Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila by Julia Kristeva

Author:Julia Kristeva [Kristeva, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: Psychology, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, Fiction, Psychoanalysis
ISBN: 9780231149600
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2008-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Matins at nine, “examen” for fifteen minutes with meditation in Spanish upon a particular mystery, all “together in the choir.” Alone and together, meditation and work; the hours of the day are planned in such a way that time does not elapse but stands up straight, vertical, the frozen present of the contemplation of the Other. There are no distractions: your authorization of the vernacular tongue is not a license, it merely helps familiarize each nun with her Spouse and assimilate Him to whatever is most “her own,” both infantile and maternal. Likewise with chanting: to forestall possible backsliding, you prohibit the seductive runs of Gregorian notation, stipulating “a monotone and with uniform voices.” As for the rest of the rite, even Mass will be “recited,” to save time, “so that the Sisters may earn their livelihood.”9

Thus set up, the absolute present of contemplation will be paced according to the rhythms of the seasons and the movement of the sun. The bell rings out the calls to prayer, morning, noon, and night, and organizes the space of solitude with others: indoors or out, chapel or cell, garden or kitchen. The hours of the divine office (matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, lauds) and the milestones of the Catholic calendar (Christmas, Lent, Easter, saints’ days) divert the quantitative flow of “passing time” into the outside-time of contemplative suspension.

The reform of time imposed by your Constitutions, Teresa, does not create a new calendar. Obviously not, since you are consciously aware of not founding a new religion. To take refuge in Catholic time as it exists (your Spouse’s calendar, the holy feasts and liturgies) enables you to better hollow out this time in which you recognize yourself, and of which you demand that it recognize you—the better to shoot it like an arrow deep inside toward the amorous intensity, carried to extremes, that will help you to detach from the world in order to cleave to the Other until “participating” in Him. Recognition and exile: never one without the other. Your genius lies in this paradox, which conformists (traditionalist and modernist alike) refused to accept, and could only be admitted by bolder dialectical minds in the wake of the Council of Trent.

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