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

TERESA. Since our first meeting in Medina in 1567—when you, Father, were still a young student in Salamanca — I recognized in you the spiritual authority we needed, by God’s grace. (Shifting her chair away from his.) I also realized straight away that your paternity would not be easy to deal with. You wanted to become a Carthusian, but I quickly made you see that you could be one, to perfection, with me. Do you remember what you replied? “I give you my word, on condition I don’t have to wait too long.”

JOHN OF THE CROSS, after a silence. “For, the farther the soul progresses in spirituality, the more it ceases from the operation of the faculties in particular acts, since it becomes more and more occupied in one act that is general and pure.”⁴ “The soul no longer enjoys that food of sense, as we have said; it needs not this but another food, which is more delicate, more interior, and partaking less of the nature of sense,”⁵ full of “peace and rest of interior quiet.” (He is motionless, eyes fixed not on her but on the glowing red space.)

TERESA. I expounded on these delicate matters long before you did, my little Seneca. Recall that by 1567 I had already written the book of my Life and The Way of Perfection. (No longer at death’s door, voice calm and authoritative.) It’s true that God accorded me the spiritual marriage in November 1572, and your arrival six months earlier did have something to do with it; still, I was already prepared, I had been ready ever since my re-conversion. I know you don’t dispute it, but I’d rather set the record straight once more before I die, seeing how absorbed you are by that flame…(Gazing at the brazier herself.) You didn’t write anything before my Interior Castle, and that’s a fact. (Shifting her chair back nearer to his.) The life of the spirit — which I taught you — arises from the most intimate part of the soul. It burns, and how! I am a connoisseur of fire, contrary to what you might expect from the voluble female you suspect me to be. Water is my element, I can’t help that, but it doesn’t prevent me from acceding to the soaring of the flame. You have often witnessed it yourself. For the spark that suddenly begins to blaze and shoots up like something extremely delicate to the higher plane that pleases the Lord is of the same nature as the fire that remains beneath. “It seems to be a flight, for I don’t know what else to compare it to.”⁶

JOHN OF THE CROSS. “Withdrawn from pleasure and contentment.”⁷ (Pause.) Nothing! Nothing! I would give up all I am for the sake of Christ! “Love is begotten in a heart that has no love.”⁸

O living flame of love

That tenderly wounds my soul

In its deepest center! Since

Now You are not oppressive,

Now Consummate! If it be Your will:

Tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!⁹

(Silence.)

TERESA, in a soft voice, eyes turned inward. Expiation, are you summoning me to expiation? I know…I’ve tried everything…it’ll never be enough.…But I insist on it right up to the final pages of the Castle: “What I conclude with, Sisters, is that we shouldn’t build castles in the air,” or towers without a foundation; and remember that there is no foundation during this short life other than to “offer the Lord interiorly and exteriorly the sacrifice we can.”¹⁰ What generations to come will retain of our experience as Carmelites is the acerbic taste of a noble atonement, isn’t that right, Father? Are you thinking, like me, of the Carmelites of Compiègne, in the Dialogues screenplay by Bernanos?

(John remains silent. La Madre glimpses the shadow of Mother Marie sweeping over the walls of Avila.)

MOTHER MARIE. There is no horror but in crime, and in the sacrifice of innocent lives the horror is expunged, and the crime itself restored to the order of divine charity.…¹¹

JOHN OF THE CROSS. O sweet cautery!

The two friends hear the court pronounce the death sentence on sixteen Carmelites for holding counterrevolutionary meetings. Then they watch the nuns climb down from the tumbril at the foot of the guillotine in the place de la Révolution. Young Blanche de la Force advances calmly, her face shows no fear. Suddenly she breaks into song: “Deo Patri sit Gloria, et Filio, qui a mortuis surrexit, ac Paraclito, in saeculorum saecula.” Blanche becomes lost among the crowd, along with the rest of the sisters.

JOHN OF THE CROSS. Solus soli.