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

TERESA, in a melancholic and then assured voice. I think so too, you know I do, my sweet Seneca, I have often atoned, for far more than you can imagine, although it doesn’t stop me sensing the Guest inside of me, that’s just how it is.…Must one offer oneself up as a holocaust to appease the wrath of God, as Bernanos has the Carmelite prioress decide, during the Terror of 1794? Did the Lamb of God want Sister Teresa Benedicta to become another mystic Lamb, to be immolated by the Nazis, so that the profound joy and inner gaiety with which she submitted to His will at the blackest moment of that black night could burst back over the world to save even the most hardened sinner, and perhaps redeem the criminal himself? Do you know? She will write that “the mania for suffering caused by a perverse lust for pain differs completely from the desire to suffer in expiation,”¹⁵ and I believe her, of course. Although my path was a different one, and different also to yours, dear friend, for all your clear complicities. Sacrifice, suffering, obedience, and profound humility, of course…the fact of sin demands them.…But martyrdom?…Hombre como Cristo? What do you say? God loved me as something other than a Lamb, He loved me as a Bride and was content to demand works, works, and more works from me.…He bathed me and inflamed me and I wanted to enkindle you all with celestial fire…I wanted to become a perpetual spur to virtue…I mean, to love.…¹⁶ You can be Stein’s Science of the Cross, and I, the Hidden Spring.…¹⁷ Don’t pull that face.…All right, it’s not so simple! We are converging, though. Saint Teresa Benedicta will experience our reunion in herself.…We’ll come together in her, do you see? It diverts me to argue with you today, my good friend, just for the pleasure of getting closer to you, I know you understand.…In a nutshell, you’ll be most read in times of war, and I in times of peace…if such a thing exists.…(Moves her chair nearer, he doesn’t budge, doesn’t look at her.) In the Love of the Other, it does. (Tranquil face, pensive smile.)

JOHN OF THE CROSS, immobile in his love and as if absent, surrendered to his dark night. O delightful wound!

(Silence.)

TERESA, shrinks back, straightens up and presses her head against the back of her chair. Here it comes again, that feeling I always had in your company, Father: dare I tell you aloud, by now? I am frightened by the spell you cast. How grateful I was to your paternity for founding the first discalced male monastery in Valladolid in 1568! But I know you felt snubbed when I wrote more about Prior Antonio de Jesús than about you, in relation to the foundation at Medina del Campo, and didn’t even mention you in connection with Granada. And yet you are everywhere in my pages: that wounded deer, for instance, slaking her thirst in the living waters;¹⁸ or that poor little butterfly so full of apprehension that everything alarms it and makes it take flight before the Lord has a chance to fortify it, enlarge it, and render it capable.¹⁹ It’s partly me, but very much you: you’ll be recognized in those figures one day. Excuse me for prophesying, I do it sometimes, I’m sorry, it’s embarrassing, you know how your Madre is.…But how can I refer to you but through secret analogies, when the sweet perfection of your suffering body often impressed upon my soul your own lovely pains and froze me with fright: you can understand my trepidation, can’t you, dear John? Oh, and those death’s-heads, those skulls in Pastrana! When all’s said and done it’s the Trinity that separates us, Father. I don’t feel it in quite the way you do, and your paternity doesn’t die of it the way I do.

JOHN OF THE CROSS. “I know that the stream proceeding from these two

Is preceded by neither of them

Although it is night.”²⁰

(Pause.)

“A lone young shepherd lived in pain²¹

Withdrawn from pleasure and contentment.”

(Pause.)

Even in darkest night.

(Silence.)

TERESA. Look here, my brother! Although I am a woman and haven’t studied Latin, I try to comprehend the Mystery you describe so well. (Reads.) “I was reflecting today upon how, since they were so united, the Son alone could have taken human flesh…these are grandeurs which make the soul again desire to be free from this body that hinders their enjoyment.”²² That’s what you’re saying, too, yes or no?

JOHN OF THE CROSS. “In the beginning the Word

Was; He lived in God…

The Word is called Son;

He was born of the Beginning…

As the lover in the beloved

Each lived in the other…

And the Love that unites them

Is one with them,

Their equal, excellent as

The One and the Other:

Three Persons, and one Beloved

Among all three.

One love in them all

Makes them one Lover…