The Sisters must keep their hair cut so as not to have to waste time in combing it. Never should a mirror be used or any adornments; there should be complete self-forgetfulness.12
For those who haven’t grasped that this detachment is the imperative condition for belonging to the Other, The Way of Perfection sets out, in greater psychological detail, the implications of your juridical-constitutional rigor:
I am astonished by the harm that is caused from dealing with relatives. I don’t think anyone will believe it except the one who has experienced it for himself. And how this practice of perfection seems to be forgotten nowadays in religious orders! I don’t know what it is in the world that we renounce when we say that we give up everything for God, if we do not give up the main thing, namely, our relatives.13
Once nature, that is, “the relatives,” has been dealt with, there naturally follows the need to guard against any special affection between sisters. Teresa is careful to put bounds on female passions, veritable poisons that she compares to the tumultuous feelings between siblings and to a “pestilence”:
All must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped. Watch out for these friendships, for love of the Lord, however holy they may be; even among brothers they can be poisonous. I see no benefit in them. And if the friends are relatives, the situation is much worse—it’s a pestilence!14
Let no Sister embrace another or touch her on the face or hands. The Sisters should not have particular friendships but should include all in their love for one another, as Christ often commanded His disciples. Since they are so few, this will be easy to do. They should strive to imitate their Spouse who gave His life for us. This love for one another that includes all and singles out no one in particular is very important.15
The inevitable pleasures between sisters (female homosexuality is endogenous!) must be closely watched out for, then. Beware elective affinities! Transform them into “general” bonds, into the cement holding the group together! Is that your message? Sooner said than done!
With rather more finesse, your Motherhood—sensual and prudent—softens these rigors by drawing attention to another, more delightful Cross that afflicts those who care for others, and know them down to “the tiniest speck [las motitas]”: “On the one hand [these lovers] go about forgetful of the whole world, taking no account of whether others serve God or not, but only keeping account of themselves; on the other hand, with their friends, they have no power to do this, nor is anything covered over; they see the tiniest speck. I say that they bear a truly heavy cross.”16
When, in situations of mystical ascesis and the acquisition of this insight into human relationships, penances seem called for, you are careful to qualify them: “Should the Lord give a Sister the desire to perform a mortification, she should ask permission. This good, devotional practice should not be lost, for some benefits are drawn from it. Let it be done quickly so as not to interfere with the reading. Outside the time of dinner and supper, no Sister should eat or drink without permission.”17
Moments of relaxation—an innovation of yours—will be allowed:
When they are through with the meal, the Mother prioress may dispense from the silence so that all may converse together on whatever topic pleases them most, as long as it is not one that is inappropriate for a good religious. And they should all have their distaffs with them there.
Games should in no way be permitted, for the Lord will give to one the grace to entertain the others. In this way, the time will be well spent. They should strive not to be offensive to one another, but their words and jests must be discreet. When this hour of being together is over, they may in summer sleep for an hour; and whoever might not wish to sleep should observe silence.18
It goes without saying that delicacies are forbidden: the menu is meager, and fasting lasts for six months. The Constitution for Saint Joseph’s bans meat, save in cases of absolute necessity, as we have seen, but it does allow for fish and eggs, as well as unlimited bread and vegetables. Positively mouthwatering! Lest we forget, there’s nothing like frugality to condition the detachment from self that solitude is expected to foster.
Good spiritual nourishment, equally under surveillance, will feed the souls whose stomachs have thus been purified:
The prioress should see to it that good books are available, especially the Life of Christ by the Carthusian [Ludolf of Saxony], the Flos Sanctorum [a collection of lives of the saints, including the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine], the Imitation of Christ [Thomas à Kempis], the Oratory of Religious [Antonio Guevara], and those books written by Fray Luis de Granada [the Book of Prayer and Meditation, the Sinners’ Guide] and by Father Fray Pedro de Alcántara. This sustenance for the soul is in some way as necessary as is food for the body. All of that time not taken up with community life and duties should be spent by each Sister in the cell or hermitage designated by the prioress; in sum, in a place where she can be recollected and, on those days that are not feast days, occupied in doing some work. By withdrawing into solitude in this way, we fulfill what the rule commands: that each one should be alone. No Sister, under pain of a grave fault, may enter the cell of another without the prioress’s permission. Let there never be a common workroom.19
I see that the list of books authorized by the prioress is short but edifying, and the cleverest of the discalced nuns would be able to commit their salient passages to memory, so as to form part of a duly indoctrinated, elite corps.
I also note that this austerity wisely applies to one and all, fomenting a kind of equality between the sisters that even includes the mother superior:
The Mother prioress should be first on the list for sweeping so that she might give a good example to all. She should pay careful attention to whether those in charge of the clothes and the food provide charitably for the Sisters in what is needed for subsistence and in everything else. Those having these offices should do no more for the prioress and the older nuns than they do for all the rest, as the rule prescribes, but be attentive to needs and age, and more so to needs, for sometimes those who are older have fewer needs. Since this is a general rule, it merits careful consideration, for it applies in many things.20
Over the years, the various foundations would show that it was better to establish the prioress’s authority from the start and enshrine total respect for the hierarchy; for the moment, however, Teresa refers to herself as an “older sister.” Such were the optimistic beginnings of an institution that dreamed of equality. When at length she realized that the human animal, even behind the bars of a cloister, requires steering by an unambiguously firm hand, La Madre would duly take this into account.
But this is still only the start of an unimaginable adventure. The goal was no more or less than to found, in this world, the interiority of an absolute love beyond the reach or ken of this world; to noise abroad the work of this love by isolating it, rendering it invisible and indeed untouchable, and by the same token infinitely desirable. Nothing could have gone more against the grain at this time, the apogee of the Renaissance, as colonization was spreading and industry beginning to develop. But the repercussions of the Council of Trent subsumed this Teresian casuistry into the cultural revolution that was the Counter-Reformation, without anyone knowing where exactly this would lead: to the impasse of an archaism in whose swamp of supernatural manifestations Renaissance or Protestant progress would find itself mired? Or to the awakening of unsuspected energies and fruitful singularities, as enigmatic and confounding today as they ever were?
In The Way of Perfection, the three points that summarize the Constitutions allude to a Paradise located at the intersection of the “inward” and the “outward”:
I shall enlarge on only three things, which are from our own constitutions, for it is very important that we understand how much the practice of these three things helps us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us. The first of these is love for one another; the secon
d is detachment from all created things; the third is true humility, which, even though I speak of it last, is the main practice and embraces all the others.21
The fundament is love according to prayer: in these days of religious war, you must pray (inwardly) and make it known by taking up as much space as possible (outwardly). Recollect yourself at the very heart of your interior castle, but swarm through the mountains and valleys. In a Carmel harking back to the old ways, contemplation amounts to a warrior kind of love. Are some “unfortunate heretics” attacking the Catholic fortress in which La Madre desires to house her reform? To arms, to war! But one cannot gallop into battle without first outlining the Paradise of love; without exploring in every direction love’s exaltations, which only thus, accepted at last, open up into Nothingness.
Let us return now to the love that it is good for us to have, that which I say is purely spiritual. I don’t know if I know what I am saying.…For I don’t think I know which love is spiritual, or when sensual love is mixed with spiritual love, nor do I know why I want to speak of this spiritual love.…The persons the Lord brings to this state are generous souls, majestic souls. They are not content with loving something as wretched as these bodies, however beautiful they may be, however attractive.... And, in fact, I think at times that if love does not come from those persons who can help us gain the blessings of the perfect, there would be great blindness in this desire to be loved. Now, note well that when we desire love from some person, there is always a kind of seeking our own benefit or satisfaction…
It will seem to you that such persons do not love or know anyone but God. I say, yes they do love, with a much greater and more genuine love, and with passion, and with a more beneficial love: in short, it is love. And these souls are more inclined to give than to receive. Even with respect to the Creator Himself they want to give more than to receive. I say that this attitude is what merits the name “love,” for these other base attachments have usurped the name “love.”22
Who said enclosure? Inwardly and outwardly, you constitute whatever is necessary to harbor love, to set it ablaze with ecstasy, indifference, endurance. You are ready, Teresa, to confront the world from the vantage point of that nonworld. Comfort does not sit well with prayer, ecstasy is not a pampered but a painful act, incompatible with easy living: “regalo y oración no se compadece.”23
Are you, like Angela of Foligno, perpetually engaged in a “twofold immersion in the fathomless depths of the divinity”? Not really. What you do instead is to walk it, explore it, elucidate it. The idea is to create the optimum conditions for attaining, through recollection, the intimate secrecy, the “closet” (Matt. 6:6) of prayer, the prayer “all night” (Luke 6:12) engaged in by Jesus himself, for “it has already been mentioned that one cannot speak simultaneously to God and to the world.”24 Time to withdraw from the world, then, to step back from its “frenzy”; but also from “bad humors” or melancholia, on “days of great tempests in His servants.”25 To stand never so far from the Master “that He has to shout,” close enough for the person at prayer to “center the mind on the one to whom the words are addressed.”26 This pact with the Other should neither be a fusion, nor an obstacle to comprehension: “It will be an act of love to understand who this Father of ours is and who the Master is who taught us this prayer.”27
And yet, with no striving on the part of the spirit, a transfer of intimacies is what occurs, an outpouring of pleasure between communicating vessels. The “divine food” of happiness, then,28 the understanding of the “nothingness of all things,” which together transmute the “pain” into “joy.” Let “reason” itself “raise the banner”!29 The “interior” of every person will thus find itself appeased: “If the soul suffers dryness, agitation and worry, these are taken away.”30 In a word, the soul is returned to bliss. “The delight is in the interior of the will, for the other consolations of life, it seems to me, are enjoyed in the exterior of the will, as in the outer bark, we might say.”31
Severed from this “exterior life,” the cloistered soul—which Teresa reveals and instructs in the Way—will not allow itself to be held back by any obstacle. Of course, La Madre laments those “scattered” souls who behave like “wild horses…always restless,”32 and this remonstration could just as well apply to herself. However, the enclosure of Heaven, irrigated by the Other’s water or milk, is not impervious to the “active,” “powerful” fire, “not subject to the elements,” whose inability to extinguish its opposite, water, “makes the fire increase!” Far from being passive, the soul Teresa summons up in her writing is a blaze of love, tantamount for La Madre to the fire of “liberty”: “No wonder the saints, with the help of God, were able to do with the elements whatever they wanted.”33 The “poor nun of St. Joseph’s” licenses herself to wage war in order to “attain dominion over all the earth and the elements.”34 War against herself, by practicing “interior mortification”;35 war to “conquer the enemy,” meaning the body first of all. Once souls have become “lords of our bodies,”36 they wage war against the last enemies, among whom must be counted those “learned men,” who “all lived a good life—incomparably better than I,”37 but who have not been blessed with true “consolations [pleasures, refreshment: gustos] from God.”38 Or against what she calls the “night owls” or “cicadas,” those Carmelites of the observance who haven’t gone along with Teresa’s reforms.39
Thus inflamed, the soul on its path to perfection never encounters a “closed door,” for its state of “suspension”40 makes an invincible combatant of it. Cloistered but not tied down, its deep refreshment in itself, at once water and fire, compels it to brave the antagonism of those who are content with the “exterior life,” the “outer bark”:
I had no one with whom to speak. They were all against me; some, it seemed, made fun of me when I spoke of the matter, as though I were inventing it; others advised my confessor to be careful of me; others said that my experience was clearly from the devil. My confessor alone (even though he agreed with them in order to test me, as I came to know afterward) always consoled me.41
Not even devils can scare you anymore, Teresa. Fortified by your union with the Beloved, you ignore them, like so many pesky flies! “For although I sometimes saw them, as I shall relate afterward, I no longer had hardly any fear of them; rather it seemed they were afraid of me. I was left with a mastery over them truly given by the Lord of all; I pay no more attention to them than to flies.”42
Contemplative and secluded as you are, you harbor a military vision of the world, my dear Teresa; the Parisian Psychoanalytical Society crowd would call it paranoid, and they wouldn’t be completely wrong. Witness this vision:
I saw myself standing alone in prayer in a large field; surrounding me were many different types of people. All of them I think held weapons in their hands so as to harm me: some held spears; others, swords; others daggers; and others, very long rapiers. In sum, I couldn’t escape on any side without putting myself in danger of death; I was alone without finding a person to take my part. While my spirit was in this affliction, not knowing what to do, I lifted my eyes to heaven and saw Christ, not in heaven but quite far above me in the sky. He was holding out His hand toward me, and from there He protected me…
This vision seems fruitless, but it greatly benefited me because I was given an understanding of its meaning. A little afterward I found myself almost in the midst of that battery, and I knew that the vision was a picture of the world…But I’m referring to friends, relatives, and, what frightens me most, very good persons. I afterward found myself so oppressed by them all, while they thought they were doing good, that I didn’t know how to defend myself or what to do.43
How lucky you are: your ideal Father still protects you! What’s more, his protection has modulated. The ecstatic union has already become a matter of listening and hearing. From now on, and more and more, His Voice does not simply comfort and reassure you: it reasons, judges, ponders, counsels. You would never have succeed
ed as a foundress without pulling back from the Beloved a little. Where previously you were enclosed in a garden irrigated by pleasure, cut off from a world you perceived as rejecting you, His Voice has opened up an evaluating distance; the love-rapture has been amplified by understanding and a kind of mastery. In professional jargon, I’d say that the ideal of the ego has become endowed with a reasonable, domesticated, sympathetic superego. To build the little Convent of Saint Joseph’s, you followed David’s example: “I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints” (Ps. 85:8).
And with time, indeed, you will outdo David. Is that an overstatement, brought on by a fit of feminism? In 1577, the Voice you hearken to in prayer is that of Jesus himself as he tells you to “Seek yourself in Me” (Búscate en mí).44 Listening to the Other is not the same as seeking oneself in Him. Your inner experience is renewed; you are searching, you are a seeker; not content with hearing voices—divisions-hallucinations—you recompose, modulate, compose them. You write. David played on his harp while waging war, and he was a king. You are a warrior with no sovereignty beyond that of fiction in the Castilian vernacular. I can’t help thinking that your writing has more than one string to its harp.
Four years, the quietest and most restful of your life, had gone by in the company of the select group you gathered together at Saint Joseph’s,45 when a missionary friar fresh from the Indies told you of the horrors being perpetrated on the natives by the glorious peruleros whose adventurous freedom you had once envied.
Teresa, My Love Page 39