Chapter 7: St Teresa of Avila
7.3: Her understanding of the way to union with God…
7.3.2: Detachment
From her own experience, Teresa was well aware that none of these virtues were instantly present in the life of a person; these virtues are made present through a gradual process of transformation. She articulated this understanding as she wrote: “On the one hand God was calling me; on the other hand I was following the world. All the things of God made me happy;
those of the world held me bound” (Life 7.17). From this comment it is she discerned within herself the effects of wealth, honour, power. She knew these to be obstacles to union with God. Yet she also knew that knowledge alone does not transform. She wrote about how she loved religious life, but did not want to be looked down on. She liked to be held in honour and to be thought highly of by friends and acquaintances. Yet within her she also knew that these desires for honour and high regard meant it was not possible to experience union with the Christ who was weighed down with insults and scorn. She exclaimed, “Either we are brides of so great King or we are not. If we are, what honourable woman is there who does not share in the dishonours done to her spouse even though she does not will them? In fact, both spouses share the honour and the dishonour. Now, then, to enjoy a part in His kingdom and want no part in His dishonours and trials is nonsense” (Way of Perfection 13.2).
In a very human way, she confessed, “Sometimes I think I am very detached;
and as a matter of fact when put to the test, I am. At another time I will find myself so attached, and perhaps to things that the day before I would have made fun of, that I almost don‟t know myself” (Way of Perfection 38.6). This was clearly an ongoing struggle in the path to union with God, a struggle that needed to be grappled with on a daily basis. And so Teresa plead: “May this
“I” die, and may another live in me greater that I and better for me than I, so that I may serve Him. May he live and give me life” (Soliloquies 16.3).
She recognised that exterior detachment does not necessarily mean that interiorly one is no longer bound to certain things. She advised that although this interior detachment may take much time, exteriorly it must be done immediately. For Teresa this was a matter of obedience and a test of true love. This process of transformation was not easy for the sisters with whom she lived; many began to find her exterior changes too extreme. In her Foundations to the sisters, she taught that when detachment is practiced with a pure conscience, such detachment joins the soul to God. She later explained,
“The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior delights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy but in having our will so much in conformity with God‟s will that there is nothing we know He wills that we do not want with all our desire” (Foundations 5.10). Detachment is therefore about choosing God over all other things.
Teresa had a deep understanding of the real nature of attachments, realising as she did that attachment is not just attachment to objects or status; one can also be attached to friendships. This process of renunciation and detachment took place in her own life in terms of such relationships. She claimed her soul was very fragile with regard to giving up certain friendships. Although she was not offending God by them, her attachment to them was greater than her attachment to God. In this lay the difficulty.
I had a serious fault that did me much harm; it was then when I began
to know that certain persons like me, and I found them attractive, I became so attached that my memory was bound strongly by the thought of them. There was no intention to offend God, but I was happy to see these persons and think about them and about the good things I saw in them. This was something so harmful it was leading my soul seriously astray. After I beheld the extraordinary beauty of the Lord, I didn‟t see anyone who in comparison with Him seemed to attract me or occupy my thoughts (Life 37.4).
Once again we see that it is only as she experientially comes to know of the beauty of God, which leads to greater love of God, does the power of the attachment diminish. From that moment, she reflected on how she could no longer tie herself to any friendship or even hold a particular love for a certain friendship, since nothing compared to the beauty of her beloved.
It is therefore increasingly clear that Teresa‟s life was more and more detached from wealth, honour, status and even certain friendships, so she could be freer to love and to follow God. Although initially one can sense and hear her struggle with this process, once it is underway, the joy from God seems to drive the process to the point where she exclaimed that “nothing other than You can give it pleasure any longer; for since it desires to live no longer in itself but in You, it seems that its life is unnatural… It doesn‟t know what it wants, but it well understands that it wants nothing other than you”
(Life 16.4). For Teresa there was no loss. She said to her sisters, “What is this nothingness that we leave!” Again in her autobiography she writes “And what greater perdition, greater blindness, greater misfortune than to cherish that which is nothing?” (Life 34.16).
She used the beautiful analogy of a silkworm which has to die in order to become the creature it was created to be. She went on to describe how, in dying, the ugly worm becomes a beautiful butterfly. This is a powerful image
which speaks of the necessity of dying to oneself in order for the transformation of something greater to take place within the individual.