Busy Mystic

When a young caballero once admired the dancing legs of Teresa de Cepeda, she replied: "Look well, it may be your last chance!" A short time later, against the wishes of her aristocratic father, 18-year-old Teresa entered a Carmelite convent. But the Carmelites, noted for being the most austere order of women in the Roman Catholic Church, had grown lax and easygoing in 16th Century Spain, and Teresa eventually found herself setting out to reform them. The result was a strangely dual life that has been one of the wonders and inspirations of Christian history. Though tormented by constant bad health, St. Teresa of Avila was busy and effective in a world of power politics that was dangerous and corrupt. At the same time, she explored the paths of mystical experience as few Christians have done before or since.

Some Other Virtue. Last week, U.S. readers, whose curiosity about the mystical and monastic aspect of Christianity may have been whetted by such bestselling authors as Trappist Thomas Merton, could sample the great St. Teresa* in an anthology of her work prepared by Msgr. William J. Doheny, C.S.C.: Selected Writings of St. Teresa of Avila (Bruce; $5).

Her charity toward others' faults seems to have been as effortless as breathing: "God has been very gracious to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards; if I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person."

St. Teresa did her best to explain the higher stages of mental prayer. For example: "I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, of such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that He was within me or that I was wholly engulfed in Him. This was in no sense a vision . . . The soul is suspended in such a way that it seems to be completely outside itself. The will loves; the memory, I think, is almost lost; while the understanding, I believe, though it is not lost, does not reason . . ."

God Suffices. For her nuns she prepared a series of maxims. Samples: "When you are with many people, always say little." "Never excuse yourself save when it is most probable that you are in the right." "Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and that there is only one glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing."

The words on her bookmark are perhaps her most memorable:

Let nothing disturb thee,

Let nothing affright thee.

All things are passing.

God never changes.

Patience gains all things.

Who has God wants nothing.

God alone suffices.

* Not to be confused with France's St. Teresa of Lisieux (1873-97) or Portugal's 13th Century St. Teresa, daughter of King Sancho I.

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