the mystic t(hr)ee
looks like golgotha to me

August 2023

#Gierskopp #Olsberg #fog #Nebel #trees #Bäume #golgotha #Golgatha #monochrome #drought #dryness #trockenheit #photography #nature #natur #wald #forest #mist #SilentSunday #sauerland #nrw #Hochsauerland

For my dear daughter Sister Teresa de Jesús

Jesus. The grace of the Holy Spirit be with your charity, my daughter. I was delighted with your letter, and that my letters make you happy is a great joy for me, seeing that we cannot be together.

As for the dryness, it seems to me that the Lord is now treating you as one who is strong. He wants to try you in order to know the love you have for him, whether it is present in dryness as well as in spiritual delights.

Take it as a very great favor from God. Don’t let it cause you any grief, for perfection does not consist in delight but in the virtues. When you least expect, devotion will return.

As for what you say about that sister, try not to think of it, but turn away from the thought. And don’t think that when a thought comes into your mind, even if it concerns something very bad, you are immediately at fault, for the thought is nothing. I too would like to see that sister experience the same dryness, for I don’t know if she understands herself, and for her own good we could desire this.

When some bad thought comes to you, bless yourself, or recite an Our Father, or strike your breast and try to think of something else, and you will instead be meriting because you will be resisting.

I would like to answer Isabel de San Pablo [the subprioress at St. Joseph’s in Avila] but there is not time. Give her my best regards—for she already knows how you must be the one dearest to me—and also regards to Romero [identity unknown] and María de San Jerónimo [St. Teresa’s cousin, who was also a Carmelite nun at St. Joseph’s in Avila]. I wish someone would write to me about her health since she doesn’t do so. Don Francisco [Sister Teresa’s oldest brother] is like an angel and doing well. Yesterday he received communion, and his servants did so too. Tomorrow we are going to Valladolid. He will write to you from there, for I haven’t told him now about this messenger.

May God watch over you, my daughter, and make you as holy as I beg of him, amen. My regards to all.

Today is the feast of San Alberto.

Saint Teresa of Avila

Letter 351 to her niece Teresita at St. Joseph’s in Avila
From Medina, 7 August 1580

Note: Translator and editor Father Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. indicates that St. Teresa’s niece, Teresita, was now a novice at St. Joseph’s in Avila. She was grieving over the recent death of her father and wrote to her aunt about some of her interior troubles and problems. St. Teresa gives her niece some standard counsel and comfort.

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Before leaving Seville with St. Teresa and her father Lorenzo de Cepeda on the way back to Castile, young Teresita was depicted in an oil on canvas painting by Fray Juan de la Miseria, who shortly before had painted a portrait of St. Teresa. Fray Juan portrayed the girl dressed as a Carmelite (brown habit and white mantle), noting that she was “10 years old.” This featured image is a detail from Fray Juan’s painting, which is one of the prized treasures of the Carmel of St. Joseph “of the Teresas” in Seville. Image credit: Carmel of Alba de Tormes

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/06/stj-ltr351/

#distractions #dryness #familyLife #holiness #monasticLife #prayer #spiritualDirection #StTeresaOfAvila #Teresita

With flowers and emeralds
chosen on cool mornings
we shall weave garlands
flowering in your love,
and bound with one hair of mine.

The Spiritual Canticle
Stanza 30

This means they are acquired at the time of youth, which is life’s cool morning. She points out that they are chosen because she obtained them during her youth when the vices put up more strenuous opposition and nature is more inclined and ready to lose them; also by beginning to gather the virtues at this early season, she acquired more perfect and choice ones.

She terms this time of youth “cool mornings.” For just as fresh spring mornings are more pleasant than other times of day, so too the virtue of youth pleases God more. And these cool mornings can even refer to the acts of love by which the virtues are acquired. These acts of love give more pleasure to God than do cool mornings to the children of the earth.

The cool mornings also bear reference to works done in difficulty and dryness of spirit. God highly esteems these works denoted by the chill of the winter mornings and done for him in aridity and hardship, for by such means the virtues and gifts are acquired in a high degree.

Those acquired through this labor are for the most part more select, refined, and stable than if they were obtained with spiritual relish and enjoyment, for virtue takes root in dryness, difficulty, and labor, as God says to St. Paul: Virtue is made perfect in weakness [2 Cor 12:9].

To stress, then, the excellence of the virtues from which garlands for the Beloved are woven, the words “chosen on cool mornings” are very apt, because the Beloved rejoices only in these flowers and emeralds of select and perfect virtues and gifts, and not in imperfect ones. As a result the bride declares here that with them “we shall weave garlands.”

Saint John of the Cross

The Spiritual Canticle, stanza 30, nos. 4–5

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Photographer Bob Wick captured this stunning photo at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, which is located about 30 minutes from Las Vegas, Nevada. The cliffs at Red Rock face east and catch the best light in the morning hours. Image credit: Bob Wick, Bureau of Land Management / Flickr (Some rights reserved)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/06/juan-sc30n4/

#beloved #bride #dryness #God #love #morning #spring #StJohnOfTheCross #virtue #weakness #youth