the st. teresa of avila prayer book

THE St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

by Vinita Hampton Wright

Paraclete Press Brewster, Massachusetts 2015 First printing

The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

Copyright © 2015 by Vinita Hampton Wright

ISBN 978-1-61261-660-5

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wright, Vinita Hampton, 1958- The St. Teresa of Avila prayer book / Vinita Hampton Wright. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61261-660-5 1. Teresa, of Avila, Saint, 1515-1582. 2. Catholic Church— Prayers and devotions. I. Title. BX4700.T4W75 2015 242'.802—dc23 2015022795

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Published by Paraclete Press Brewster, Massachusetts www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America To every person learning to trust God’s intimate conversation with the human heart.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction xi I THE PRAYER LIFE OF ST. TERESA OF AVILA 1 Her Early Life as a Carmelite Nun 3 Her Years of Illness, Struggle, and Opposition 7

II PRAYING ALONGSIDE ST. TERESA 13 Morning and Evening Prayer an introduction 15 Themes for Seven Days of Prayer 18

vii III THE DAILY OFFICE FOR SUNDAY THROUGH SATURDAY 27 Sunday 29 Monday 40 Tuesday 51

Wednesday 63 Thursday 75 Friday 87 Saturday 97

IV ST. TERESA’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF PRAYER 109 viii V SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES ON THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA 119 Francisco of Osuna: Third Spiritual Alphabet 121 St. Peter of Alcantara 123

St. Augustine 125 St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits 125

notes 129

bibliography 137

index of subjects 138

ix index of scriptures 140 index of authors and sources 142

x INTRODUCTION

eresa of Avila lived during the long, tumultuous era in which Catholic Spain sought to conquer the world. MonarchsT sent armies to claim, for country and for church, lands close by and in the faraway New World. They drove out Muslims, Jews, and others who did not fit in a truly Christian kingdom. Today’s believer cringes to think of those bloody attempts at converting entire populations to the faith. But while the outward conquest marched across countries, certain pilgrims were traversing a different landscape: interior regions of the human soul. Teresa became one of those pioneers, joining the company of spiritual writers and teachers such as Francisco of Osuna, Peter Alcantara, John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola. For them, the real battles must be waged within, and conversion had to begin, not with a battle between armed troops, but through encounter with a loving and merciful God. This is not to say that Teresa or others like her were rebels in the church; Teresa was loyal to the faith she had been taught and remained committed to obeying its authorities. She eventually worked diligently to reform the xi The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

Carmelite order, but it was a reform toward the order’s original calling to a life of solitude, poverty, and prayer, not to any new idea about what it meant to serve God. She did not intend to put herself in opposition to confessors or superiors or her sisters in the faith. She set out only to be the nun she believed she was called to be. She did not know that efforts to fulfill her religious vows would take her beyond her concept of the devoted life and into regions deep and beautiful, mysterious and sometimes frightening. As is the case with so many mystics, Teresa did not think of herself as spiritually gifted. In fact, she had a very low view of her moral state, her spiritual weakness, and what she considered her general stupidity when it came to prayer or any other form of relating to God, her “Majesty.” Teresa would say to each of us that not only is it possible to become intimately acquainted with God, but also that God desires our friendship before we even consider or want it. God waits, sometimes decades, for us to reach that point of trust and openness to what holy presence might accomplish in our lives. The saint would also be quick to say that some of our best progress happens when we are troubled, suffering, and battling against our own sinful resistance.

You, my Lord, were prepared to be offended by me for almost twenty years, during which xii Introduction time I made ill use of your favor, so that in the end I might become better. . . . When I look back on these actions of mine, I do not know what my intention could have been. All this, my Spouse, reveals still more clearly the difference between your nature and mine. Certainly distress for my great sins is often tempered by the joy that comes to me when I realize that they were the means of making known the multitude of your mercies.

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I the prayer life of St.Teresa of Avila

 HER EARLY LIFE AS A CARMELITE NUN

eresa’s early years as a Carmelite nun probably did not distinguish her from other young women in TSpain who took the veil in the 1530s. Like many who chose a religious vocation, she came from a devout and well-off family. Her mother had died when Teresa was thirteen, and during her teen years her father sent her to Our Lady of Grace, a local convent/boarding school run by Augustinian nuns. She was well educated for her time, having grown up in a home full of books on everything from theology to modern romances. She was acquainted with the prayers that would have been routine in a devout household, but she was also a typical girl of privilege who enjoyed her social life and probably gave little thought to prayer. However, a young woman of the time must choose either marriage or a religious vocation. At age seventeen, Teresa had to return home to recover from illness, and during the next few years she determined to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, also in Avila. She took her vows in 1536 at age twenty-one.

3 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

The convent followed the Rule of St. Albert, which included renunciation of possessions, obedience to a superior, life in one’s own cell but with community meals and reading, and keeping the Divine Hours of prayer, as indicated:

Those who know how to say the canonical hours with those in orders should do so, in the way those holy forefathers of ours laid down, and according to the Church’s approved custom. Those who do not know the hours must say twenty-five Our Fathers for the night office, except on Sundays and solemnities when that number is to be doubled so that the Our Father is said fifty times; the same prayer must be said seven times in the morning in place of Lauds, and seven times too for each of the other hours, except for Vespers when it must be said fif- teen times.

In one of her later works, The Way of Perfection, Teresa devotes several chapters to the Our Father and how best to benefit from that prayer. Perhaps, when she was a young nun, she had had to pray repeated Our Fathers, along with others who were not well trained in the canonical hours.

We should try to pray attentively. May God grant that, by using these means, we may 4 The Prayer Life of St. Teresa of Avila

learn to say the Our Father well and not find ourselves thinking of irrelevant thoughts while we are reciting it. When this happens to me, I have found that the best remedy is to fix my mind on the Person who first spoke the words. Have patience and try to make this necessary practice into a habit.

Daily, communal devotions presented challenges, but if Teresa hoped to develop a cloistered life of robust prayer, her environment was not entirely helpful:

The Encarnation was a popular convent, housing daughters from most of the leading families in Avila. The large numbers (180 women) meant that the Rule was followed carefully by some, indifferently by others. Some wealthy women, including Teresa, came to the convent with an entourage of family members, friends, and servants and had the best quarters and food. Some wealthy nuns held soirees for male friends and fam- ily—enjoying music, poetry, and likely good wine. Nuns from less affluent families lived much more poorly. The nuns were free to come and go; return to family when ill; invite male and female friends to the convent; and often they were called upon to attend to the needs 5 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

of wealthy patrons and benefactors in their homes for extended periods of time. This portrait clashes sharply with the image of a cloistered convent of enclosure, silence, and prayer and was among the reasons that even- tually led Teresa to desire reform.

She confesses that those early years were quite difficult. Not only did she endure serious, sometimes life-threatening illness for months on end, but she also struggled to pray.

During all these years, except after com- municating [receiving the Eucharist], I never dared begin to pray without a book; my soul was as much afraid to engage in prayer with- out one as if it were having to go and fight against a host of enemies.

She complained of not having a good enough imagination to do any sort of image-based prayer. Also, she didn’t sing well and found the communal prayer chanting very difficult. It was during a long convalescence at her uncle’s home that Teresa discovered Francisco of Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet, which led her to seek the experience of contemplative prayer. She cites this volume as a pivotal discovery and the means by which God led her to a new experience in her relationship with the divine. 6 The Prayer Life of St. Teresa of Avila

HER YEARS OF ILLNESS, STRUGGLE, AND OPPOSITION

From her teen years, Teresa dealt with illness serious enough that she was sent home from her convent/boarding school. One commentator and translator speculates that she was plagued by either severe anxiety attacks or malignant malaria. During those months of convalescence, she read the Letters of St. Jerome, which partly led to her choosing the religious vocation a few years later. Then, just about a year after she took her vows, another bout of illness incapacitated her. It grew worse, and everyone assumed she would die. In fact, they had a grave open and ready for her in the convent cemetery. She did come back from death’s door but suffered paralysis for the next three years. Illness seemed a steady companion for Teresa, even years later during her travels as she founded convents all over the region. She came to see suffering as part and parcel of a life that grows in its perfection and faith. If a person practiced humility and gave everything to God, suffering could help form a life and make it stronger, more capable of withstanding the many battles it must wage against sin and the devil’s attacks. Teresa’s interest in, and desire for, contem- plation developed in the context of reform and renewal that had been simmering in Spain for 7 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book some time. Osuna wrote of it, and St. Ignatius of Loyola taught it through his Spiritual Exercises. The Catholic Church did not quite know what to do with it. The Inquisition questioned and exam- ined the works of pioneers such as Ignatius (and, eventually, some of Teresa’s writings), and the average confessor was fearful of condoning expe- riences that were not well defined by the church. By the time Teresa was in her forties, she was discovering in depth and detail the prayer of meditation and contemplation. And while she desired this communion with God, she suffered spiritual loneliness for it. “I found no other guide (no, confessor, I mean) who understood me, though I sought one for fully twenty years subsequently to the time I am speaking of.” This alienation became even more pro- nounced as the years went by, after Teresa began experiencing raptures and ecstasies, periods of time when she felt herself entirely taken to God’s presence without any effort of her own. She found fewer and fewer priests who were safe to talk to because they did not understand what was happening to her. Worse, they suspected that her experiences were demonic. At one point, a committee of six people—whom she knew and trusted—after much deliberation determined that her contemplative episodes were the deceptions of Satan. Eventually she found a Jesuit willing to be her confessor, and even he was timid to confirm 8 The Prayer Life of St. Teresa of Avila that her experiences were from God, although he himself believed that they were. She stated that “very great trials befell him on my account.”

I knew they used to tell him that he must be on his guard against me, lest the devil should deceive him into believing anything I might say to him, and they gave him similar examples of what had happened with other people. All this worried me. I was afraid that there would be no one left to hear my confes- sion, and that everyone would flee from me: I did nothing but weep.

Teresa had also studied and absorbed Peter Alcantara’s Treatise on Prayer and Meditation; she and Peter became friends, and he came to visit and counsel her from time to time. He and others, namely her Jesuit confessors and spiritual directors, assured her that these prayer experiences were authentic and that they were gifts from God. Through the encouragement of these counselors and friends, and by her own tenacious desire, Teresa continued her prayer. Perhaps because Teresa experienced aban- donment to holy presence, she understood more and more how earthly distractions could impede spiritual progress, and she envisioned a reformed Carmelite order that would keep a stricter rule and thus remain focused on its purpose: to pray 9 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book and serve the needs of others. Social attachments, large numbers of nuns in a single convent, and dependence on money and its suppliers—all must be sacrificed for the sake of a simpler life and better prayer. One would think that such plans would have pleased other religious, particularly its leaders. But Teresa’s plan to found a new convent, based on this stricter rule, elicited new waves of opposition. For several years she struggled to maintain her vision—though religious and civic authorities forbade the project and judged her harshly. In 1562, Teresa was finally able to establish the Carmelite convent of St. Joseph’s there in Avila. It became clear that Teresa’s reformed practice should be established apart from the Incarnation and other Carmelite convents that did not approve of her changes; thus was born, years later, the Discalced Carmelites, an order separate from the original Carmelites. One of Teresa’s students, now known to us as St. John of the Cross, soon joined forces with her to reform the Carmelite monasteries as well. By the time Teresa died in 1582, she had founded at least sixteen convents throughout Spain. Teresa’s primary works are her autobiography, The Interior Castle, and The Way of Perfection. She wrote in part to explain herself to superiors and to make a clear case for her prayer experiences in the religious environment of Counter-Reformation 10 The Prayer Life of St. Teresa of Avila upheaval and Inquisition reviews. Her personal reasons for writing were to clarify for herself what she understood and to help other religious with their prayer. She wrote The Way of Perfection to serve as a better organized and more easily understood alternative to her larger works.

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II praying alongside St.Teresa

Morning and Evening Prayer AN INTRODUCTION

Following is a week of morning and evening prayer based upon themes that emerge in the life of St. Teresa of Avila. These prayers come from sources that would have been meaningful to Teresa or that were part of the Carmelite tradition, such as the prayer dedicated to the prophet Elijah. Teresa’s decision to join the convent was influenced by her reading the Letters of St. Jerome, and thus we include a prayer by him. Years later she discovered Augustine’s Confessions, which played a significant role in her spiritual development, so his words form some of the prayers in this week of prayer. She had a devotion to St. Joseph, and we have included two prayers dedicated to him. When Teresa joined the Carmelites at the Convent of the Incarnation, her schedule would have included regular prayers that followed the Divine Office. They would have been sung or chanted in Latin. Teresa confessed to having difficulty with “choir”; she did not sing well and generally struggled through her prayers. Nevertheless, she would have maintained not only morning and evening prayer but the several other offices besides, spanning the day, from early 15 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book morning until Compline, right before bed. And although Teresa would develop her prayer life most strongly in meditation and contemplative practice, she urged her sisters, and all who would devote themselves to God, to remain constant in prayer and never give up trying to do it. For this week of prayer, the sequence of each day of liturgy is as follows: a. quote of st. teresa b. preparation: simple prayer of intention c. gospel sentence: a brief yet powerful introduction to the day’s topic d. silence: for a minute or more e. confession: in the morning, a penitential psalm; in the evening, a standard prayer of confession or a prayer by a saint to aid in confession f. first reading: from the Hebrew prophets or New Testament epistles g. psalm h. gospel reading/sentence i. silence j. prayers of the saints: ones that Teresa may have prayed, or prayers by saints for which Teresa had particular fondness k. prayer for the day or prayer for night- time: using prayers of the time or that relate to Teresa’s spiritual journey and the Carmelite tradition 16 Praying Alongside St. Teresa of Avila

These prayer liturgies can be used in a variety of ways. If you already practice morning and evening prayer, you can substitute these prayers for a week of your ordinary readings. Or you might add these prayers to those already in your schedule, to enhance a particular week of your prayer time. These prayers might also serve as a separate retreat with Teresa, practiced over a week as suggested or used in a shorter time span, concentrated into two or three days of prayer focused on the themes of Teresa. These liturgies can be prayed alone or used in a group. If they are prayed in a group, specific readings can be assigned to different people, and the psalms can be read responsively—that is, half the group reading one verse, and the other half reading the next, for the duration of the psalm. We come to know God in our time alone with God. We also come to know God in community. This book offers a unique opportunity to spend time with God, in the company of Teresa of Avila. As you pray to God, you can enjoy the sense that some of these prayers were part of Teresa’s journey of faith. You may feel comfortable inviting Teresa to pray them alongside you. Her presence can become more real to you as you dwell on her own words that are included in the liturgies. Together, you can continue upon your journey of loving God and enjoying God’s love for you. 17 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

While I envision these prayers in the hands of individuals as they enrich their personal devotions, this book might also serve groups of people devoted to St. Teresa, whether lay prayer partners or academic colleagues. My hope is that these themes, prayers, and Teresa’s words will assist you in understanding not only the woman who was Teresa the Carmelite nun but also your own life calling, and the next step in your vocation, whatever it may be.

THEMES FOR SEVEN DAYS OF PRAYER

Teresa lived out various spiritual themes, but I have chosen only seven, one to serve as a framework for each day of prayer. I have chosen Scriptures that speak to these themes, as well as prayers from various saints and early prayer sources that, if not prayed verbatim by Teresa and other nuns of her time, certainly echo their prayers in theme and voice. Some prayers were chosen because they relate to or come from saints to whom Teresa was devoted, such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Joseph. Also, prayer choices will reflect those who influenced her, such as Francisco of Osuna, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Peter Alcantara.

18 Praying Alongside St. Teresa of Avila

Day One—God the Majestic and Merciful Teresa was formed by a culture of monarchy and severe social hierarchies. A person understood the importance of titles and of speaking appropriately to those above and below her. So it is not surprising that one of Teresa’s most common titles for God or Jesus is “His Majesty.” Her language about and toward the Divine conveys her fine-tuned sense of God’s sovereignty and absolute holiness—in contrast to Teresa’s sinfulness, weakness, lack of holy knowledge, and tendency to failure. She maintained a strong sense of the vast distance between her life of trying to be holy and God’s presence, which was all-holy, all bright, and true. A human being could not touch this presence, could not negotiate with or manipulate His Majesty. And yet, Teresa carried an uncanny sense of Divine mercy, which made possible communion between God and human. She knew that her only chance at goodness or peace or understanding was for God to grant her these gifts, and more. The amazing truth was that God did grant these gifts, again and again. God not only gave to people undeserved gifts of grace and forgiveness, but God actually wanted to give these gifts to anyone who desired them.

It is true that His Majesty grants such favors to whom He chooses; yet if we sought Him 19 The St. Teresa of Avila Prayer Book

as He seeks us, He would give them to us all. He only longs for souls on whom He may bestow them, for His gifts do not diminish His riches.

Here was her vision of Divine love: a presence so unlimited in riches that, no matter how many times and to how many people God bestowed these gifts, there would always be more—and God would always be generous.

Day Two—Saved from Sin and the Evil One Teresa is known as a mystic, one to whom God granted states of deep contemplation, raptures, and ecstasies. Perhaps Teresa’s increased sensitivity to mystical realities also made it possible for her to sense the presence of evil. On various occasions she encountered the devil and demons, through visions and at times in mental or physical capacities. She also grew painfully aware of the endless ways sin seemed to sprout up in her life— through vanity and distractions, lack of prayer, and a slackness in good works. Her personal theology developed to include frank references to evil forces, those at work within a person and those attacking from outside. As she instructed others to discern what happened to them during prayer, she did not shy away from the reality of demonic deceptions and other ill effects. 20