Quote of the day, 8 March: St. Teresa of Avila
Well, here is what happens sometimes to a soul that experiences these anxious longings, tears, sighs, and great impulses… While this soul is going about in this manner, burning up within itself, a blow is felt from elsewhere (the soul doesn’t understand from where or how). The blow comes often through a sudden thought or word about death’s delay. Or the soul will feel pierced by a fiery arrow.
I saw a person in this condition [Teresa refers to herself]; truly, she thought she was dying, and this was not so surprising because certainly there is great danger of death. And thus, even though the experience lasts a short while, it leaves the body very disjointed, and during that time, the heartbeat is as slow as it would be if a person were about to render his soul to God. This is no exaggeration, for the natural heat fails, and the fire so burns the soul that with a little more intensity God would have fulfilled the soul’s desires.
You will tell me that this feeling is an imperfection and ask why the soul doesn’t conform to the will of God since it is so surrendered to Him. Until now, it could do this, and has spent its life doing so. As for now, the reasoning faculty is in such a condition that the soul is not the master of it, nor can the soul think of anything else than of why it is grieving, of how it is absent from its Good, and of why it should want to live. It feels a strange solitude because no creature in all the earth provides it company, nor do I believe would any heavenly creature, not being the One whom it loves; rather, everything torments it.
But the soul sees that it is like a person hanging, who cannot support himself on any earthly thing, nor can it ascend to heaven. On fire with this thirst, it cannot get to the water, and the thirst is not one that is endurable, but already at such a point that nothing will take it away. Nor does the soul desire that the thirst be taken away save by that water of which our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman.
Saint Teresa of Avila
The Interior Castle, VI.11.2, 4–5
Teresa of Avila, St 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Kavanaugh, K & Rodriguez, O (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: This detail of a photographic artwork created by Elías Rodríguez Picón comes to us thanks to the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Alba de Tormes. The artist’s sister is the model for this scene, which is intended to show the beginning moment of the Transverberation. You can see and read more about his photographic technique in this article from La Hornacina (in Spanish). Image credit: Discalced Carmelites (By permission).
#impulse #longing #SamaritanWoman #StTeresaOfAvila #transverberation