Tag Archives: Teresa of Avila

Patience: The lost virtue our relationships need

“Patience attains all that it strives for.” At least that is what the saint says. The prayer, “Nada te Turbe” was found in Teresa of Avila’s breviary, written in her own hand. Since the 16th century her private words have consoled countless numbers of people, including me. I even put it to music for the church to sing (before I discovered several other versions).

Gm
Nada te turbe,
Let nothing disturb you;
  D
Nada te espante,
Let nothing dismay you;
Gm             F
Todo se pasa.
All things pass:
F
Dios no se muda.
God never changes.
F
La paciencia
Patience attains
F              Bb
Todo lo alcanza.
All that it strives for.
Eb
Quien a Dios tiene
The one who has God
                D
Nada le falta.
Lacks for nothing:
Gm Dm Cm  D
Sólo Dios basta.
God alone suffices.

Teresa is credited with reviving Catholicism in the 1560’s and 70’s when Protestantism threatened to bring down the church. Her most significant contribution was founding the Reformed Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelite Convent of San Jose, a more radical version of the Carmelites. At the time of her death in 1582 she had started seventeen further houses, in Spain.

Bernini captures Teresa in rapture

Teresa is best known today as one of the great Catholic mystics, which means she recounted her personal experiences with God. She described her raptures in several books. Among the most widely read works is her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus (1611).

Teresa of Avila may have been the last proponent of the virtue of patience. Around the time she founded the Discalced Carmelites to restore basic, early church Christianity, the Catholic Church was breaking up. Spain was conquering South and Central America. Europeans were colonizing the world. Spain was in constant war to  secure Charles V’s royal claims. Copernicus revealed the earth orbited the sun. Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Henry the VIII murdered his wives and founded the Anglican Church. Cervantes wrote El Cid. John Calvin wrote The Institutes. Shakespeare and John Donne wrote their early works. Nostradamus published his prophecies. It was a wild time. Flush toilets, the spinning wheel, the pocket watch, the graphite pencil were all introduced.

Yet Teresa still disciplined herself to be patient, like her examples from the Early Church, reciting her prayer. She might have been the last leader on the continent to believe “God suffices” as the Europeans rushed into the modern world and the Americans soon invented a country (for the first time) to represent all that was new. I’m not sure most Americans would consider patience to be an important character trait, would you? — even though my mother used to mockingly chide me when I was tired of waiting with, “Patience is a virtue,” unwittingly channeling Piers Plowman from 1360 (Passus II, 383).

Patience, the lost virtue

Patience may be the lost virtue Christians, in particular, need to rediscover. I think many of us might see it as a bit out of date, now that we are accustomed to complaining if Amazon is a day late, or the line at the drive through is taking too long. A person lamented yesterday that their arrival at their appointment was thwarted for ten minutes by the Schuylkill. They were very frustrated. We have things timed down to the minute.

A book I have been reading, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, has reminded me the Bible writers and the earliest Christians considered patience to be a central trait of authentic Christianity. I want to leave you with a bit of their wisdom so you can follow their fruitful lead.

  • Origen of Alexandria (died around 253) quoted Romans 5:3-4 this way, “Tribulation produces patience, indeed patience produces assent to belief, and assent to belief produces hope.”
  • The KJV translates it: “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.”
  • My favorite, the NRSV says, “And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
  • I think the VOICE amplified translation sums it up well. “And that’s not all. We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness.”

You’ll notice that the word for patience is often translated “endurance” or “perseverance.” It is an active idea, not passive. It is not just waiting for your birthday to come without too much complaining. It is a discipline exercised by people who want to develop. It is a strategy for demonstrating glory. Patience takes intention and effort. It is a way of seeing and acting. Patience is not swallowing your resentment when it takes a while for your kids to put on their shoes. It is not just standing in line at the store behind a less-than-able shopper without groaning or looking around for another line with panic.

As you can see from the constellation of translations, patience is an outlook that results in a way of life. Patience is trusting God in the middle of everything, especially when you suffer. For the early church, patience was sticking with Jesus when the world was sticking it to them. They were not like the Stoics who endured by tamping down emotions and developing personal resilience, even seeking imperviousness. It was quite the opposite. Christian patience is opening up to the Spirit of God incarnate in our hearts and behavior. The eternal lens and heartfelt trust of the early church was central to their endurance. Patience is knowing everything works for good to them who love God.

The early church’s premier virtue

Few writings from the first 300 years of the church are about a “topic.” They are mostly stories or compilations of teachings. But Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian and Lactantius all wrote about patience. The early church did not produce writings about evangelism, at least as most modern people think about it: verbal persuasion and radical changes of allegiance. But they did write about patience, which changed them and changed their world. Their way of patience made the first Christians a distinct and attractive alternative to the brutal Roman world.

I was happy to discover Kreider’s book when I was listening to several couples trying to work out the tribulation of their power struggle. Many marriages, not to mention churches and other institutions, went through a lot of trouble during the pandemic. We are all still sorting things out. For many people, the trouble in the world became trouble in their relationships. It is terrible how often general trouble gets translated into blaming the people close to us: “If I have trouble, it must be you.”

The early church helped each other learn patience and didn’t turn on each other; they turned their behavior out into the world. Their way of life was salt and light. St Perpetua (martyred around 203) caused many conversions the day she refused to grovel in the arena, begging for mercy, but stood still and dignified, patiently trusting God for her future. If my lens developed a character like hers, I could at least endure the development of my mate (or myself) and give some time and space for our relationship to grow before I hardened my heart, cut them off, or found something better.

I hope you are getting the idea of how the virtue of patience is foundational to enduring as a Jesus follower and making a difference in our relationships and culture. Here are a few final characteristics that sum up how the Bible writers and early church teach about patience:

  • God is patient. She is walking with you and working for your best right now.
  • Jesus demonstrates God’s patience. Origen calls him “Patience itself.” He highlights how to trust in oneself and in miracle at the same time, in real time.
  • Patient people don’t just manipulate outcomes; they can take risks in trust and not worry what they can’t control is as urgent as it seems.
  • Patience is not hurried; it accepts incompleteness and can wait.
  • Patient behavior inevitably undermines the world’s common sense.
  • Trusting in patience to change lives is the opposite of relying on violence and retaliating. It is innately uncoercive.
  • Patience is hopeful, confident in God. As Teresa noted, God alone suffices.

Most families are good laboratories for learning patience. Churches should be a good place for learning it, too. They are the main places we learn to forebear in love, or don’t. In a marriage we have a daily opportunity to develop a way of living together that hopes more in God’s blessing than in the immediate satisfaction of our desires. As one of my clients said the other day, in marriage we learn to act out love rather than wait for love to make us feel like connecting. Patience opens up our families to God’s presence and relaxes the stranglehold of our disappointment and longing. Patience let’s things grow, and delights in nurturing what God is growing up in our loved one — that wonder, that creation, that future resurrected being.

 

 

 

Who Are You? — In honor of Teresa de Jesus

Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Visit The Transhistorical Body for more.

The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. Those two wanted to return their monastic order to the ways of the hermits who founded it near Elijah’s Well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They were responding to the radicals of the Protestant Reformation, which was like an earthquake in the Catholic Church of their time. They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites.

Mariko’s emphasis on pilgrimage last night at our congregation on Frankford Ave. helped me remember many good times on my journeys with Jesus. While on pilgrimage in Kent over a decade ago, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. A yard full of elementary kids were there when we arrived, which was right in line with the order’s traditional love of children.

Teresa and John in Avila

I am Teresa of Jesus

When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. It seemed mysterious and important. Holy. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend the stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus. And who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”

Biographers say that encounter with the Child Jesus, affected Teresa so deeply that whenever she set out to organize one of the eighteen (!) new houses she founded, she always brought a statue of the Lord as a child with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.

Who are you?

In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.

If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or another kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?

When I pondered these questions in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Road. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the Church fits, as in Ephesians 3.

The mystery of the body of Christ in action probably moves me most. It is so fragile and yet so powerful, like the sculpture our group made in the forest last Saturday.

I have never been diverted from my passion for the church’s work of restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many harmonious parts.  Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named by my brothers and sisters as they recognize Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.

“Who are you?” How would you answer? At the Men’s Retreat last weekend one of the answers we offered the men is “You are the treasure God found when he was plowing his  field in you. You are the beloved of God.” That might be the best place to start in order to see how you might be described in relation to the other wonders of God.

With Teresa of Avila: Who Are You?

Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).

The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. In response to the radicals of the protestant reformation — which was like an earthquake in the Church of their time, Teresa and John wanted to return their order to the ways of the hermits that founded it near Elijah’s well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites. [As a total aside, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey last year when in Kent, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. They had a yard full of elementary kids when we arrived, befitting the order’s traditional love of children.].

Teresa’s vision

When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus, and who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”

Biographers say that encounter with the Lord, as a child, affected her so deeply that whenever  Teresa set out to found a new house (she founded eighteen in all) she always brought a statue of the Child Jesus with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.

Who are you?

In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.

If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or other kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?

When I pondered this in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the church. The mystery of the body of Christ in action: restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many diverse parts – I have never been diverted from my passion for it.  Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named, by my brothers and sisters, as they recognized Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.

“Who are you?” How would you answer?