with the Community of St. Bridget
eflect
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October 15 was the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila.
Teresa Teaches What Many Have Yet to Learn
To be a woman is not easy in any period of history. The world is a male preserve, and women, it has apparently been decreed by someone, somewhere for his own convenience, are to be its caretakers, not its pioneers. To be a strong and idealistic woman is even worse. The problem is that caretaking is not usually the gift of dreamers who have an urge to change things, but if the dreamers are women, it is even worse.
Leadership is normally denied a woman under the best of circumstances, and only caretaking is acceptable. The result is a kind of human in-betweenness for women that confuses the psyche and lacerates the soul. It is a state of life that has plagued most of the great women of the world. As a result, women have commonly been fated to live undeveloped lives, to live vicariously, to find their fulfillment and satisfaction in life in the lives of their husbands and children or else be doomed to find little if any satisfaction at all.
Teresa of Ávila was that kind of woman—too bright for her time, too strong for the institutions around her, too spiritual for the church of her day. To be a woman in a society that does not value women as full human beings brings with it the burden of invisibility. To be a woman with different views about the ideals of life brings with it the burden of ostracism. To be a woman with an independent interior life too often brings with it the suspicions of what in life was most dear to her, the church. Teresa of Ávila had all three problems: she was a strong woman in a male culture; she was an institutional reformer in a period of high satisfaction; she was a visionary in a time of orthodoxy. It was a difficult, a dynamic mix.
In a period of political, economic and intellectual upheaval, Teresa of Ávila brought the concerns of the soul to new heights. She made contemplation, mysticism, and union with God things to be sought in everyday life. She brought understanding to piety. She wed the physical and the spiritual dimensions of life into one great walk with God. “We aren’t angels,” she taught emphatically, “We’ve got bodies.” The point was clear: the spiritual life was normal; the normal was spiritual. Teresa was declared the first woman Doctor of the Church—in 1970—over fifty years after John of the Cross, her disciple, was named doctor. Teresa teaches what many have yet to learn: Women have a place as teachers of the faith, directors of souls, and models of the spiritual life.
Teresa of Ávila is a clear and resounding sign that a woman can hear the word of God and do it, all male institutions to the contrary. She is a call to a spiritual life that is more impelled by vision than secure in its complacency. She taught generation after generation how to pray themselves into the presence of God, and she never used prayer as an excuse to run away from life. She wrote: “What is the purpose of prayer, my sisters? The purpose of prayer is always good works, good works, good works.” And given her unending attempts to make religion spiritual and the church holy, God knows, she of all people has the right to say so.
––from A Passion for Life, by Joan Chittister (Orbis)
Click to visit Joan Chittister's website
