This is the invitation: to “advance with courage” through the “madness” – in Teresa’s words, “holy madness” (cf. IC 6:6:11).[1] And courage we will need, for sure: the path of prayer will bring us face to face with many trials and contradictions. On this journey Teresa offers us encouragement, freedom and support to persevere; she is in no doubt that it will be worth it.

First, though: in true Teresa style I need to make a digression; there is something I have to admit… The thing is: I have no idea how to pray and even less idea how to love God. Remember the beautiful lyrics in Jesus Christ Superstar, sung by Mary Magdalene: “I don’t know how to love him.”

This does feel like something of a confession, especially when I have been invited to share my experience of Teresa and of how she has given me the courage to advance on this bewildering journey of life and faith, and it turns out I am nothing but a fraud: I haven’t even got the basics… What on earth does it mean to love God? But immediately I can take courage from Teresa who states in The Book of Her Life, when describing her own difficulty with prayer: “I began to practise prayer without knowing what it was…” (L 9:4) [2]

Of course, there was a time when I did know how to pray, or at least I thought I did, but maybe it was only a beginning. Knowing, it seems, is a more comfortable place than not knowing – “unknowing” – yet we discover that being able to say, “I don’t know how to” is actually progress and we experience a new kind of freedom.  Although even the word “progress” is a word I hesitate to use, the danger is that we try to evaluate our prayer as the world evaluates productivity: we place value judgments on our prayer life and attempt to calculate our success.

Teresa, we find, when describing what she calls “degrees” of prayer, reminds us that: 

In no way can [the soul] acquire this prayer through any efforts it may make […] the will is occupied in such a way that, without knowing how, it becomes captive; it merely consents to God allowing Him to imprison it as one who well knows how to be the captive of its lover. (L 14:2; my italics)

Or, as the Franciscan Richard Rohr puts it:

My watching and judging do not change what is, but often becomes a concern with watching and judging itself. Prayer is not self observation butfalling into the hands of the living God. (Heb 10:31) [3]

Falling into the hands of the living God, being a captive of one’s Lover… Is this what it means to pray? Could it be that “the losing of the knowing how to…” is precisely what it takes to bring us to a deeper place of “knowing”? So perhaps, the truth is that it is not really possible for us to “know how” to love God. We don’t need to! This is not something achieved by our own efforts, knowledge or intellect. However, at the same time, it doesn’t happen in spite of us. Yes, it is true we can’t do it, but it does require us to be in it… or as Teresa so beautifully expresses it, this requires our consent and allowing: “the will […] becomes captive; it merely consents to God allowing Him to imprison it as one who well knows how to be the captive of its lover” (L 14:2; my italics).

In The Way of Perfection, Teresa reminds us that “He excludes no one […] But since He is so good,He does not force us” (WP 20:2; my italics).[4] Somehow, this is a happening in us, the work of God, yet it requires our consent, our cooperation, our allowing, our participation… It is an awakening, a spark, a gift, and it will take us out of control, out of our comfort zone, the place of “knowing”, into the place of “unknowing”! It can come from offside when we are least expecting it and stop us in our tracks. “A feeling of the presence of God would come upon me unexpectedly so that I could in no way doubt He was within me or I totally immersed in Him” (L 10:1).

“The intellect does not work, but it is as though amazed by all it understands because God desires that it understand, with regard to the things His Majesty represents to it, that it understands nothing” (L 10:1; my italics). However, this “unknowing” paradoxically brings us to awareness. This awareness is a different kind of knowing. “God always understands us and is with us. There is no doubt about this […] But our […] Lord desires that in this prayer we know that He understands us […] This satisfaction takes place in its very intimate depths, and the soul doesn’t know where the satisfaction comes from or how, nor frequently does it know what to do or what to desire or what to ask for. It seems it has found everything at once and doesn’t know what it has found” (L 14:6; my italics).

Trials, Contradictions and the Harbour of Salvation

As already mentioned, when Teresa speaks of prayer, she recognises that we will need courage, we will need to advance with courage. Why? Because there will, for certain, be trials and contradictions along the way. Yet so that we will not be dismayed by these trials and contradictions, she first wants (in her words) to: “explain the goal and show you the reward […] the good that comes from drinking of this heavenly fount, of this living water” (WP 19:14). In other words, it is Teresa’s desire to encourage us, to give hope, to increase our thirst, and where does her authority come from? It comes from her own experience! “I shall say nothing about what I have not experienced myself or seen in others…” (WP, Prol.  3).  Teresa speaks with love and through her own experience of “ordinary things”. Hers is not some spirituality detached from the reality of the ordinary, everyday experience of life.

Regarding contradiction, it is significant for me that the more “serious” I am about prayer, and the more I desire to be in relationship with God, the less “holy” it feels, or at least what I had considered “holy” to mean. Probably something quite insipid, nice, almost unreal, otherworldly.  Instead, here I am, faced with what feels like a right “unholy mess” of trials and temptations. Yet if being “holy” is something about being “whole”, then its meaning changes altogether: it becomes more about being real, facing my reality and the reality of life; it is about being integrated, fully alive, fully human; and once we are on this path, there is no going back.  This path of prayer, of holiness, will, it seems, take us along unexpected routes. We will experience diversions, road blocks, places we would rather not go; we will travel through dark nights and bright sunny days and we will indeed need courage to advance along the way. Courage and a good dose of Teresa’s determined determination! “If the soul perseveres in prayer, in the midst of the sins, temptations and failures of a thousand kinds […], I hold as certain, the Lord will draw it forth to the harbour of salvation” (L 8:4).

Unceasing Prayer

Some time ago, I was invited to speak to a group attending a School of Prayer.  The theme I was asked to talk about was “Prayer in the Marketplace” and I imagine I was invited because I was considered to be someone in the “marketplace”, whatever that means!  In reality, we are all in the marketplace.  Mine is lived out as a wife, mother, nurse; Teresa’s was the monastery in sixteenth-century Spain.

I found myself asking the question: “Could it be that either everything is prayer or nothing is prayer?” Now prayer has burst its boundaries, it cannot be contained, it is not a separate reality, but reality itself. Could it be that prayer, like God, cannot be limited to the size of our imagination? On the journey of faith, it seems that sooner or later we notice that God is everywhere. And how do we see this? I would like to suggest that it is through love; we begin to see love breaking through in the most unlikely and even devastating circumstances: a touch, a moment of tenderness, a look, a good neighbour… When we see through the eyes of love, then love is indeed all around us.

“For unceasing prayer is the most important aspect of the rule” (WP 4:2)

So, what might this prayer in the marketplace be, this unceasing prayer that Teresa tells us is the most important aspect of the Carmelite rule?

I don’t hear Teresa talking about a method or a technique, but rather a way of being in the world, the “happening” of prayer in us. And this is something Teresa experiences in every aspect of her life, of her reality, in the details, the personal details, the little things and the big things. Nothing and no one is excluded, there is nothing superficial about this. It includes the goal, the reward, the trials, the contradictions, the absurdities, the agony, the delight, the ecstasy! We all have our own experience and this is where prayer is happening, this is where love is happening, where relationship is happening. “Let us believe that all is for our own greater good. Let His Majesty lead the way along the path He desires” (L 11:12; my italics).

We can trust our own experience.  In the end, that’s all we have got, anyway; we can’t be where we are not, and Teresa reminds us: “For just as there are many mansions in heaven, there are many paths” (L 13:13). It is the ordinary everyday circumstances of our lives that expand our capacity for love, loving at the point which is most difficult, most challenging, when there is no feeling, just grit and determination. But maybe this is when love is most at work; it is a way of being in the world, not merely a “nice” feeling – rather, we are in love.  It is no longer I who live, no longer I who love, but Christ who loves in me.

The Thought that Counts

We have all heard the expression: “It’s the thought that counts.”  What do we understand by that?  A person may get it terribly “wrong” but if it is coming from a genuine place within them – if, to use another saying, “their heart is in the right place” – then somehow that’s okay.  Well, it seems to me that on this subject of prayer Teresa is saying: It is the desire that counts… So when we find ourselves amidst all these trials and contradictions that make up life (as we will, because we are human), the desire to be selfless can elude us and we find ourselves selfish instead.  I may have the desire for detachment, yet find myself with all kinds of attachments; I may desire to be faithful, but find myself easily distracted; I may have the desire for purity, yet I am besieged with impure thoughts. If we are able to be honest with ourselves, there are many things which appear to tarnish our desire. But it is our desire that counts: our desire to love, to be loving, to pray, however imperfect it may feel… And without this desire we have nothing! “He looked not at my great sins but at the desires I often had to serve Him” (L 7:18; my italics).

Teresa speaks of this desire in terms of thirst, a thirst to drink from the heavenly fount of living water, the same water that Christ spoke of to the Samaritan woman when he said that whoever drinks of it “will never thirst” (John 4, 14). Here Teresa reminds us that of course this is true for the things of this life, but once we have had our thirst quenched by this living water, then somehow our thirst is increased for the things of the next life – “How thirsty one becomes for this thirst!” (WP 19:2; my italics); moreover, “when God satisfies the thirst, the greatest favour He can grant the soul is to leave in it this same need – and a greater one – to drink the water again” (WP 19:2).  In the same way that our earthly bodies need water to stay alive, not just as a one-off but daily, so is it with the soul. Desire, thirst, keeps us alive. We are alive, we are living… Let us desire this desire. Let us desire the thirst for this thirst!

When she is encouraging us to pray, Teresa wants us to know this: “There is nothing here to fear but only something to desire” (L 8:5).  However imperfectly we do it, the important thing is to persevere, for: “I trust then in the mercy of God, who never fails to repay anyone who has taken Him for a friend” (L 8:5). Following this, Teresa famously goes on to describe mental prayer as “nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us” (L 8:5).

“Him who we know loves us.” There really is nothing to fear; we find ourselves awestruck, it is almost too much to bear, too beautiful – scarily wonderful. The saints describe this life-giving desire well when “The language of souls is their desire” [5]; “By desire [God] empties out souls. In emptying them out, he makes them more capable of receiving him.” [6] So, we see Teresa is in good company! By now we might be thinking that that’s fair enough for Teresa and Gregory the Great and Augustine of Hippo – the “saints” – but what about me? My desire is so imperfect.

More recently (back in 2014), there was a number one song in the charts with the title, “All of me loves all of you”, and it had these words: “I love your perfect imperfections.” Just imagine the living God whispering those words in our ear… What a paradox! It turns out that our imperfections are the thing that make us perfect, real.  Reading Teresa’s Way of Perfection, I have found myself thinking: for me it feels like the way of imperfection, and in a way it is, but it turns out that all of me is included in this way of perfection: my imperfections, the absurdities, the mess, the pain, the beauty, the joy… Of course, it is not just our desire that counts, but God’s desire. A God who is always desiring us, longing for us, desiring what is best for us. This is mutual – not only our desire for God but his for us. This is a path of mutuality. “In a way amazing to me, His Majesty when He desires teaches me everything in a moment” (L 12:6; my italics).

Wild Horses

Absurdity is an aspect of our reality, part of our humanity, our grist for the mill, the roots from which we grow, the place from which we are being transformed, where the activity of God is happening in us, where prayer and indeed love are at work. Teresa describes this state as being like a wild horse – it will feel wildly unreasonable: “There are some souls and minds so scattered they are like wild horses no one can stop […], always restless” (WP 19:2). Teresa pities these souls, for they seem to be like thirsty persons who just can’t get to the water: something or someone prevents their passing.

Now for many years of my life I was very attached to the image of myself as a “nice” girl – nothing wrong with that, you might say, and it served me well – but in the end “nice” is a poor substitute for “real” and I begin to discover the wild woman in me! The journey from nice girl to wild woman is totally exhilarating and scary… I love Teresa’s wild horse. Somehow if we can trust this wildness, the restlessness, if we can consent to this and allow ourselves to be present with awareness to our own very specific reality, however messy, painful or beautiful – as it were, our marketplace – then I have the sense that this will be the fertile ground from which our relationship with God is deepened, and indeed our relationship with others, with creation, and not least with ourselves. We might discover that we are not quite who we thought we were, but not so as to beat ourselves up but to see ourselves with mercy: it turns out I am human, imperfect… How wonderful!!

It is from this spacious place of prayer that we can be a neighbour. Now the person’s whole being expresses and communicates love and acceptance. This is what we are created for and capable of if we are willing to participate in the divine life. When the activity of God is fully realised in the person, it will be part of who they are at such a deep level; they will be so immersed in it that they won’t even notice it is happening. Like the fish that doesn’t see the sea because it is in it, the saints never know they are saints. Or as Teresa puts it:

It is true that these virtues have the characteristics of so hiding themselves from the person who possess them that he never sees them […] Yet, they are so manifest in the one who possesses them that without his desiring it, these virtues are at once recognised by others who deal with him. (WP 10:4)

Fakes Welcome!

Teresa warns us to beware of false humility and she encourages a more authentic humility that enables us to claim that we are indeed rich. Yes, it is true that God gives us gifts without any merit on our part, but Teresa tells us that we must thank God for this, because:

If we do not acknowledge we are receiving them, we will not awaken ourselves to love. And it is very certain that while we see more clearly that we are rich, over and above knowing that we are poor, more benefit comes to us, and even more authentic humility. (L 10:4)

False humility does not serve anyone; and the goal, as Teresa reminds us, is to be awakened to love: “For love is the genuine fruit of prayer when prayer is rooted in humility” (L 10:5); “For how can people benefit and share their gifts lavishly if they do not understand that they are rich?” (L 10:6).

It seems to me Teresa wants us to claim who we are: we are the beloved children of God, we were born to manifest the glory of God. On a recent visit to my spiritual director, he told me he was going to change the sign on his door to “Fakes welcome here”… What did he mean by that?  Something about welcoming those who know they are not perfect, yet pray anyway, who know they are not perfect but love anyway, who know they are not perfect but give anyway… And each is a unique manifestation of God in all His glory.

Malodorous Dung Heaps

Teresa has such a wonderful sense of humour, and whilst encouraging us to claim and embrace our giftedness, our riches, she states of herself: “As for everything else, just being a woman is enough to have my wings fall off” (L 10:8)!  Later. at the end of the same chapter (cf.  L 10:9), she refers to herself as a “filthy and malodorous dung heap” (manure makes soil more fertile) and this is the place where His Majesty, in her words, “[makes] a garden with so many delicate flowers”.

Maybe we all ought to pray to be a malodorous dung heap and have our wings fall off!!

I have taken personal courage from Teresa’s encouragement that we should talk to others about our joys and trials on this journey in prayer.  She believes that when we talk about these things honestly, we will benefit ourselves and those who hear us, for she tells us that if our desire is authentic we have no need to fear “vainglory”. How do we know if our desire is authentic? I once wrote a long-detailed email to a friend, expressing my concern as to how I might know whether or not I can trust my desires, and a one-line answer came back: “Just trust and get on with it!!” So, I share this encouragement here: all we can do is trust and get on with it.

Good Works, Good Works

“This is the reason for prayer […]: the birth always of good works, good works” (IC 7:4:6).

I began by making a confession: I don’t know how to love God. Teresa tells us that the reason for prayer is the birth always of good works. The Psalmist exclaims: “Bend my heart to your will, O God” (Psalm 119, 36). Could loving God be something about the desire to do God’s will?  But what does this mean, how can this be enfleshed? Loving God, doing God’s will, can feel very abstract; yet through the mystery of the Incarnation, God is no longer abstract but present – present in those we love and those we find it difficult to love, present in the whole of creation.

I am grateful to Teresa for offering us a language, a way of being that enables us to be fully present to reality as it is: nothing fancy, just the ordinary reality of life. Contemplation has been described as a long, loving look at the real. And it is as simple and as difficult as that.

“For here in these souls love has now increased, and it is love that is at work” (L 15:12).

End Notes

[1] IC = The Interior Castle, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1980).

[2] L = The Book of Her Life, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 1. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1987).

[3] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), p. 90.

[4] WP = The Way of Perfection, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2, op. cit.

[5] Gregory the Great, Commentary on the Book of Job, 2, 7, 11 (Sources Chrétiennes, no. 32 – vol. 2, Paris: Cerf, p. 189), quoted in Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Text and Commentary (London: New City Press, 2002), p. 22.

[6] Augustine of Hippo, Commentary on the First Epistle of St John, 4, 6 (Sources Chrétiennes, no. 75, Paris: Cerf, p. 230), quoted in Clément. op. cit., p. 23.