannot set out the pieces
in a game of chess
will never be able to play well,
and, if he does not know how
to give check,
he will not be able to bring about
a checkmate. [46]
Now you will reprove me
for talking about games,
as we do not play them in this house
and are forbidden to do so.
That will show you what kind of a mother
God has given you--
she even knows about vanities like this!
However, they say that the game
is sometimes legitimate.
How legitimate it will be for us
to play it in this way,
and, if we play it frequently,
how quickly we shall give checkmate
to this Divine King!
He will not be able
to move out of our check
nor will He desire to do so.
It is the queen
which gives the king most trouble
in this game
and all the other pieces support her.
There is no queen
who can beat this King
as well as humility can;
for humility brought Him
down from Heaven
into the Virgin's womb and
with humility
we can draw Him into our souls
by a single hair.
Be sure
that He will give
most humility
to him who has most already and
least
to him who has least (humility).
I cannot understand
how humility exists,
how humility exists,
or can exist,
without love,
or love without humility,
and it is impossible
for these two virtues to exist
save where there is great detachment
from all created things.
You will ask, my daughters,
why I am talking to you
about virtues
- when you have more than enough books
to teach you about them and
- when you want me to tell you
only about contemplation.
My reply is
that, if you had asked me about meditation,
I could have
- talked to you about it, and
- advised you all to practise it,
even if you do not possess the virtues.
For this (meditation) is
the first step to be taken
the first step to be taken
towards the acquisition of the virtues and
the very life of all Christians
depends upon their beginning it.
No one,
however lost a soul he may be,
should neglect so great a blessing
if God inspires him to make use of it.
All this I have already written elsewhere,
and so have many others
who know what they are writing about,
which I certainly do not:
God knows that.
But contemplation, daughters,
is another matter.
This is an error
which we all make:
if a person gets so far
as to spend a short time each day
in thinking about his sins,
as he is bound to do
if he is a Christian
in anything more than name,
people at once call him
a great contemplative;
and then they expect him
to have the rare virtues
which a great contemplative is
bound to possess;
he may even think he has them himself,
but he will be quite wrong.
In his early stages
he did not even know
how to set out the chess-board,
and thought that,
in order to give checkmate,
it would be enough
to be able to recognize the pieces.
But that is impossible,
for this King does not allow Himself
to be taken
except by one
who surrenders wholly to Him.
Therefore, daughters,
if you want me to tell you
the way to attain to contemplation,
do allow me to speak at some length
about these things,
even if at the time
they do not seem to you very important,
for I think, myself, that they are.
If you have no wish
either to hear about them
or to practise them,
continue your mental prayer all your life;
but in that
I assure you,
and all persons who desire this blessing,
that, in my opinion,
you will not attain true contemplation.
I may, of course, be wrong about this,
as I am judging by my own experience,
but I have been striving after contemplation
for twenty years.
I will now explain
what mental prayer is,
as some of you will not understand this.
God grant
that we may practise it as we should!
I am afraid, however,
that, if we do not achieve the virtues,
this can only be done with great labour,
although the virtues are not necessary here
in such a high degree
as they are for contemplation.
I mean that the King of glory
will not come to our souls--
that is, so as to be united with them--
unless we strive
to gain the greatest virtues. [47]
I will explain this,
for if you once catch me
out in something
which is not the truth,
you will believe nothing I say--
and if I were to say
something untrue intentionally,
from which may God preserve me,
you would be right;
but, if I did,
it would be because
I knew no better
or did not understand what I said.
I will tell you, then,
that God is sometimes pleased
to show great favour to persons
who are in an evil state
[and to raise them to perfect contemplation],
so that by this means
so that by this means
He may snatch them
out of the hands of the devil.
It must be understood, I think,
that such persons
- will not be in mortal sin at the time.
- They may be in an evil state, and
yet the Lord will allow them
to see a vision, even a very good one,
in order to draw them back to Himself.
But I cannot believe
that He would grant them contemplation.
For that is a Divine union,
in which
the Lord takes His delight
in the soul and
the soul takes its delight
in Him;
and there is no way
in which the Purity of the Heavens
can take pleasure in a soul
that is unclean,
nor can the Delight of the angels
have delight in
that which is not His own.
And we know
that, by committing mortal sin,
a soul
becomes the property of the devil, and
must take its delight in him,
since it has given him pleasure;
and, as we know,
his delights, even in this life,
are continuous torture.
My Lord will have no lack
of children of His own
in whom He may rejoice
without going and taking
the children of others.
Yet His Majesty will do
what He often does--
namely, snatch them out
of the devil's hands. [48]
Oh, my Lord!
How often do we cause Thee
to wrestle with the devil!
Was it not enough
that Thou shouldst have allowed him
to bear Thee in his arms
when he took Thee to the pinnacle
of the Temple
in order to teach us how to vanquish him?
What a sight it would have been, daughters,
to see this Sun
by the side of the darkness, and
what fear
that wretched creature must have felt
though he would not have known why,
since God did not allow Him to understand!
Blessed be such great pity and mercy;
we Christians ought to feel great shame
at making Him wrestle daily,
in the way I have described,
with such an unclean beast.
Indeed, Lord,
Thine arms had need to be strong,
but how was it
that they were not weakened
by the many [trials and] tortures
which Thou didst endure upon the Cross?
Oh, how quickly all that is borne
for love's sake
heals again!
I really believe
that, if
Thou hadst lived longer,
the very love which Thou hast for us
- would have healed Thy wounds again and
- Thou wouldst have needed
no other medicine.
Oh, my God,
who will give me such medicine
for all the things
which grieve and try me?
How eagerly should I desire them
if it were certain
that I could be cured
by such a health-giving ointment!
Returning to what I was saying,
there are souls
whom God knows
He may gain for Himself
by this means;
seeing that they are completely lost,
His Majesty wants to leave
no stone unturned to help them; and
therefore,
though they are
in a sad way and
lacking in virtues,
He gives them consolations,
favours and emotions [49]
which
begin to move their desires, and
begin to move their desires, and
occasionally even brings them
to a state of contemplation,
though rarely and not for long at a time.
And this, as I say,
He does because He is testing them
to see
if that favour will not make them
anxious to prepare themselves
to enjoy it often;
if it does not,
may they be pardoned;
Pardon Thou us, Lord,
for it is a dreadful thing
that a soul
whom Thou hast brought near to Thyself
- should approach any earthly thing and
- become attached to it.
For my own part
I believe there are
many souls whom God our Lord
tests in this way, and
few who prepare themselves
to enjoy this favour.
When
the Lord does this
and
we ourselves leave nothing undone either,
I think it is certain
that He never ceases from giving
until He has brought us
to a very high degree of prayer.
If we do not give ourselves
to His Majesty
as resolutely as
He gives Himself to us,
He will be doing
more than enough for us
if He leaves us in mental prayer
and from time to time visits us
as He would visit servants
in His vineyard.
But these others are His beloved children,
whom He would never want
to banish from His side;
and, as they have no desire to leave Him,
He never does so.
He seats them at His table,
and feeds them with His own food,
almost taking the food from His mouth
in order to give it them.
Oh, what blessed care of us
is this, my daughters!
How happy shall we be
if by leaving these few, petty [50] things
we can arrive at so high an estate!
Even if the whole world should
blame you, and
deafen you
with its cries,
what matter so long as you are
in the arms of God?
He is powerful enough
to free you from everything;
for only once did He command the world
to be made
and it was done;
with Him,
to will is to do.
Do not be afraid, then,
if He is pleased to speak with you,
for He does this for the greater good
of those who love Him.
His love for those
to whom He is dear
is by no means so weak:
He shows it in every way possible.
Why, then, my sisters,
do we not show Him love
in so far as we can?
Consider what a wonderful exchange it is
if we give Him our love
if we give Him our love
and receive His.
Consider that
He can do all things, and
we can do nothing here below
save as He enables us.
And what is it
that we do for Thee, O Lord, our Maker?
We do hardly anything [at all]--
just make some poor weak resolution.
And,
if His Majesty is pleased
that by doing a mere nothing
we should win everything,
let us not be so foolish as to fail to do it.
O Lord!
All our trouble comes to us
from not having our eyes
fixed upon Thee.
If we only looked at the way along
which we are walking,
we should soon arrive;
but we
stumble and fall a thousand times and
stray from the way
because, as I say,
we do not set our eyes on the true Way.
One would think
that no one had ever trodden it before,
so new is it to us.
It is indeed a pity
that this should sometimes happen.
I mean,
it hardly seems
it hardly seems
that we are Christians at all or
that we have ever in our lives
read about the Passion.
Lord help us --
that we should be hurt
about some small point of honour!
And then,
when someone tells us
not to worry about it,
we think he is no Christian.
I used to laugh--
or sometimes
I used to be distressed--
at the things I heard in the world,
and sometimes,
for my sins, in religious Orders.
We refuse to be thwarted
over the very smallest matter
of precedence:
apparently such a thing is quite intolerable.
We cry out at once:
"Well, I'm no saint";
I used to say that myself.
God deliver us, sisters, from saying
"We are not angels",
or
"We are not saints",
whenever we commit some imperfection.
We may not be (saints);
but what a good thing it is
for us to reflect
that we can be
if we will only try and
if God gives us His hand!
Do not be afraid
that He will fail to do His part
if we do not fail to do ours.
And since we come here
for no other reason,
let us put our hands to the plough,
as they say.
Let there be nothing we know of
- which it would be a service
to the Lord for us to do, and
- which, with His help,
we would not venture to take in hand.
I should like that kind of venturesomeness
to be found in this house,
as it always increases humility.
We must have a holy boldness,
for God helps the strong,
being no respecter of persons; [51]
and He will give courage to you and to me.
I have strayed far from the point.
I want to return to what I was saying--
that is, to explain the nature
of mental prayer and contemplation.
It may seem irrelevant,
but it is all done for your sakes;
you may understand it better
as expressed in my rough style
than in other books
which put it more elegantly.
May the Lord grant me His favour,
so that this may be so. Amen.
_____________________
Foot Notes: [45] The first four paragraphs of this chapter originally formed part of V., but, after writing them, St. Teresa tore them out of the manuscript, as though, on consideration, she had decided not to leave on record her knowledge of such a worldly game as chess. The allegory, however, is so expressive and beautiful that it has rightly become famous, and from the time of Fray Luis de Leon all the editions have included it. The text here followed is that of E. [46] Chess was very much in vogue in the Spain of St. Teresa's day and it was only in 1561 that its great exponent Ruy Lopez de Segura had published his celebrated treatise, in Spanish, entitled "Book of the liberal invention and art of the game of chess". [47] Lit.: "the great virtues." In V., St. Teresa originally began this sentence thus: "In the last chapter, I said that the King of glory, etc.," and ended it: "to gain the virtues which I there described as great." Later she altered it to read as above. [48] Lit.: "out of his hands", but the meaning, made more explicit in V., is evident. On the doctrinal question involved in this paragraph, see Introduction, above. P. Silverio (III, 75-6), has a more extensive note on the subject than can be given here and cites a number of Spanish authorities, from P. Juan de Jesus Maria (Theologia Mystica, Chap. III) to P. Seisdedos Sanz (Principios fundamentales de la mystica, Madrid, 1913, II, 61-77.) [49] Lit.: "and tenderness." [50] Lit.: "low", contrasting with "high" at the end of the sentence. [51] Acts x, 34. |
End of Chapter 16 |
