Carmelite homily for Saturday, February 29, 2020 – Lectionary 222 (Luke 5:27-32)
Because today’s Gospel passage is the same, this homily is repeated from Saturday, January 18th.
In today’s Gospel we have the call of Levi (or Matthew). Jesus is walking by the tax-collecting post and sees him and says, “Come follow me.” And Levi does. And invites everybody over to his house for a banquet in honor of this, and in honor of Jesus. And what is the reaction of the crowds, especially the scribes? They complain. How this man is a sinner; he’s a tax-collector. The people around here are sinners. This is a great blessing and all they see are the problems. John of the Cross says, “It is great wisdom to know how to be silent; look at neither the remarks nor the deeds nor the lives of others.” That is very difficult advice, very needed advice. That day at the customs-station, the tax-collectors station, and today. But I think John is right: it is great wisdom to be silent.
Carmelite homily for Friday, February 28, 2020 – Lectionary 221 (Matthew 9:14-15)
Saint Therese of Lisieux has the line, “It is better to love Jesus on his terms.” In today’s Gospel we have the disciples of John the Baptist saying they’re fasting and the Pharisees are fasting. Why aren’t your disciples fasting? I think we oftentimes still do that to Jesus. We want to impose our expectations, our demands on Jesus. I think Therese is right, it is better to love Jesus on his terms.
Carmelite homily for Thursday, February 27, 2020 – Lectionary 220 (Luke 9:22-25)
Because today’s Gospel passage is the same, this homily is repeated from Wednesday, November 15th.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says whoever does not take up his cross and follow him is not worthy to be his disciple. But Jesus doesn’t say why. Why should we take up this cross? But Teresa of Avila answers it. She says, “If you wish to gain freedom of spirit begin by not being afraid of the cross.” Because it is the crosses of our lives that pull us past ego, past fear, past self-appetites, past selfishness – and self. It is the cross that brings us to freedom. So if you wish to gain freedom, begin by not being afraid of the cross.
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avilaby Carlos Eire | Princeton University Press, 2019
This book, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila, should be renamed The Life of the Life of Saint Teresa of Avila. Why? Because the book is a more about Saint Teresa’s autobiography, The Book of Her Life (oftentimes shortened to Vida in Spanish and Life in English), than it is about Saint Teresa herself. Carlos Eire is a history professor at Yale University and presents to us an extremely interesting history of, yes, Saint Teresa of Avila, but after her death (1582) the continued ‘life’ of her Life.
Professor Eire claims that The Book of Her Life really is Teresa’s magnum opus and that her other books (i.e., The Foundations, The Interior Castle, Soliloquies) are afterwords to her main work. He provides a solid interpretation of Teresa’s Life from a 21st-century perspective. He does not dismiss her extraordinary visions, locutions, or levitations but puts them as sidebars to the main point of Teresa’s book: an outline of the mystical journey to union with God. The extraordinary stuff all made sense from a 16th-century mindset, but from the 1700s (the Enlightenment) through today the extraordinary stuff comes across more as psychological disturbances than as actual events. But the main point – the mystical journey – has a timeless validity. Professor Eire does not go into all the political entanglements Teresa faced; instead, he concentrates on the entanglements that her Life caused with the Inquisition, her confessors, the Spanish aristocracy, and anyone who read her Life. Overall, in the first part of his book Professor Eire gives us a clear and easily-read biography of Saint Teresa. If nothing else, I recommend Eire’s book for this clarity.
BUT this book gets really interesting after the death of Teresa in 1582, and a lot of the history Professor Eire writes about will be new to even the ardent disciples of Teresa. Here are just a few of the things I learned:
After her death the Dominicans launched a major campaign with the Inquisition to discredit her and block her beatification and the publication of any of her works, but King Philip IV and the royal family silenced any opposition.
After her canonization, Philip IV declared her to be the co-patron of Spain (along with Saint James; i.e., Santiago) but the Pope squelched that.
Various picture-books (remember this was an illiterate age) of Teresa’s Life were published after her death. One of the engravings from a popular picture-book by Arnold van Westerhout became the template that Bernini used in his famous statue, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.
Sigmund Freud and his disciple, Jacques Lacan, pronounced her the patron saint of hysterics.
When given a reliquary containing Teresa’s left hand Generalissimo Francisco Franco pronounced her the patron saint of fascism (and the Superior General of the Discalced Carmelites wrote a treatise supporting this!). Franco even published a magazine for fascist women called Teresa (1936-1975).
Virgil Thomson wrote an opera, with the libretto by Gertrude Stein, called Four Saints in Three Actsabout Saint Teresa and Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Do I recommend this book? You bet! Whether you’re new to Saint Teresa and her works (especially her Life) or you’ve been a life-long disciple, you will learn a lot.
Arnold van Westerhout’s ‘The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa’
Carmelite homily for Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020 – Lectionary 219 (Matthew 6:1-6,16-18)
Humility doesn’t mean being smarmy and allow people to walk all over you or to treat you like a doormat. No! Humility means not being controlled by your ego. That’s what we see in today’s Gospel. When you pray, don’t pray in front of everybody so everyone says, ‘look how holy she is.’ Or when you give gifts or donations don’t blow a trumpet or call attention to it so everyone says, ‘look how, how generous he is.’ Or when you’re fasting don’t look all beaten up so everyone can say, ‘look how god-focused she is.’ No, that’s all ego. The idea is to not let ego control this, but to let love control this, God control this, the other control this, your heart control this. This is the call for Ash Wednesday. Saint Teresa of Avila writes, “If there is no progress in humility, everything is going to be doomed.” Let’s make that the focus for this Lent – progress in humility. Which means simply, don’t be controlled by your ego, be controlled by love.
Carmelite homily for Tuesday, February 25, 2020 – Lectionary 342 (Mark 9:30-34)
Those disciples, they’re at it again, arguing who is the greatest. So Jesus brings a child and places the child in the middle and says, “whoever receives a little one like this receives me” and “the last shall be first, the first shall be last.” What he’s getting at is all the things that keep us enslaved, like the disciples ‘who’s the greatest?’ It’s status, it’s power. Their culture was very vertical and Jesus is asking for very horizontal. But what about us? What are our verticals that we’re not willing to budge on? Money? or power? or status? or wealth? or the house? or my will? or my control? What are my verticals? And are they child-like? That’s the call of today’s Gospel. It’s not to be a child necessarily, but to check what are the verticals? What are the non-negotiables? What are the things I insist on having my way? And does that have to be so?
Carmelite homily for Monday, February 24, 2020 – Lectionary 341 (Mark 9:14-29)
In today’s Gospel the people bring to the disciples a boy who has convulsions. And the disciples can’t heal this boy, so they bring him to Jesus, and Jesus does heal him. And the disciples ask, “Why couldn’t we do that?” And he says, “Well, this one could only be healed by prayer.” But the call is not just for the difficult cases to pray, but to pray always, even for the easy cases. Here’s what Saint Teresa of Avila has to say, “I say only that prayer is the door to favors as great as those the Lord granted me. If this door is closed, I don’t know how he will grant them.” So let’s leave the miracles to the Lord, the answers to the Lord, let’s leave everything to the Lord – except prayer. Let’s do that, and see what happens.
Carmelite homily for Sunday, February 23, 2020 – Lectionary 79 (Matthew 5:38-48)
The last line of today’s Gospel says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And sometimes we can hear this and say – oh, I’ve got to be perfect then; I can’t make any mistakes; I can’t make any failures; I cannot sin; I’ve got to be — ‘ahhhh’ – uptight. And that’s not what it means at all. Because if you take it in the whole context, the Father lets the sun shine on the good and the bad alike and the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike, means to treat everyone with love. Here’s what Saint Teresa of Avila has to write about this. This comes from her book, The Way of Perfection (it makes sense), “Zeal for perfection is in itself a good thing. But it could follow that every fault the sisters commit will seem to you a serious breach; and you are careful to observe when they commit them, where they commit them, and then go and inform the prioress. Often, you don’t see your own faults because of your intense zeal for the religious observance of everybody else. What the devil is hereby aiming at is no small thing; namely, the cooling of charity and love the sisters have for one another. So, let each one look to herself only. For perfection consists of love of God and love of neighbor; whereas, perfectionism comes from the devil.” So let’s not confuse ‘perfection’ and ‘perfectionism’ today.
Carmelite homily for Saturday, February 22, 2020 – Lectionary 535 (Matthew 16:13-19) – the Chair of Peter
In the Gospel for this Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Jesus asks of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they give a bunch of answers and finally Simon says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus turns to him and says, “Your name is Peter.” He gives him a special name. But Jesus gives us a special name. Here’s what Saint Teresa of Avila has to write, “To always live in calm desire to rejoice solely in Christ, one’s spouse.” That’s the name Jesus, as we get closer and closer to him, gives us: spouse. So, yes, that’s what we celebrate on this Feast of the Chair of Peter – our espousal.
Carmelite homily for Friday, February 21, 2020 – Lectionary 339 (Mark 8:34-9:1)
On the cover of the most recent issue of the Sword, a Carmelite publication, there’s a picture of Jesus carrying the cross followed by a bunch of Carmelites all dressed in the white part of their habit, this part, carrying their cross. They’re all carrying the cross. And that seems to be what today’s Gospel is asking us – that we all need to carry the cross. But why? I think Teresa of Avila has a great answer. Here’s what she writes, “If the soil is well-cultivated by trials, persecutions, criticisms, and illnesses – for few there must be who reach this stage without them – and it is softened by living in great detachment from self-interest, the water soaks in so deep that one is never dry.” That’s why the cross. To sum up, to get us past our ego, our desire, me, I; and to get me to Jesus, to the other, to God. That’s why the cross.
