The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 2 by Teresa of Avila & Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez

Author:Teresa of Avila & Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Catholicism, Christianity, Spirituality, Mysticism, Classics
ISBN: 9780960087662
Publisher: ICS Publications
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

[1] In no. 1.

[2] She is speaking of St. Paulinus of Nola (353-431).

[3] This person was Alonso de Cordobilla. He sailed from Cádiz and died in Gibraltar October 28, 1566.

[4] Mk. 14:38.

[5] Mt. 26:38.

[6] Sg. 1:2.

Chapter 4

Speaks of the prayer of quiet and of union and of the sweetness and delight they cause in the spirit; in comparison, earthly delights are nothing.

Your breasts are better than wine, and give forth the most sweet fragrance. (Sg. 1:2-3)

1. Oh, my daughters, what deep secrets there are in these words! May the Lord give us experience of them, for they are very difficult to explain.

When His Majesty, through His mercy, desires to answer the petition of the bride, He begins to commune with the soul in so friendly a way that only those who experience this friendship will understand it, as I say. I have written much about this in two books[1] (which, if the Lord is pleased, you will see after my death) in a very detailed way and at length, for I see that you will need them. Thus, I will do no more here than touch upon the matter. I don't know whether I will succeed in using the same words by which the Lord wished to explain the matter there.

2. In the interior of the soul a sweetness is felt so great that the soul feels clearly the nearness of its Lord. This experience is not merely one of devotion moving a person to shed many tears -- which give satisfaction -- either by thinking of the Passion of the Lord or of our sins. In this prayer of which I speak, that I call "quiet" because of the calm caused in all the faculties (for it seems the person has them well under control -- although sometimes the experience is not like this, because the soul is not so absorbed in this sweetness), it seems that the whole man interiorly and exteriorly is comforted. It's as though there were poured into the marrow of one's bones a sweet ointment with a powerful fragrance. If we were suddenly to enter a place where this fragrance was strong and not from one thing but from many, and we did not know what it was or where it came from except that it permeated everything, we would have some idea of this most sweet love of our God. He enters the soul and does so with wonderful sweetness. He pleases and makes it happy, and it cannot understand how or from where that blessing enters. It would not want to lose that good; it would not want to stir or speak or even look lest the blessing go away.

3. [And this is what the bride says here according to my interpretation, that the breasts of the Bridegroom give forth fragrance greater than that of precious ointments.]

In these books I mentioned[2] I spoke of what the soul must do in order to make progress, and my purpose here is solely to explain the type of prayer I am dealing with.

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