“In God alone is my soul at rest
For my hope comes from him.
He alone is my refuge, my stronghold;
My fortress: I stand firm” (Psalm 66)
How often must St Teresa have prayed these words in the Divine Office and one imagines it must have been with a great depth of feeling! There were many times in her life when she felt totally helpless and without any human support. In these times, she turned to God with great hope, trust and her characteristic ‘determined determination’[i].
My first ‘contact’ with Carmel came through St Thérèse of Lisieux and I found St Teresa much more difficult to get to know. As the great reformer and Doctor of the Church, she felt distant. I was overawed by some of her mystical writings which I could not understand, although I could relate very much to her early struggles with prayer. My relationship with Teresa changed completely after I was encouraged to read The Book of her Foundations.
A lesser-known work of St Teresa which deserves greater attention, the Foundations begins with an account of the peaceful years she spent at her first reformed monastery of St Joseph’s in Avila and follows the rest of her life’s work founding monasteries over the length and breadth of Spain and also beginning a reform of the Carmelite friars. This was at great personal cost and amidst much opposition.
I don’t know what I expected when I picked up the book for the first time but it certainly wasn’t that I would be laughing out loud in my cell! St Teresa’s personality breaks out of the pages. She writes with honesty, great descriptive detail and a good dose of humour.
After reading the Foundations I was able to return to her other writings understanding more about her, ‘knowing’ her better as a person and therefore able to grasp more easily what she was trying to teach.
St Teresa’s hope and trust in God is the recurring theme of the Foundations. She begins by describing how in 1567, she received a visit from the Prior General of the Carmelite Order Fr Juan Battista Rossi (whom she knew by his Spanish name Rubeo.) He was impressed by what he saw at St Joseph’s and gave Teresa permission to found further reformed houses for both nuns and friars. In purely human terms, she had nothing to begin this work: no money, no property, no friars who wanted to join the reform. However, she wrote, “Since the main thing was accomplished, I had special hope that the Lord would do the rest.”[ii] And in the next paragraph “Here I was, a poor discalced nun, without help from anywhere – only from the Lord – weighed down with patent letters and good desires, and without there being any possibility of my getting the work started. Neither courage nor hope failed, for since the Lord had given the one thing, He would give the other. Everything now seemed very possible, and so I set to work.[iii]”
In the course of her many foundations, Teresa faced opposition from within the Church, from city authorities, from the families of young women who wished to join her. Sometimes these disputes involved lawsuits. She withstood inappropriate demands from wealthy patrons who tried to impose their influence on the monasteries. She travelled for days at a time by mule and wagon, often in ill health and nearly always in discomfort, staying at ‘bad inns’ which were unsafe. She was defamed by false accusations and did not even write about the more serious of these which caused her much suffering. At one point the Papal nuncio of Spain called her a ‘restless gadabout’ and demanded that she would remain in one monastery and make no further foundations.
It’s important to remember that Teresa was human and despite her hope and trust in God, she still struggled. Towards the end of the book, she reflects: “I confess that my wretchedness and weakness have often made me fear and doubt. But I don’t remember that from the time the Lord gave me the habit of a discalced nun, and some time before this, He ever failed to grant me the favour, solely out of His mercy, to conquer these temptations and throw myself into what I understood to be for His greater service however difficult it was. I understood clearly that what I did for my part was little, but God wants no more than our determination so that He may do everything Himself. May He be forever blessed and praised, amen.”
The Book of Her Foundations shows that the words of St Teresa’s famous ‘bookmark’ were rooted in her personal experience, her prayer and her great hope in God alone:
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing;
God alone is unchanging.
Patience obtains everything.
Whoever has God wants nothing.
God alone suffices.
[i] Way of Perfection Chapter 21:2
[ii] Foundations Chapter 2:5
[iii] Foundations Chapter 2:6
Sr Thérèse Wilkinson OCD, Thicket Carmel, York
