HOW TO MAKE THE LIVING CHRIST PRESENT IN YOU.
-
According to Teresa, the first step is to become aware of God’s presence, that we are against him, that he is standing by our side, or that he is within us. The Soul must acknowledge what the Lord is like and what is the position of the creature and the sinner. Prayer must begin by asking whom we will talk to and who we are so that it is clear what to use (C 22:3). This step is called contemplation and explains. She is talking to, what she is asking of him, and who she is, I do not consider it prayer (H I, 1, 7). He thinks this fact’s very consciousness is an inner prayer.
It is possible to guess what Teresa means by this, and her next interpretation will be easier to understand. First, she betrays from the repetition of learned prayers, which need not be to be well heeded, like the turning of prayer mills in the East, and on the other hand, she rejects the classical style of meditation, which consists in thinking hard or reflecting “about Christ,” “on the subject of Christ,” or in an attitude of “looking up 26 to Christ,” but the soul remains somehow distant from it, from what is being meditated upon. Trying to meditate on the life of Christ wearies the mind (Psalm 11:9). To pray it is not enough to “meditate on something”; it requires a personal relationship with God, an association, where there is direct contact, where we can be face to face.
-
For her personally, this means turning to the Lord as someone standing in front of her and to whom she can give a hug or a shout. How to make this living relationship happen? If we imagine Christ in his humanity. But of what kind is it to be Christ to be “pictured”? After all, Teresa recommends this method even to souls who, like her, cannot use their imagery. God has not endowed me with the talent to meditate or to use my imagery, because my imagery is so inept that I could not even imagine the humanity of Christ, even though I tried to do so (Z 4:7). At another place, he says: I was so clumsy and could not to imagine things by reason, so that if I could not really see them; my imagination was useless unlike other people who have made the object of their contemplation could imagine. I could think of Christ as man, but I could never imagine him inwardly.
-
Though I had read so much of his beauty and seen so much of his pictures (Psalm 9:6). If so, what does she really mean when she says that her prayer lies in the fact that we are aware of Christ within us, or when she advises: Imagine that he is with you (C 26:1)? Is this perhaps proof that you are contradictory? Especially when elsewhere he encourages the sisters to remember to imagine Christ looking at them with his beautifully compassionate eyes, which are full of tears (C 26:5). Let us try to understand what he means. Let us first realize that Teresa’s demand to be aware of the Priest (although she was not able to do so according to the instructions of the authors she read) refers to an imagination capable of forming a visual and, at the same time, permanent image of Christ, that is, of conjuring up an appearance in the manner of a painted picture that is dear to us and to which can be freely concentrated on, the soul can gaze at it for a long time, can fix (the mind) long on God (Rev 5:2; cf. Ps 22:4).
-
Teresa certainly did not lack imagery, as evidenced by the images she uses in her writings. She does not deny her role in prayer, because she says that imagining imagery is like watching the Lord hanging on the cross or in another moment of his passion, and we remember within ourselves what was happening at the moment (C 34:8). By this, she means that it was impossible for her to construct an image of Christ in herself almost as something she saw with human eyes, a kind of visualization of Christ. For, in this way, she understood the use of imagery demanded by the spiritual authors. For in this way she could only imagine what she had seen with her eyes (cf. Ps 9:6). She knew, however, that his humanity does not dwell with us in our souls, but his divinity (R 57). Hence, her difficulties. Therefore, the inner idea of Christ of which Teresa speaks is not of the order of imagination but of the order of living faith, which perceives Christ’s presence without seeing him. In this spirit, we can also interpret her explanation: I was like a blind person or as if in some darkness, as if for a more detailed explanation, let us recall what Roland Barthes says: “The Ignatius image is neither a vision nor a mirage, but a plastic view of reality ( in the same sense of the word as in the artistic discipline of engraving. (…) These views (we now extend the meaning of the word, since they are all components of pictorial perception) can “contain” tastes, smells, sounds or other sensory perceptions, but it is a “visual” sight, if we may say so, and this is Ignatius is fully committed to” (op. cit. /see note 5/, p. 60). The author further notes that it was not the case with Teresa of Avila a person who talks to someone, knows that the other is next to him, it is certain, but still cannot see him. This happened to me, when I thought of our Lord (Psalm 9:6). Elsewhere, he specifies that it is the presence of God that does not.
Visitors counter: 155
This entry was posted in
Nezaradené. Bookmark the
permalink.
