TERESA: A PRAYER CENTERED REFORMER (Part 4)
STRUGGLES WITH PRAYER
In The Book of Her Life, written at the command of her confessor, Teresa admitted that for eighteen years she led a life that she considered mediocre and only intermittently faithful to the graces she was being given. She believed that her own cultivation of friendships with those who were allowed to come to visit her at the parlor of the monastery prevented her from living the life to which she was vowed. Finally, she knelt in front of a picture of Jesus being scourged before his crucifixion and begged for the grace to become faithful in the practice of prayer.
In her autobiography (Book of Life), Teresa gives a remarkable description of her struggles in practicing mental prayer and the very special graces she received. Our saint’s honesty shines through the pages on which she transcribes her successes and failures in responding to the initiatives of Jesus’ Spirit within her. During the years when she experienced being strongly attracted to prayer, she and some of her youthful friends discussed the possibility of establishing a new monastery where the number of nuns would be limited to thirteen. Teresa had learned the great disadvantages of having a community which numbered over two hundred. At the Convent of the Incarnation, not only nuns lived there but the servants of those who were wealthy were permitted to live and serve these women from the privileged class. In her Life and in her Foundations, Teresa explains the trials that multiplied as she sought to carry out what she believed was God’s will for her and a small group of other women.
(….to be continued everyday till end of article)
Article by Mary Eileen McNamara, OCD , titled “Saint Teresa of Avila: Prayer-Centered Reformer”, Published in Spiritual Life, Summer 2010.
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