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

TERESA, pulling back again, not looking at John anymore. Hands crossed over her breast, like the blue-cloaked Virgin image bequeathed by her mother, La Madre looks inside herself. I’m not saying it’s not like that, but here again the Trinity is at stake, and my Trinity is as bodily, delectable and obliging as the Spouse when He does me the favor of lodging within.…If I tell you that Christ is inside of me, it goes without saying that only divinity penetrates there, but naturally, if I may put it that way.…The humanity alone of the Son could never enter into our souls, many learned fathers have told me so, and I agree. And yet since the Three Persons are united and inside us, I understand — and this is where our experiences differ, Father, with all due respect — I understand how this offering from the Son, the only Person to have become incarnate, is pleasing.³¹…Yes, pleasing to the Father who receives it. (Pause.) But inside my soul…deep inside my soul.…(Reading with her soul the text from the Testimonies as it scrolls past on the Virgin’s blue veil.)…Pleasing deep inside my soul.…Do you understand? This offering enables the Father Himself to enjoy, down here on earth, the pleasure of His Son. Both together. Deep inside me. The Father rejoices in His Son within my soul. I mean that the delights of the filial sacrifice are permitted to the Father and to the Son and to the Spirit, and that these three divine Persons are inside us.…(Pause.)

(John keeps his eyes fastened on the flame.)

TERESA, exhaling deeply. Ah, dear Seneca, I’m sorry to repeat myself so often, but within us such great mysteries lie! At the moment of Communion, our interior is more than bodily when pleasure involves both body and soul. Does that make it any less spiritual? (Pause.) For me, the two go together. (Long silence, then slight smile.) No matter if the officiating priest is in sin: the reception of the jouissance of the Three Persons inside depends rather on the soul receiving the sacrament. If the sun doesn’t shine on a piece of pitch as it does on glass, the fault is not with the sun but with the pitch.³² (Imploring tone.) I myself have no hopes of conquering Heaven or avoiding Hell, I want to live here and now, lowly smear of pitch that I am, like a pane of glass penetrated by Christ made man, inseparable from the Holy Trinity. By my love, in the delightful friendship of His sacred humanity, spirit and body together, I try to achieve what you seek in your hopeless pursuit: “And He was gone.” It’s the living God, dwelling in my soul, who grants me the favor of such a powerful energy. “Esto no es como otras visiones, porque lleve fuerza con la fe.”³³

(Silence.)

“Look, look, she’s going up again, she’s off the ground, she’s flying!” Ana de San Bartolomé and Teresita scramble for a better look from the parlor door.

“And Father John of the Cross, too!” Catalina de la Concepción and María Bautista have joined them.

(Silence.)

JOHN OF THE CROSS. I take what you are saying, Madre, but not completely. What you do in your relish is to gobble down sacred history until your mouth bleeds with it: look at the state you’re in! You’re dying, I realize that — but throughout your life this kind of symptom, or worse, has always waylaid you. I am well informed of it, and was even a witness on some occasions. (Pause.) Once you nearly choked on the Lord’s blood…or was the blood yours? (In a cold, level voice.) You seem blind to the difference, when it comes to union with Him as you engage in it. Is that what you’ve been trying to tell me, yet again? (John of the Cross lands his chair on the ground in front of Teresa, the better to fulfill his confessor’s vocation.)

(Long silence from Teresa.)