October 15, 2005
This morning, as a deacon and student in the seminary, I was assigned to preach the homily at the Mass in honor of Saint Teresa of Avila. When I first began to prepare my homily, one line from the Gospel (Luke 12:8-12) jumped out at me: “The Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” And I thought—during a brief moment of insanity—that perhaps this meant I didn’t need to prepare. Fortunately, I remembered that the faculty members critique your homily after the Mass and I came to my senses.
But then it occurred to me that this line from the Gospel could be an excellent summary of Saint Teresa’s teaching on the spiritual life. “The Holy Spirit will teach you.” Because if there is one bottom line, one fact that all of her teaching witnesses to, it is that in the normal, ordinary life of the praying Christian, God will take an active role if He is allowed to. She teaches consistently that, without exception, a life of deep prayer is available to every baptized Christian who is open to it.
Speaking of contemplative prayer, she writes: “Remember, the Lord invites us all; and, since He is Truth Itself, we cannot doubt Him. If His invitation were not a general one, He would not have said: ‘I will give you to drink.’ He might have said: ‘Come all of you, for after all you will lose nothing by coming; and I will give drink to those whom I think fit for it.’ But, as He said we all were to come, without making this condition, I feel sure that none will fail to receive this living water unless they cannot keep to the path” (Way of Perfection, 19).
We should understand that Teresa does not mean anything esoteric by this. In fact, she is clear that extraordinary things such as locutions and visions are, in a sense, irrelevant. Her friend Saint John of the Cross goes so far as to say that even authentic visions and locutions shouldnot be allowed admittance. (To understand this admittedly strange comment I recommend the Ignatius Press book by Fr. Thomas Dubay called Authenticity, especially at pp. 116-118.) If she does not mean anything arcane or extraordinary, what is Teresa saying? Simply this: available to all of us is a real contact with God, which, though not flashy or spectacular is very, very profound.
By its nature, this deep prayer only comes at the initiation of God. “The Holy Spirit will teach you.” Our active work (eventually, in God’s good timing) gives way to God’s active work in us. The only things required of us are (1) a genuine attempt to live the Gospel with generosity, (2) perseverance in the practice of prayer, and (3) the virtue of hope.
The great enemy of hope is cynicism. And cynicism can easily come, especially for those who are practiced in prayer and begin to despair of reaching real depth. This can happen when spiritual things become commonplace, for example. Ironically, it can also happen as we mature spiritually. I mean this: it is good to grow beyond some of the pious platitudes we begin with when we first begin to live the Christian life with zeal. But the danger is in letting the pendulum swing too far in the other direction, namely towards despair of attaining an authentic, deep, living relationship with God. But Saint Teresa’s doctrine will not allow for that. Nor, for that matter, will the Church who holds up Teresa’s doctrine as exemplary. And so today we renew our petition that the Holy Spirit would teach us. [For more on these aspects of prayer, I recommend Fr. Dubay’s other books, Prayer Primer and Fire Within.]
Br. Solanus Benfatti, CFR
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