In this chapter, Father Marie Eugene points out through the writings of St. Teresa of Jesus, that it is necessary for us to have spiritual friendships. God created it that way. As all of us know, today we are very divided. Satan is unleashed like never before. He is dividing and conquering families, relationships, parishes and religious communities. God is love - therefore His love must be an ingredient in our friendships or they will fail and Satan will win.
The weakness of the soul is indeed great, especially in beginners of the spiritual life. When one tries to find God, it has perhaps left its family and social milieu; the sensible consolations and easiness of the first days have given way to dryness in prayer and difficulties in the practice of virtue. In order to remain faithful to its commitment to prayer – it needs the company and help of its neighbor.
St. Teresa stresses the particular weakness of woman and her more real and strongly felt need of support and of the help of man who completes and sustains her. All her life long she was in quest of support and of help. It is pointed out that God wanted to reveal the mysteries of this friendship through the relationship of the Son with the Blessed Mother. He took a collaborator, the Virgin Mary, whom He associated, as Mother, with His whole work of spiritual paternity. Our sanctification cannot be the exclusive fruit of our personal activity, it requires collaboration.

1. Friendships in the Life of St. Teresa

Friendship is an affectionate exchange. Friendships were for St. Teresa a great strength and a great danger but grace made of them a means for spiritual ascent. When she was young, she had read books on chivalry, had companions that she squandered time with by being worldly. Her father saw all this and sent her to a school of nuns to be educated. It was there that she realized what a great favor of God it was to place her among the company of good people.
St. Teresa mentions one nun in particular who stressed to St. Teresa the words of Gospel that many are called but few are chosen. She used to describe to her the reward which the Lord gives to those who leave everything for His sake. She soon had desires for the eternal things.
At the convent of the Incarnation, where she lived for nearly 30 years, the saint did not fall into any of the grave faults to which the absence of cloister exposes one but she wrote that she lamented that there was one person for whom she had a growing affection, who distracted her a great deal. Our Lord reproaches her for these conversations by revealing Himself to her with a stern countenance. On another occasion, a huge toad crosses the parlor when she is with that same person; this makes a strong impression on her. God wants no more of these worldly friendships for Teresa.
Her spiritual director notices that certain friendships were still keeping her from spiritual advancement. She was instructed to pray to God for discernment and to sing the hymn “Veni Creator”. So she spent the greater part of one whole day in prayer; and then, beseeching the Lord that He would help her to please Him in everything, she began the hymn and she received her first rapture with the words from Jesus, “I will have thee converse now, not with men, but with angels.” The words came true. From then on end, she only had friendships with people who she believed loved God and tried to serve Him.
Now she grows in her spiritual life so much that spiritual love overflows from the maternal heart of Teresa, more ardent and stronger than ever. It goes out to souls; and if it discovers in them gifts for working for the kingdom of God, it cannot but love them deeply and desire to see them belong entirely to God.
Even at the summits of transforming union, Saint Teresa keeps her specially loved friends, and to justify them she avails herself of the example of Christ.

1. Her Doctrine on Friendships

1. Importance of Friendships

All the great decisions of the saint were inspired or at least effectively sustained by friendships. There is a general law, that God adapts the distribution of His grace to the conditions of our nature. God became man to bring us His divine life. He instituted the sacraments, sensible signs, to be the channels of grace; He makes habitual and continual use of external events, and still more, of free causes as messengers of His light and most authentic intermediaries of His grace.
The senses are to the supernatural life what roots are to the plant; it is through them that nourishment reaches it. The beginner will be, ordinarily, more sensitive to the influence of friendship. St. Teresa stresses and explains how this can be beneficial:
“For people trouble so little about things pertaining to the service of God that we must all back each other up if those of us who serve Him are to make progress. If a single person begins to devote himself to God, there are so many to speak ill of him that self-defense compels him to seek the companionship of others until he is strong enough not to be depressed by suffering. Charity grows when it is communicated to others and from this there results a thousand blessings.”

1. Choice of Friends

Our Lord had friends during His life on earth.
Love is the law of every life and of every being. God has put this law in every creature to regulate its movement towards its providential end, but He has adapted it to the nature of each being.
In man, we find the three forms of the law of love, adapted to the three levels of life in the baptized Christian; sensible love, proper to the life of the body; rational love, which belongs to the soul; and supernatural love, which is essential to the life of grace. All come from God and so are good in themselves. These different loves are united in various degrees.

1. Sensible Love – Sensible love that has sensual demands, can be legitimate in marriage. This love mingled with the other two loves makes it pure and holy. St. Teresa states that this sensible love is limited with the religious because it might strain the purity needed in the religious life although this love between relatives and some friends seems lawful.
2. Spiritual-Sensible Love

In Christ, and also in Teresa, affection was wholly spiritual and it preserved from danger the less perfect affection of the souls that were captivated by it.
 
In our nature wounded by sin, love tends to descend to the lower powers and to pour itself out through the senses. This break in balance threatens the most sincere strivings for spiritual good and makes them flounder in the culpable liberties of sensuous love, or even the deplorable deviations of mystical sensualism leading to disorders.
 
She mentions the caution of becoming too fond of our confessor. She goes at length with this for her sisters. In a nutshell, this fondness must be ordered. We can like a good and holy man but not if he is vain. We must be prudent and if it becomes a distraction, then it may be necessary to switch confessors. The tree is recognized by its fruits.
   3. Spiritual Love
The spiritual love of which St. Teresa speaks in the sixth and seventh chapters of the “Way of Perfection” is a highly perfect love: “Few I fear, possess it; let any one of you to whom the Lord has given it praise Him fervently, for she must be a person of the greatest perfection.”
It is a love which is enlightened by a clear view on God and on the creature. These souls have a great capacity for loving and for serving God, which justifies their preferences for certain souls. This love is so pure in its object only because it is entirely spiritual and it has dominated all the natural tendencies in the soul. It is ardent and strong like the love of Christ. Those who possess it are neither blind in their love nor too complacent.
 
St. Teresa was delicately human in her spiritual love of neighbor. This spiritual love is full of divine riches and human delicacy. St Teresa states:
                                                   
Happy the souls that are loved by such as these! Happy the day on which they came to know them! O my Lord, will Thou not grant me the favor of giving me many who have such love for me? Truly, Lord, I would rather have this than be loved by all the kings and lords of the world – and rightly so, for such friends use every means in their power to make us lords of the whole world… When you make the acquaintance of any such persons, sisters, the Mother Prioress should employ every possible effort to keep you in touch with them. Love such persons as much as you like. There can be very few of them… When one of you is striving after perfection, she will at once be told that she has no need to know such people – that it is enough for her to have God. But to get to know God’s friends is a very good way of “having” Him; as I have discovered by experience, it is most helpful. For, under the Lord, I owe it to such persons that I am not in hell.” Way of Perfection p. 33 

As we can see from St. Teresa’s writings, the Spiritual Love just explained now causes us to wonder why there is so much division and hatred in the world. When we speak to each other, it should always be to help that person get to Heaven. We need to see eternity in each moment that we breathe.  A community, family, parish that lives by this love (which can only be attained by a deep prayer life) would be without trouble or at least very little trouble which could be repaired with a humble act of apology and/or forgiveness. It would be Heaven on Earth!
                                                                                                          
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel pray for us to attain this Spiritual Love that unites us to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary with all those we meet and are loved by God.


                                                         

This is a chapter we can ALL relate to. Satan does not want any of us to develop a prayer life. Distractions and Dryness are temptations that every saint has experienced. What do we do with it and how do we identify it is what this chapter is about.
Father Marie Eugene states that neither the most vital methods, or the best ordered prayers, nor even assiduous spiritual reading can make one wholly secure against distractions and dryness in prayer. We must educate ourselves in this topic because ignorance of this topic will contribute toward increasing our suffering and increase the dangers. St. Teresa states in the fourth book of Interior Castle, “We suffer terrible trials because we do not understand ourselves; and we worry over what is not bad at all, but good, and think it very wrong. They risk becoming melancholy and their health declines causing them to abandon prayer all together.”
To receive more light on so important a subject, we must study the nature and the causes of distractions and dryness so as to discover the remedies.
A. Nature of Distractions and of Dryness
While recollection is a concentration of the activity of our faculties on a supernatural reality, distraction is an evasion of one or of all the faculties towards another object, which interrupts recollection. St. Teresa was consoled when she discovered that imagination was not the same as understanding. She realized then that our imagination can sometimes interfere and cause us great harm.
The external and internal senses that can perceive or experience impressions can cause distraction. She uses the following examples of walking through the country and hearing the song of birds, or experiencing some physical or emotional pain. The imagination whose activity is so closely bound up with that of the senses can also stray away. St. Teresa states, “It exasperated me to see the faculties of the soul, as I thought, occupied with God and recollected in Him, and the imagination on the other hand, confused and excited.” Interior Castle p. 233. St. Teresa is explaining that while the will is sweetly bound in the prayer of quiet and enjoying the divine delights, the imagination may be agitated and restless.
Distraction is called voluntary when, willingly and with full intention, the mind turns from the supernatural reality to give its attention to another object. It is involuntary when this movement is produced involuntarily or without full intention, ordinarily by yielding to the attraction of a sensation or an image.
Knowing that St. Teresa has experienced these and overcame them gives us great hope. They are certainly trials but we must recognize and fight them off as best as possible but not be too hard on ourselves lest we give up hope. We must be gentle but not careless.
B. Causes of Distractions and Dryness
The very nature of supernatural truths is the primary cause of distractions and dryness. Our intellects power to penetrate such mysteries of the supernatural is strictly limited. It only draws so much light depending on the person’s amount of grace and time spent in prayer. Therefore, there is great risk of becoming weary in not making progress or losing its taste for new light. In a nutshell: the enemy must be acknowledged as being a deterrent – we must be persistent and determined because Jesus wants this! He wants our determination to draw closer to Him.
1. The Instability of the Powers of the Soul
The sense powers as well as the understanding whose activity is so closely bound up with that of the senses, are unstable and fickle. The will can direct them to an object and hold them to it; but as soon as the will lets go its grasp, the senses reassert their independence. A patient and persevering discipline is necessary to maintain recollection but it cannot change the nature of the senses.
It is only in the sacred humanity of our Savior and in Our Lady that we find the sense faculties marvelously developed and yet at the same time perfectly submissive to the will. This should give us courage to try to persevere – knowing we are not perfect. We must not give up.
2. Illness
Obviously, physical or mental anguish will be a huge distraction. We must do all that we can to be patient and persevering during these trials. Always know that offering up this anguish is a prayer as long as we submit to the Will of God with pure love in our hearts for Him. As one suffers, the suffering must be united to the cross of Christ and it then becomes a prayer. To love in this situation is more important than to think.
Also, under this category we must mention that pathological tendencies or defects that are imbedded in our character or temperament are distractions to our prayer life. Not everyone is wired the same, not everyone was brought up in the same household, not everyone had the same experiences or trials along the way. The melancholic type who is forever accusing himself; the scrupulous person, continually preoccupied with his doubts; the highly imaginative, who cannot check his mental wanderings; the restless and excitable, whose faculties are always in movement; these find special difficulties in the way of recollection. The key is to be gentle on oneself and remain fervent in one’s desire to grow close to God in prayer no matter what. He knows the load we carry on our back. Persevere in drawing close to God without giving up or being discouraged. God can do miracles with our soul.

3. The Devil
Last but not least – the enemy! He wants you to have no part in prayer! This could encourage us daily – knowing that we enter into a battlefield each and every day – no exception! “When the distractions and disturbances of the understanding are excessive… the devil is their author,” declared St. Teresa. She continues, “He confuses the understanding and does whatever he likes with it, so that the soul, fettered as it is and no longer its own mistress, can think of nothing but the absurdities which he presents to it – things of no importance…It has sometimes seemed to me, indeed, that the devils behave as though they were playing ball with the soul, so incapable is it of freeing itself from their power.” Life, p. 198-9. Worry is a state of the soul that is caused by the devil. If all things are surrendered to God and He is in charge – why worry!
C. The Action, At Least Permissive, Of God
The action of these natural and preternatural causes enters into the plan of God who uses everything for the good of those whom He loves. St. Teresa states, “I believe myself that often in the early stages, and again later, it is the Lord’s will to give us these tortures, and many other temptations which present themselves, in order to test His lovers and discover if they can drink of the chalice and help Him to bear the Cross before He trusts them with His great treasures.” Life, p. 67.
Ah! This quote speaks volumes!! A meditation all in itself and should be read daily – because we all struggle yet God wants us to bear His Cross for the sake of souls and His Kingdom!
D. Remedies

1. Discretion

St. Teresa spends time in her writing emphasizing that a Spiritual Director is important to knowing how to handle distractions or dryness. At times we may be physically ill and need a physician as well. We need health of body and soul to progress in the way of prayer. Therefore, outside sources are helpful and should be used – we cannot do this on our own and it is not advised.
      2. Perseverance
Everything passes, Patience obtains all things! It was through perseverance that St. Teresa and the saints obtain their supernatural riches. We must keep a guard over the senses during the day, abstain from dissipating frivolities and turn our minds and hearts to the Master as frequently as possible by ejaculatory prayers or acts of the theological virtues. Our Fatima Reparation prayers should be a constant prayer or turning to God throughout our day.
Let the soul persevere, St. Teresa assures us, and even though one be a sinner, God will be merciful. We must have determined determination – why? Because God wants it!
     3. Humility
What is humility? Humility is truth – truth that God is the Creator and we are the creatures. Therefore, we need dependence on Him in ALL THINGS! If we can always keep this before us, we will be humble. We need to remember that whatever good we can ever do, it is because God has given us the grace and the health to do it – the glory ALWAYS belongs to Him. If we can remember these two things – we can remain humble.
Of course, we cannot close this Chapter without mention of Our Lady – our true model, mentor and advocate in our journey toward perfect union with Her Son in prayer. She is there. She is the channel of all of God’s grace. May we remember to ALWAYS turn to Her and beg Her for the help we need in combating distractions, in combating the devil, in persevering in God’s grace to seek Him in all things. Finally, may we ask Her to make us saints by giving us the grace to seek God in prayer throughout our day until we are finally safe in Heaven.
Our Lady of Fatima – pray for us!

​The needs of beginners in the life of prayer are spiritual reading and solitude. These are equally necessary. Silence creates the atmosphere of prayer; reading gives it sustenance.

1. Importance

Love proceeds from knowledge. In man, love is not always up to the measure of knowledge, although love may indeed exceed knowledge; but without some knowledge, love could not be at all.
This law, at the same time divine and human, governs the life of grace, which is a created participation in the life of the Trinity. The development of charity, which is the very essence of the life of grace, is linked with the development of faith which gives it light; and faith itself, for its own growth, must nourish itself on dogmatic truth.
Faith has its root in the senses. Therefore, what we hear from preaching and what we read will help spur our faith and consequently our love. Love begins to yearn to know that which is love. With good books, the soul can go into solitude and be occupied with God.
The need for distinct lights on particular truths of faith are different according to souls but there are none; however, whose faith can develop without sustenance drawn from the knowledge of revealed truth. If faith is to be nourished and strengthened sufficiently to withstand all the weakening influences which threaten it; spiritual reading is a remedy to give this enlightenment. If faith is not nourished according to this wise measure, scarcely can it escape ruin; it cannot hope to develop a deep spiritual life.

1. Jesus Christ, the “Living Book”

During the Inquisition, St. Teresa of Jesus and her convents were forced to give up all of their books. At this time, she states: then the Lord said to me: “Be not distressed, for I will give thee a Living Book.” Life, p. 168 (which meant Himself)
All knowledge of spiritual things is contained in Christ Jesus, for He is the eternal Word as well as the Word uttered in time. He is the Light that enlightens every mind coming into this world, the Light that shines in our darkness, and that we can follow without fear of going astray.
Thus the soul hungering for God wants to know no other thing than Christ, and Christ crucified. “I am the door. If anyone enter by me he shall be safe, and shall go in and out and shall find pastures.” She was now more fully opened to the Book of Christ – His resurrection, His sorrowful Passion, and His mysterious depths of the human soul and of the divinity of the Incarnate Word.  This led St. Teresa to explain the teaching on the prayer of recollection and the simple and constant union with Christ which is its foundation.
If we are to acquire and maintain in our daily life a loving and constant intimacy with Christ Jesus, which is the food of the prayer of recollection, we must know the living Christ, see Him as He lived, know how and in what interior and exterior conditions He acted and spoke.
In the case of the beginner, who is usually in the first and second Mansions, love is not yet penetrating enough and faith is weak; therefore, good spiritual reading is essential if he is going to place himself in the school of Jesus Christ.

1. Choice of Reading

Spiritual books can only and must only make Christ explicit to us and lead us to Him.

1. The Person of Christ: Holy Scripture

The desire to find Christ leads us first of all to the Sacred Scriptures and gives them first place among the books to be read and meditated upon. There is no book that compares with it in interest or in usefulness. There is no other work that can enlighten us in the same degree as Holy Scriptures, concerning God and Christ.

1. Christ the Truth: Dogmatic Books

Defined dogmas and theological truths express the light of the Word in human and analogical terms. In the Catholic Church, a dogma is a definitive article of faith (de fide) that has been solemnly promulgated by the college of bishops at an ecumenical council or by the pope when speaking in a statement ex cathedra, in which the magisterium of the Church presents a particular doctrine as necessary for the belief of all Catholic faithful. For example, Christian dogma states that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basic truth from which salvation and life is derived for Christians.

1. The first quality a dogma must have is orthodoxy. Only the Truth, of which the Church is the guardian and the dispenser, can give to the soul the substantial food and the solid support that it needs to go to God. On the contrary, a theological error, even bearing on a point of detail, can bring about notable deviations on the way. St. Teresa says she could not tell all the harm that certain false assertions of some writers had caused her. Therefore, in today’s Church when Tradition should be preserved and sought after, we must be careful to not fall for New Age or Eastern philosophies that have crept into modern Catholic writings.
2. It will be excellent for the beginner in spiritual ways, whatever may be his general and religious culture, to consult very simple books on doctrine starting with the Catechism – not the modern catechism (some deviations from Tradition are in there) but the Baltimore Catechism or the Catechism written by Pope St. Pius X or even our modern day, Father John Hardon, SJ.
3. The care for simplicity and for the deepening of faith must not set limits to its growth in extension. Each dogma is a ray of light, emanating from the Divine Word. All the teachings of the Catholic Faith bring light and grace giving us a whole expression of the Word Himself.
4. Not rarely, a dogma is the source of particular grace for a soul before whom it opens up a sunlit trail to God. When found, the soul should do all that it can to penetrate that truth with a profound study in order to draw out all its nourishing substance.
5. A soul of prayer must have knowledge of dogma both extensive and profound. These needs will be different at different periods of its spiritual life. St. Thomas Aquinas is to be the first to seek when it comes to understanding theology. Also the writings of the Fathers of the Church are the great masters of theology. Their contemplative lives helped give us these purest sources of sacred science and Christian life.

 

1. Christ The Way: Spirituality

Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the Way as well as the Truth; the only one that leads to the Father. The masters of the spiritual life that have been approved by the Church will illuminate the way for us.
The paths are many. The Ignatian school will show us the importance of asceticism and the means of practicing it; the Benedictine School will instruct us on the virtue of religion and the spiritual value of the liturgy; Saint Teresa and St. John of the Cross will teach us the interior cult of prayer and will enlarge our horizons of the spiritual life.
We can draw from all of these and St. Teresa of Jesus, herself, was guided by Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans. She ultimately grafted all that she received from them into the Carmelite life. The grace of God is multiform; the delicate anointings of the Holy Ghost are so diverse that even in the same group and under the same influence there are not two souls that resemble each other. It is ultimately the Holy Ghost Himself who guides us to God by the Way that is Christ Jesus.

1. Christ The Life in the Church

Jesus Christ is the source of divine life, of that life that flows first of all in His sacred humanity, ruling there in its perfection and plenitude, making of it an ever living source of grace and a perfect model whose acts determine the laws of the moral and spiritual order.
The life that comes from Christ triumphs especially in the saints. The lives of saints explain, complete, and bring to a point the Gospel teachings and spiritual doctrines. Examples have a force that draws others after them, comparable to no other. From reading the lives of the saints, the supernatural grace awakens us by their sanctity. St. Teresa tells of the decisive influence that the Confessions of St. Augustine had on her life. Tremendous is the influence of reading in the development of the spiritual life.
I will add to the end of this Chapter that during this time of Great Apostasy, there are many new ways of prayer that are not of the Holy Ghost. We must beware that there are temptations thrown out there by the devil to keep us from these Mansions that St. Teresa talks about. If we stick to Tradition and to the writings of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross – we will not go wrong. If these prayer groups go contrary to Traditional Church Teaching – then we must beware that we could be deceived and are not travelling the road to Christ.
I will be bold and state that the Charismatic Movement is full of deceptions! How can I say that boldly? Read the writings of St. Teresa and St. John and you will see that this cannot be the way to Christ. I would have to write a whole chapter on this and maybe I will soon in my talk section. We had always hoped that Father John Hardon, who was against this Movement, would write something – but never did.
I will just summarize it by saying that these are people in the first mansions receiving gifts from the 5, 6 and 7th mansions. This is impossible and if it is happening – it is a deception. St Teresa and St. John received all of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and state that when they did – they are always received with falsehoods from the devil because he sees that this soul is close to God and will seek to trick it. Conclusion: if you are speaking in tongues or have the gift of prophecy – you are most assuredly receiving deceptions from the devil as well if not explicitly. This is planet earth – not Heaven. Satan tempts those who are close to God and are receiving mystical gifts. The saints tell us not to seek them because of this! God gives these gifts to those who are ready and know better such as St. Teresa and St. John – not someone in the first or second mansion. BEWARE and get yourself a good spiritual director if you do think you have these gifts – one cannot discern this on their own.
Finally – Our Blessed Mother is the Queen of all Saints. That means that there is no gift of the Holy Ghost that is given to a saint that was not ever received by Our Lady and Queen - Herself. She is our greatest mentor and greatest advocate before the throne of God ALWAYS!! Go to Her in ALL YOUR NEEDS! She will NEVER FAIL YOU!! Wear your Scapular – Say your Rosary!
Good spiritual reading on Our Lady would be: St. Francis de Sales, St. Alphonsus deLiguori, St. John Eudes, St. Louis deMontfort and Blessed Mother Mary of Agreda.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel – Pray for us!!