CHAPTER VI Teresian Asceticism1 To see God we must die. "To see God we must die," we have heard Teresa the child explaining to her parents on her return from the ineffective expedition to the country of the Moors. Only death, in truth, can open the gaze of...
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CHAPTER VI Teresian Asceticism1 To see God we must die. "To see God we must die," we have heard Teresa the child explaining to her parents on her return from the ineffective expedition to the country of the Moors. Only death, in truth, can open the gaze of our soul to the vision of the Infinite. It is by a dying, too, but more slowly, effected by continual mortification, that one enters even here below into the divine intimacy. Teresa takes cognizance of this; she writes: The least that anyone who is beginning to serve the Lord truly can offer Him is his life.2 The primacy that she gives to prayer in her spirituality does not make her forget the importance of asceticism: "Prayer cannot be accompanied by self- indulgence."3 The soul that is exposed to the divine light must surely discover better the requirements of the divine purity. In order to arrive at perfect union with God, it must submit itself to an energetic and absolute asceticism. And in order for this asceticism to be efficac
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