This year marks the 400th anniversary of the canonization of St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582). Such a milestone is a fitting occasion for exploring and celebrating the transformative wisdom that Teresa speaks into our contemporary world.
(Side note: The family of my cousin’s Colombian wife can trace their family tree back to Spain and close relatives of St. Teresa. I’m calling it “blessed by proximity”!)
Fundamental to Teresa’s work is the idea of wholeheartedness – living and loving with our whole hearts. The key to wholehearted living is believing that whatever our strengths or weaknesses, our achievements or unfulfilled potential, we are enough. We are worthy of love and belonging just as we are.
Wouldn’t life be amazing if we could embrace that concept? If we believed we are enough and didn’t depend on what others might think about us?
Teresa realized that she could derive the belief that she was enough only from God – that only God could guarantee her fundamental worthiness of love and belonging.
In recent months, Teresa’s insights have had a profound impact on me. She famously describes the interior self as an exquisite crystal castle with many rooms where God dwells in the innermost room. Inviting us into her amazement at the splendor of the interior castle, Teresa writes:
“There is no point wearing ourselves out trying to fathom the great beauty of this castle with our mere minds. Even though the castle is a created thing, there is a vast difference between Creator and creature, so the fact that the soul is made in God’s image means that it is impossible for us to understand her sublime dignity and loveliness.” (The Interior Castle)
As a child of God, I believe that I’m fundamentally worthy of love and belonging. Teresa helps me to grasp that my “enoughness” is not something that I will ever discover within the storehouse of my own resources if I just look hard enough. Rather, it’s divinely bestowed and contained within the very reality of my God-given existence.
What is required is a fundamental shift in where I place authority regarding my identity. It’s a matter of me relinquishing control, of surrendering and of actively choosing to give God’s love the authority to underwrite my enoughness.
Here, Teresa’s teachings on prayer come to my aid. Teresa speaks of prayer as a person-to-person sharing between loving friends. It’s about being vulnerably present to the One Who is intimately present within us.
Teresa affirms, “If you speak, strive to remember that the One with whom you are speaking is present within. If you listen, remember that you are going to hear One who is very close to you when He speaks.” (The Way of Perfection)
Teresa wants us all to know that Jesus is living and available.
This kind of relationship is transformative – and I’m still working on it. I am prying away my grip on my self-perception and working to see me as God sees me. This reaffirmation empowers me to actually believe that I am worthy now. I am worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As I am.
Through her writings, Teresa shows me that I am not the creator of my own enoughness. The One who calls me by name, holds me in existence and dwells within me has taken care of that from all eternity.
I pray that you look into your own interior castle and find your own enoughness.