Interpreting St Teresa of Avila (X)

Patrick Burke, O.Carm.

One might wonder why St Teresa in her forties was consulting so many learned friars and priests. She was experiencing especially from about 1555, extraordinary visions and heavenly favours. She was getting to know more about mystical theology and of the different degrees of prayer. As her prayer life progressed she began to be afraid ‘since at that time other women had fallen into serious illusions and deceptions caused by the devil’ (Life 23, 2), referring to those condemned by the Inquisition in Cordoba, Seville and Valladolid. She felt great sweetness and delight in her prayers but later would be troubled in case she was deceived by the devil.

In 1560 at the direction of her Dominican confessor, Pedro Ibanez, a professor of theology in the College of St Thomas at Avila, Teresa prepared an account about the state of her soul and her progress in the spiritual life. Of him she wrote later: ‘He was so learned I was able to feel fully assured with what he told me’ (L 33, 5). Another Dominican friar, Domingo Banez, a recognised mature and prominent theologian, who later became Consultor at the Holy Office in Valladolid, took over from Ibanez as Teresa’s confessor. But just before Christmas 1561, her religious Superiors seconded Teresa to act as a companion to a noble lady in Toledo, a widow Dona Luisa de la Cerda whose husband had died early in the year. When still greatly distressed at his death she heard about Teresa, she immediately used her influence to obtain permission from the Carmelite Provincial for Sr. Teresa to travel and stay with her to help her overcome her loss. The most influential ladies -many of them the most powerful in the land - visited her house. Here Teresa was to meet several matrons of noble families who were to be involved in her later life. One of them was the Princess of Eboli who would in later years cause her endless trouble.

The most important thing during her time in Toledo was that Teresa began to write her autobiography. This was at the insistence of her new confessor. He was another Dominican and one whom she knew well in Avila. He was Garcia de Toledo, a learned aristocrat and highly talented, who had held various offices in his Order. Of all her acquaintances he understood Teresa better than most. It is acknowledged that he was so influenced in helping her that he grew in holiness and became an outstanding spiritual director of souls. Of him Teresa wrote: ‘If I hadn’t seen it, I would have doubted that in such a short time the favours of God so increased that he was so occupied with God that he no longer seemed to live for anything else on earth.’ (L 34, 11).

St Teresa many times alludes to her Dominican confessor Fr Garcia who had encouraged her to write the story of her own life in order to explain her growth towards God and the method of her prayer. She had developed her spiritual life through the action of God but always acknowledges that the confessor was God’s instrument He had teased out every difficulty with her and gained enormously himself as a result. She wrote of him; ‘Within four months the Lord had brought him further than I got in seventeen years. This person has prepared himself better and so without any labour of his own the flower garden is watered with these four waters’ (L. 11, 8). What had happened was extraordinary. During the six months she spent in Toledo, Teresa had completed a redaction of her life story and gave it to Fr Garcia to assess. The draft had long accounts of her slow progress until she began to master the way to the love of God, a way that involved intellectual visions, raptures, mysterious locutions and ecstatic favours. Fr Garcia recognised that the spiritual experiences marked a development that Teresa did not explain, only stating the phenomena that she felt or witnessed. Obviously from her discussions with him and her clarification in detail of what she had learned, he too grew towards the Lord. However, as a result of his insistence Teresa had to now write an account of her prayer life which she describes as an analogue of watering a garden where the soul is the gardener who must secure the supply of water for the plants to grow. This additional material now forms Chapters 11 to 22. These ‘Four Degrees of Mental Prayer’ are the preparation for a better understanding of what the Saint describes in the following chapters.

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