FEEL GOOD

Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Jn 15:1-8

Have you experienced prolonged dryness in your prayer life? Have you known the aridity of spiritual wilderness? Good news: you are not alone. Many saints, if not all, went through this kind of spiritual pruning. To name a few: St. John of the Cross, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, and, our saint for today, St. Teresa of Jesus, commonly called “Teresa of Avila”.

Born in 1515 in Avila, Spain, to a well-to-do family, Teresa, however, chose to enter the Carmelite monastery. Together with St. John of the Cross, she later on reformed the Discalced Carmelites for which she suffered many hardships because pervasive laxity and politicking permeated the Spanish religious orders of her time. Faithful to the Church, her contribution to the renewal of the entire ecclesiastical community is far from being minor. Her written works, among which the most famous is the “Interior Castle”, give us a glimpse to the beautiful soul of this mystic and serve even until today as guides to asceticism and intimate union with God. Teresa passed away in 1582 and was declared Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

She who went through a prolonged spiritual dryness is after all a mystic. According to Teresa herself, she experienced deep desolation, even in the midst of her faithfulness to prayer and spiritual discipline, for eighteen years! But she turned out to be a genius of mysticism.

When we find our selves going through a wilderness in our spiritual life, may Teresa remind us that prayer is not about feeling good as it is first of all becoming good. May she inspire us to remain faithful to our prayer and spiritual discipline even, and most of all, when there seems to nothing happening. For it is when nothing seems to be happening because we are not in control of what happens that God is actually doing something in us. He is pruning us so that we may bear the sweet fruit of spiritual growth.

Solo Dios basta was St. Teresa’s motto in life. And indeed, God alone is enough. The rest are distractions…yes, sometimes even including feeling good…when feeling good does not come from our greatest Good – God.