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

Thus it is a boundless

Love that unites them…

And the more love is one

The more it is love.”²³

TERESA, fast. Father and Son, united in equality and excellence: I see that. The more love is one, the more infinite it is; I’m with you there, too. But what equality, what excellence? And how does this infinity become concretely plural among the Three Persons, and then in our souls? (Pause.) Oh, Father, please don’t scold me for splitting hairs; unworthy woman I am, and fleshly with it, I don’t want to make a mistake. As you know, I would go “to the ends of the earth as long as it were out of obedience.”²⁴

JOHN OF THE CROSS. “They were meant for the Son

And He alone rejoiced in them.…

My Son, only your

Company contents Me.”²⁵

TERESA, settling back into her chair, which will not levitate. Well said! Gospel truth! And yet it would seem that I took the opposite path to yours. One day, “I was given understanding of how the Father receives within our soul the most holy Body of Christ.”²⁶ Have you tried it, my great Seneca? (Thoughtfully.) Your vision is pure and intellectual, I know, you refrain from detailing ecstasies and raptures, you prefer only to explain the words, or rather your own stanzas, as befits a learned man. (Knowing smile.) You have no time for physical apprehensions and manifestations. (Pause.) Whereas me, I am a scruffy sparrow rather than a golden eagle.…I try to be inseparable from Jesus’s humanity, inside my flesh and its retinue of visions, revelations, words.…Your unsullied way is one of darkness, death, and desolation. A wholesale negation that peters out exhausted in a purified tranquility, a terrible, pitch-black peace. Like you I started off with pain, loss and separation. (Pause.) In my banishment as I moved toward the Spouse, ecstasy emptied me of myself. (Long pause.)

(Silence from John. Wary tenderness.)

TERESA, in an anxious voice. Do you think, Father, that I allot too little space for the Holy Spirit? That I only mention it when a great scholar like yourself steers me back onto the straight and narrow? (Pause, short laugh.) Oh, but I said that in the Life…that’s the meaning of the dove…of course!²⁷

(Silence from John.)

TERESA, fast. I can see you coming, with your pure-man’s objections to the base woman I am! That Christocentric Teresa, not theocentric enough — that’s what people will say, and I expect them to. Still, I often wrote and here repeat that when the Persons of the Trinity “take human flesh” in my soul, I felt a kind of obstacle to seeing three of them (parece me hacía algún impedimento ver tres Personas):²⁸ Not easy, for I am a creature, and a sinner.

(Silence from John.)

TERESA. Quite quickly, however, the Lord filled me with His presence. “In emptying my soul of all that is creature and detaching myself for the love of God, the same Lord will fill it with Himself.”²⁹ (In a greedy voice.) That’s right, the Lord, Cristo como hombre, man and God, Son and Father, both inseparable and all of them deep inside me. But you’re the opposite, you only countenance the carnal figures of God — kisses, splendors, or what have you — to beseech them, to moan and groan over them, and then run away. Whereas I have our Guest dentro de mí. (Normal voice.) That’s the difference between us, my ideal father. For you, it gets cleansed in the fires of agreeable tortures, is that right? That’s what you feel?

(Heavy silence from John.)

(Teresa stares at him for a while. Concerned tenderness. Silence.)

JOHN OF THE CROSS. “Where have You hidden,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag

And after wounding me;

I went out calling You, and You were gone.”³⁰