God loves to see us at rest

A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Find today’s readings here.

Since writing a book on my spiritual struggles with the Catholic Church and its scandals, I’ve often been asked whether my spiritual life is still as tumultuous as it was at the times recounted in the book. Most of the time, it is not. Generally, I tell people, since having a child, my spirituality has settled, focusing on the essentials that I want to teach my son: God created you, God loves you, God loves everyone.

To be honest, for many years my spiritual life has been an endless cycle of God hitting me over the head with one message: “Let me love you!” I learn to accept that love for a while, enjoying the peace that comes with it, but eventually something pulls me away and the cycle begins again, with God gently inviting me to let myself be loved, then insisting more and more, before finally making the message unmissable: “Let me love you!” and I relent.

Why is it that I struggle so much to accept God’s love? Today’s first reading posits: “Do you hold [God’s] priceless kindness, forbearance, and patience in low esteem, unaware that the kindness of God would lead you to repentance? By your stubbornness and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself for the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God.” How often am I unwilling to accept God’s kindness and love because I am simply too stubborn, or because my heart is closed? That closed-heartedness has real consequences: By refusing to accept God’s love, I shut out exactly that which would help me love others better, love God better, even love myself.

Teresa of Avila, the Doctor of the Church whose memorial we celebrate today, saw her share of church scandals and was, I think, at least as stubborn as I am. As a child she ran away from home, wanting to die as a martyr; as a young woman she resisted her vocation to religious life and, once she did join the Carmelites, adopted such an intense asceticism that she nearly died. She became best known as a reformer and a mystic, both of which made her the target of a Spanish Inquisition investigation. Undeterred, Teresa appealed constantly to the king of Spain in letters until the charges were dropped and she could continue her reform.

Maybe it was this stubbornness—and these clashes with authority—that led her to keep her famous “Nada te turbe” prayer in her breviary:

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.

With these words, Teresa echoes the psalmist from today’s readings:

Only in God is my soul at rest;
from him comes my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed at all.

These days, when my son can’t sleep, I often turn to the two Taize versions of “Nada te Turbe”: The well-known Spanish one and the French one that I learned from Swiss Carmelite monks. Chanting the words to him over and over calms not only my son by me, too, letting me sit again in peace, overcome with love as I watch him sleep, understanding that God looks at me—at all of us—with this same love, this same desire to see us at rest in him.

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