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

TERESA, eyes head-on. Shall I have the impertinence to repeat, Father, that your mournful felicity frightens me? (Reading.) Of course, like Christ…you are suspended in the void…your heart racked by love and forever unsatisfied. How far I am, I the sinner, from that heart burning to obtain something or other…but loathing any food he sees!⁴⁰ I am the unworthy servant of your Lord, chosen by His Majesty to be filled with the divine essence.…

JOHN OF THE CROSS, edging his chair back a little, pinched face, then expressionless. “Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing; not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least.”⁴¹ (John of the Cross begins to take flight, trying to escape La Madre’s appetites.)

TERESA. Your naked faith, my son, your desnuda fe is unsparing toward naked flesh.⁴² (Pause.) Here, I’ll offer you this insight, Father, the modest opinion of a woman. (Eyes upward, then down.) The only naked faith is that which transits through naked flesh, that’s what I’ve realized.…Only transits, mind you…Can you understand that, my little Seneca? (Broken voice.)…But what an incandescent transport in that baring of the flesh! (Flies off in her turn.)

(Silence from John.)

TERESA, vehemently. Yes, my soul’s union with the Three Persons is a matrimonial one, dear Father — that is the divine mystery. Edith Stein says about human marriage in her Science of the Cross, listen: “Its actual reality has its highest reason for existence in that it can give expression to a divine mystery”—or perhaps it’s the other way around?⁴³ (Long silence.) For my part, I can’t see how that can be possible unless the soul is wedded to the sacred humanity of the Son of God. The Lord necessarily wants to make His presence felt: “Quiere dar a sentir esta presencia…para conocer que allí está Dios.”⁴⁴ And God the Father, along with the Holy Ghost, are necessarily present at the nuptials.…That is their place, and this union gives it to them, gives rise to them.…

(Silence from John.)

TERESA. Won’t you answer, my little Seneca? Say, do you really hold the people of Israel to be the Bride? In the Song of Songs, of course. But the Bride of the Trinitary God? Of the Holy Spirit, I mean, as well as of the Father and the Son; of the Three Persons in their distinctness and yet substantial oneness? I can’t affirm this incontrovertibly when I listen to you…and yet it’s of the essence, for me. It’s a question of bodies, do you understand? Of course you do, forgive my choice of words, dear John.…In the long run people will realize, I know they will, that our religion — Christianity, of course, what else — that Christianity was founded on the loss of a body. Michel de Certeau will spell it out; he’ll be very fond of us both, believe it or not. The loss of Christ’s body, of course, but duplicated — are you listening — by the loss of the body of Israel.…It’s obvious, surely.…Well, the disappearance of both kinds of body, the Christic and the Jewish, was perhaps necessary: logically there had to be a detachment from both “nation” and “genealogy,” as they will be called, if the religion was to become universal and spiritual. In the Jewish tradition, you know, living bodies are always shifting and moving around.…Among us, the party of the Crucified One, it’s different, as I hardly need tell you: we start off depriving ourselves of the body and then, based on that absence, we keep trying to “form a body,” to incorporate ourselves. Don’t you think? You and me too, we make ourselves a body out of words, not in the same way as each other, but still. Add in the ecclesiastical body, the doctrinal corpus, all of that…delightful experiences, I grant you.…The Word becomes flesh and back again, a risky operation for the likes of us, and not given to all: you tend to overlook the flesh, and I the word.…Where was I? Oh yes, the Trinity. Well, there it is, the Bride can’t help but wed all three of them! And like the Sulamitess finds her Solomon, I find Him in the actual reality of marriage. “Draw me, we will run after thee.” That’s your sentiment too, Father. So let’s continue. Read with me what follows: “The king hath brought me into his chambers; we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine.”⁴⁵

(Long silence.)