We enter Advent and, at least here in northern Europe we come into a time of darkness and cold as we attempt to prepare ourselves for Christmas amongst the bustle and busyness, for Christ coming at Christmas and for the Second Coming. In these short days and long nights I find that these words of St Teresa of Avila from the Second Mansions of The Interior Castle resonate very deeply:
Can there be an evil greater than that of being ill at ease in our own house? What hope can we have of finding rest outside of ourselves if we cannot be at rest within?
I minister in a busy cathedral at the heart of England’s second city. A major aspect of our ministry is welcoming many vulnerable people who come seeking shelter, sanctuary and love in the cathedral and our grounds. Many of these are people who have no homes, are those who live in substandard or insecure accommodation, or are in profound lack of ease with themselves due to complex mental health needs.
This poverty is worse in the winter weather. But there hope. Hope endures. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. We work closely with partner charities to provide good food, showers and clothes. But more importantly, this is work that is deeply relational. Knowing names as much as giving food. Homeless people are a central part of the cathedral community, as they are with the other city centre churches.
This is connects us to another vitally important and profoundly hopeful insight of Teresa – that the way of prayer and contemplation should be open to all. Teresa makes a very long, subtle and successful argument that prayer and recollection should be open to women in the face of opposition that included the Inquisition (she was very brave). Discalced sisters and brothers in the time of Teresa and John did not need dowries or to be educated.
This suggests so much for work with people who are not at ease in their own house. Pastoral work includes the prophetic dimension of removing any barriers which might block people’s way to God. There is an essential and hope-filled work of building people up, of transformation, of freedom. We work with God to uncover the image and likeness of God within us, to reveal what we are created to be.
Both Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux teach us that an aspect of union with God lies in serving others. Teresa writes:
What would it matter were I to remain in purgatory until judgment day if through my prayer I could save even one soul? How much less would it matter if my prayer is to the advantage of many and for the honour of the Lord?
Way of Perfection 3:6
While Therese echoes and builds on this in her Last Conversations (p27):
I don’t know whether I’ll go to purgatory or not, but I’m not in the least disturbed about it; however, if I do go there, I’ll not regret having done nothing to avoid it. I shall not be sorry for having worked solely for the salvation of souls. How happy I was to learn that our holy mother, St Teresa, thought the same way!
One is led to wonder if an insight of these two Carmelite giants of prayer and mission might have glimpsed that Union with God involves and is lived out in sacrificial love for others, in the hopeful work of bringing people to God, especially as Therese points to, those most in need of this love. In the words of Thomas Nevin, In the most exemplary charity imaginable, Therese draws with her through prayer a lost and suffering humanity (The Last Years of St Therese, p199.
In the most profound darkness we are led by God and by our Carmelite mothers and fathers into a deep and mysterious process of co-creation and cooperation with God. Noel Dermot O’Donogue sees prayer in the Carmelite tradition as a creative partnership between God and the human being who is praying:
The mystical union towards which all Christian prayer reaches is a creative union of activity and passivity … This journey of prayer involves a partnership between God and man (sic) in which God is all-goodness and all-giving
(Adventures in Prayer p220)
It is here, in the darkness of winter, in the darkness of poverty, of Gethsemane and Calvary, in the place of doubt and dereliction that hope enters with the fragile light of love. From his imprisonment in the pit, St John of the Cross tells us the simple truth of God:
Where there is no love
pour in love
and you will find love.
The Rev’d Canon Andy Delmege, The Carmelite Companions of the Way (CCTW)
