(1) _The Price of Prayer_.--O Thou Lord of my soul, and my Eternal Good,
why is it that when a soul resolves to follow Thee, and to do her best to
forsake all for Thee,--why is it that Thou dost not instantly perfect Thy
love and Thy peace within that soul? But I have spoken unadvisedly and
foolishly, for it is we who are at fault in prayer, and never Thee. We
are so long and so slow in giving up our hearts to Thee. And then Thou
wilt not permit our enjoyment of Thee without our paying well for so
precious a possession. There is nothing in all the world wherewith to
buy the shedding abroad of Thy love in our heart, but our heart's love.
If, however, we did what we could, not clinging with our hearts to
anything whatsoever in this world, but having our treasure and our
conversation in heaven, then this blessedness would soon be ours, as all
Thy saints testify. God never withholds Himself from him who pays this
price and who perseveres in seeking Him. He will, little by little, and
now and then, strengthen and restore that soul, till at last it is
victorious. If he who enters on this road only does violence enough to
himself, with the help of God, he will not only go to heaven himself, but
he will not go alone: he will take others with him. God will give him,
as to a good leader, those who will go after him. Only, let not any man
of prayer ever expect to enjoy his whole reward here. He must remain a
man of faith and prayer to the end. Let him resolve, then, that whatever
his aridity and sense of indevotion may be, he will never let himself
sink utterly under his cross. And the day will come when he will receive
all his petitions in one great answer, and all his wages in one great
reward. For he serves a good Master, who stands over him watching him.
And let him never give over because of evil thoughts, even if they are
sprung upon him in the middle of his prayer, for the devil so vexed the
holy Jerome even in the wilderness. But all these toils of soul have
their sure reward, and their just recompense set out for them. And, I
can assure you, as one who knows what she is saying, that one single drop
of water out of God's living well will both sustain you and reward you
for another day and another night of your life of life-long prayer.
(2) _Sin spoils Prayer_.--Now I saw that there would be no answer to me
till I had entire purity of conscience, and no longer regarded any
iniquity whatsoever in my heart. I saw that there were some secret
affections still left in me, which, though they were not very bad perhaps
in themselves, yet in a life of prayer such as I was attempting those
remanent affections spoiled all.
(3) _Eighteen Years of Misery in Prayer_.--It is not without very good
reason that I have dwelt so long on this part of my life. It will give
no one any pleasure to see any one so base as I was. And I wish all who
read this to have me in abhorrence. I failed in all obedience, because I
was not leaning on my strong pillar of prayer. I passed nearly twenty
years of my life on this stormy sea, constantly tossed with tempest and
never coming to harbour. It was the most painful life that can be
imagined, because I had no sweetness in God, and certainly no sweetness
in sin. I was often very angry with myself on account of the many tears
I shed for my faults, when I could not but see how little improvement all
my tears made in me. All my tears did not hold me back from sin when the
opportunity returned. Till I came to look on my tears as little short of
a delusion: and yet they were not. It was the goodness of the Lord to
give me such compunction even when it was not as yet accompanied with
complete reformation. But the whole root of my evil lay in my not
thoroughly avoiding all occasions of sin, and in my confessors, who
helped me at that time so little. If they had only told me what a
dangerous road it was I was travelling in, and that I was bound to break
off all occasions of sin, I do believe, without any doubt, that the
matter would have been remedied at once. Nevertheless, I can trace
distinctly the mercy of God to me in that all the time I had still the
courage to pray. I say courage, because I know nothing in the whole
world that requires greater courage than plotting treason against the
King, knowing that He knows it, and yet continuing to frequent His
presence in prayer. I spent more than eighteen years in that miserable
attempt to reconcile God and my life of sin. The reason that I tell and
repeat all this so often is that all who read what I write may understand
how great is that grace God works in the soul when He gives it a
disposition to pray on, even when it has not yet left off all sin. If
that soul perseveres, in spite of sin, and temptation, and many relapses,
our Lord will bring that soul at last--I am certain of it--to the harbour
of salvation, to which He is surely bringing myself. I will say what I
know by experience,--let him never cease from prayer, who has once begun
to pray, be his life ever so bad. For prayer is the only way to amend
his life, and without prayer it will never be mended. Let him not be
tempted of the devil, as I was, to give up prayer on account of his
unworthiness. Let him rather believe that if he will only still repent
and pray, our Lord will still hear and answer. For myself, very often I
was more occupied with the wish to see the end of the hour. I used
actually to watch the sand-glass. And the sadness I sometimes felt on
entering my oratory was so great, that it required all my courage to
force myself in. In the end our Lord came to my help: and, then, when I
had done this violence to myself, I found far greater peace and joy than
when I prayed with regale and rapture. If our Lord then bore so long
with me in all my wickedness, why should any one despair, however wicked
he may be? Let him have been ever so wicked up till now, he will not
remain in his wickedness so many years as I did after receiving so many
graces from our Lord. And this more I will say,--prayer was the true
door by which our Lord distributed out all His grace so liberally to me.
Prayer and trust. I used indeed to pray for help: but I see now that I
committed all the time the fatal mistake of not putting my whole trust in
His Majesty. I should have utterly and thoroughly distrusted and
detested and suspected myself. I sought for help. I sometimes took
great pains to get it. But I did not understand of how little use all
that is unless we root utterly all confidence out of ourselves, and place
it at once, and for ever, and absolutely in God. Those were eighteen
miserable years.
(4) _Aridity in Prayer_.--Let no one weary or lose heart in prayer
because of aridity. For the Hearer of prayer comes in all such cases
very late. But at last He comes. And though He confessedly comes late,
He correspondingly makes up to the soul for all His delays, and rewards
her on the spot for all her toil, and dryness, and discouragement of many
years. I have great pity on those who give way and lose all this through
not being taught to persevere in prayer. It is a bad beginning, and very
prejudicial to proficiency in prayer, to use it for the gust and
consolation that a man receives at the time. I know by my own
experience, that he who determines to pray, not much heeding either
immediate comfort or dejection, he has got into one of the best secrets
of prayer. I am troubled to hear that grave men, and men of learning and
understanding, complain that God does not give them sensible devotion. It
proceeds from ignorance of the true life of prayer, and from not carrying
the cross into prayer as into all the rest of the spiritual life. He who
begins to pray should be well told that he begins to plant a fine garden
in very bad soil; a soil full of the most noxious and ineradicable weeds.
And that after good herbs and plants and flowers have been sown, then he
has to weed and water and fence and watch that garden night and day and
all his life. Till the Lord of the garden is able to come and recreate
and regale Himself where once there was nothing but weeds, and stones,
and noxious vermin. Prayer, howsoever perfect in itself it may be, must
always be directed in upon the performance of good works. We must not
content ourselves with the gift of prayer, or with liberty and
consolation and gust in prayer. We must come out from prayer the most
rapturous and sweet only to do harder and ever harder works for God and
our neighbour. Otherwise the prayer is not good, and the gusts are not
from God. The growth and maturity and fruitfulness of the soul do not
stand in liberty in prayer, but in love. And this love is got not by
speaking much but by doing and suffering much. For my part, and I have
been long at it, I desire no other gift of prayer but that which ends in
every day making me a better and better woman. By its fruits your prayer
will be known to yourselves and others.
At other times I find myself so arid that I am not able to form any
distinct idea of God, nor can I put my soul into an attitude of prayer,
though I am in the place of prayer, and though I feel that I know
something of God. This mind of mine at such times is like a born fool or
some idiot creature that nothing can bind down. I cannot command myself.
I cannot properly say one _Credo_. At such times I laugh bitterly at
myself, and see clearly my own natural misery. I come then to see the
exceeding favour of the Lord in that He ever holds this insane fool fast
in prayer and holiness. What would those who love and honour me think if
they saw their friend in this dotage and distraction? I reflect at such
times on the great hurt our original sin has done us. For it is from our
first fall that all this has come to us that we so wander from God, and
are so often utterly incapable of God. But it is not so much Adam's sin
as my own that works in me all this alienation and inability and aridity.
Methinks I love God; but my actions, and the endless imperfections I see
in myself, cause me great fear, and deep and inconsolable distress.
(5) _Prayer after Sin_.--Never let any one leave off prayer on any
pretence: great sins committed, or any other pretence whatsoever. For by
leaving off prayer the soul will be finally lost, while every return to
prayer is new life and new strength, as I am continually telling you. I
tell you again that the leaving off of prayer was the most devilish and
the most deadly temptation I ever met with.
(6) _Meditation in Prayer_.--He who prays should often stop to think with
whom he speaks: who he himself is who speaks: who Jesus Christ is through
whom he speaks: what that country is to which he aspires: how he may best
please Him who dwells there: and what he is to do so that his character
and disposition may suit with God's disposition and character. Mental
prayer, as I am wont to call it, is the constant meditation of such
things as these. And mental prayer ought to be endeavoured after by all,
though they have no virtues, because it is the beginning of them, and
therefore the one interest of all men is at once to begin such prayer.
But it will be exercised with no little difficulty unless the steady
acquisition of the virtues accompanies it. In prayer it is far best to
be alone; as, for our example and instruction, our Lord always was when
He prayed. For we cannot talk both to God and man at the same moment.
And, if we feel too much alone, and must have company, no company is
comparable to Christ's company. Let us picture and represent Christ to
ourselves and to His Father as always at our side. Those who pray with
proper preparation: that is, with much meditation on the whole life and
death of our Lord: on their own death: on the last day, or such like, our
Lord will bring all such to the port of light. Meditate much on the
Sacred Humanity of our Lord: what He was on earth: what He said: what He
did, and what He suffered. Because this life of ours is long and uphill,
which to pass well through needs the constant presence with us of our
great Exemplar, Jesus Christ.
(7) _The Presence of God in Prayer_.--In prayer there would sometimes
come upon me such a sense of the Presence of God that I seemed to be all
engulfed in God. I think the learned call this mystical experience; at
any rate, it so suspends the ordinary operations of the soul that she
seems to be wholly taken out of herself. This tenderness, this
sweetness, this regale is nothing else but the Presence of God in the
praying soul. At the same time, I believe that we can greatly help
toward the obtaining of God's Presence. We obtain it by considering much
our own baseness, the neglect and the ingratitude we show toward the Son
of God, how much He has done for us, His passion and terrible suffering,
His whole life so full of affliction, by delighting ourselves in His word
and in His works, and such things as these. And if in these reflections
the soul be seized with the Presence of God, then the whole soul is
regaled as I have described. The heart is filled with relenting. Tears
also abound. In this way does the Divine Majesty repay us even here for
any little care we take to serve Him and to be with Him. The life of
prayer is just love to God and the custom of being ever with Him.
(8) _Supernatural Prayer_.--In supernatural prayer God places the soul in
His immediate Presence, and in an instant bestows Himself upon the soul
in a way she could never of herself attain to. He manifests something of
His greatness to the soul at such times: something of His beauty,
something of His special and particular grace. And the soul enjoys God
without dialectically understanding just how she so enjoys Him. She
burns with love without knowing what she has done to deserve or to
prepare herself for such a rapture. It is the gift of God, and He gives
His gifts to whomsoever and whensoever He will. This, my daughters, is
perfect contemplation: this is supernatural prayer. Now this is the
difference between natural and supernatural prayer: between mental and
transcendental prayer. In ordinary prayer we more or less understand
what we say and do. We think of Him to whom we speak; we think about
ourselves and about our Surety and Mediator. In all this, by God's help,
we can do something, so to speak, of ourselves. But in pure supernatural
and transcendental prayer, we do nothing at all. His Divine Majesty it
is who does it all. He works in us at such elect seasons what far
transcends and overtops all the powers and resources even of the renewed
nature. At the same time, as a far-off means of attaining to
supernatural prayer, it is necessary to put upon ourselves the acquiring
of the great virtues, and especially, humility: we must give up and
resign ourselves wholly and entirely unto God. Whoever will not attempt
to do this, with all the grace of God, that man will never come within
sight of the highest prayer. Let him, in absolutely everything, seat
himself in the lowest place. Let him account himself utterly and
hopelessly unworthy of everything he possesses, both in nature and in
grace. Let him shun advancement. Let him apply himself to daily
mortification, not of the body so much as of the mind and the heart, and
let him be more than content with the least thing that God allows him,
for this is true humility. In short, let His Majesty lead us in any way
He pleases, and the chances are that He will soon lead us by these ways
to a life of prayer and communion it had not entered into our hearts to
conceive possible to such sinners as we are. Let no man be too much cast
down, because he has not yet attained to supernatural prayer. God leads
His people in the way that He chooses out as best for Him and for them.
And he who stands low in his own eyes, may all the time stand high in
God's eyes. Supernatural prayer is not necessary to salvation: nor doth
God require it of us. They shall not fail of salvation who practise
themselves in the solid virtues. No, they may have more merit in His
eyes than their more favoured neighbours, because their obedience, and
their faith, and their love have cost them more. Their Lord deals with
them as with strong and valiant men, appointing them travail and trouble
here, that they may fight for Him the good fight of faith, and only come
in for the prize at the end. And, after all, what greater mark of a high
election can there be than to taste much of the cross? Whom the Lord
loveth, in that measure He lays on them His cross. And the heaviest of
all our crosses is a life of sanctification and service without sensible
consolation.
(9) _Over-familiarity in Prayer_.--He was a man of a powerful
understanding. I thought on his great gifts, and the possibilities there
were in him of doing great service if he were once entirely devoted to
God. He asked me to recommend him much to God, and I did not need to be
asked. I went away to the place to which I used to retreat in cases like
this. And once there, I put myself into a state of entire recollection,
and began to treat with our Lord in a way, when I think of it, of too
great familiarity. But it was love that spake, and every one allows love
great familiarity, and no one so much as our Lord. My soul overlooked
the distance between herself and her Lord. She forgot herself, as she so
often does, and began to talk impertinences and to take too great
freedoms. I entreated our Lord with many tears. I judged my friend to
be already a good man, but I must have him much better, and I said so too
freely, I fear. 'O Lord,' I remember I said,' Thou must not deny me this
favour that I ask. This is a man for us to make a friend of.' And far
more than that. And He did it. Yes, He did it. O His immense bounty
and goodness! He regards not the words but the affection with which the
words are uttered. That must be so, when He endures with such an
impertinent and over-familiar and irreverent wretch as I am; endures and
answers. May He be blessed to all eternity!
(10) _The Best Result of Prayer_.--To Father Gratian. To-day I received
three letters from your Reverence by the way of the head-post. The whole
matter is in a nut-shell. That prayer is the most acceptable which
leaves the best results. Results, I mean, in actions. That is true
prayer. Not certain gusts of softness and feeling, and nothing more. For
myself, I wish no other prayer but that which improves me in virtue. I
would fain live more nearly as I pray. I count that to be a good prayer
which leaves me more humble, even if it is still with great temptations,
tribulations, and aridities. For it must never be thought that because a
man has much suffering, therefore he cannot have prayed acceptably. His
suffering is as incense set forth before God. Tell my daughters that
they must work and suffer as well as pray, and that it is the best prayer
that has with it the most work and the most suffering.
(11) _A Bishop taught to Pray_.--To Don Alonzo Velasquez, Bishop of Osma.
Your Reverence enjoined me the other day to recommend you to God. I have
done so: not regarding my own inconsiderableness, but your requisition
and your rights. And I promise myself from your goodness that you will
take in good part what I feel compelled to say to you, and will accept
that which proceeds only from my obedience to you. Recognising, then,
and representing to our Lord, the great favours He has done you in having
bestowed upon you humility, charity, zeal for souls, and a strong desire
to vindicate the Divine honour, I still besought the Lord for an increase
in you of all these same virtues and perfections in order that you may
prove as accomplished in all these things as the dignity of your office
requires. Till it was discovered to me that you still wanted that which
is the foundation of every virtue, and without which the whole
superstructure dissolves, and falls in ruins. You want prayer. You want
believing, persevering, courageous prayer. And the want of that prayer
causes all that drought and disunion from which you say your soul
suffers. That which was shown me as the way your lordship is henceforth
to pray is this. You are to recollect and accuse yourself of all your
sins since your last time of like prayer. You are to divest yourself of
everything as if you were that moment to die. You are to begin by
reciting to yourself and to God the Fifty-first Psalm. And after that
you must say this. 'I come, O Lord, Bishop as I am, to Thy children's
school of prayer and obedience. I come to Thee not to teach, but to
learn. I will speak to Thee, who am but dust and ashes.' And all the
time set before the eyes of your soul Jesus Christ crucified, and
ruminate on Him in some such way as this. Fix your eyes on that
stupendous humility of His whereby He so annihilated Himself. Look on
His head crowned with thorns. Fix your eyes on His nailed hands, His
feet, and His side. Meditate on and interrogate every one of His wounds
for you. It behoves you also to go to prayer with a most entire
resignation and submission and pliantness to go that way in religion and
in life that God points out to you. Sometimes He will teach you by
turning His back on you: and, anon, by lifting up the light of His
countenance upon you. Sometimes by shutting you out of His presence, and
sometimes by bringing you into His banqueting-house. And you are to
receive it all with the same equability of mind, knowing that He always
acts for the best. Otherwise you will go to teach God in your prayers,
which is not the proper scope and intent of prayer at all. And when you
say that you are dust and ashes, you must observe and exhibit the proper
quality of such. In our Lord's prayer in the garden, He requested that
the bitterness and the terrible trial He felt in overcoming His human
nature might be taken away. He did not ask that His pains might be taken
away, but only the disgust wherewith He suffered them. And when it was
answered Him that it was not expedient but that He should drink that cup,
He had to master that weakness and pusillanimity of the flesh, as must
all other men. One cannot be a great scholar, or even a finished
courtier, without great pains and expense; and to be a scholar in the
Church, and a minister, and a master in the science of Heaven, cannot be
done without long time at school and much hard work. And herewith I
desist from saying more to your lordship, whose pardon I beg for all this
presumption. Which, however full it may be of defects and indiscretions,
is not wanting in that zeal I owe to your service as one of the most
wandering and gone astray of your lordship's flock. Our Lord preserve
your lordship, and enrich you with the manifold increase of His grace. I
am, your lordship's unworthy servant and subject, Teresa of Jesus.
(12) _The proper Readers of what the Saint has Written_,--And now I
return most humbly to beseech your Reverence, that, if you mean to impart
to any one these things that you have made me write concerning prayer,
let them be imparted to spiritual persons, and to persons of real insight
only. For, indeed, I have written for persons of exceptional experience
and exceptional prudence only. What I have written, I fear, very few are
capable of. But what am I, to speak thus about any but myself?
Farewell.--I am,