It wa a tremendous priviledge to preach at the Eucharist at the start of the Affirming Catholicism (Ireland) theology seminar. I was apt to gather as we commemorated St Teresa of Avila - and to consider our friendship with God in discipleship, worship and mission.
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way. If I can't work up to you, you'll surely have to work down to me someday.
Words not from Teresa of Avila - though perhaps they do echo something of her longing for God; the intimacy and intensity of sustained awareness of abiding in the movement of God's love towards us in Jesus.
No they are lyrics from Bob Dylan's 2012 album Tempest.
I came late to Dylan. A friend's obsession sparked my curiosity; if Bob was the soundtrack to his life, it was a gapping hole in my musical repertoire.
Listening was a revelation. It familiar: known by me; making me known to myself. The melodies and chord structures; the images, characters and turns of phrase, sung in that recognisable husky drawl. Like Shakespeare or the authorised version of the bible, his language has shaped our imaginations; his songs responding to cultural shifts and personal upheavals; a universal biographer, describing what we think or feel or fear. He's more than a commentator on loves, betrayals and breakups; for he's been a sharp tongued critic of power, alienation and our desire to consume. The marks of a Nobel Laureate indeed!
It's a long road...
Dylan himself was shaped by the Judaeo-Christian tradition: it's truths reinterpreted it through his own lens; its ways refracted in the prism of our works; the questions rubbing up against the experiences of his own life. In Desolation Row he journeys with an eclectic band: Ezra Pound, T S Eliot, Ophelia, Einstein and a jealous monk.
Einstein and the Jealous Monk - Chris Gollon 2004
A long and narrow way: with a deep longing at its heart. Recognising the frailty of our human nature; our struggles within and without. If we can't work up to God, God will surely have to work down to us. Someday. Is Dylan reframing our deep desire for God; naming the necessity of incarnation? Is he challenging us to make known that in Christ, God is with us? Is he provoking us to witness not to a past event, but an enduring reality?
Wherever we place Dylan on that trajectory of desiring and naming God; his words reveal some of what Teresa was seeking to express. In her as a theologian and sister in Christ, we see a model of life as friendship with God; a God who comes down to us without status or dignity; save the status and dignity of our creatureliness, in order that we might be redeemed.
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way.
This journey into the heart of God's love is the very essence of discipleship. Church of England papers describe discipleship as being rooted in prayer; sustained by worship and community life; coming to maturity in faith; knowing the love of God in Jesus and, in the power of the Spirit, witnessing to that love in the world.
The language is of following, learning, obeying and growing; the dynamics are upward, inward and outward; paying deep attention to God, to our human nature and to the world. Teresa's vivid language is a gift to us; revealing something of way, truth and life of God. Today we pray that her teaching might awaken in us a longing for holiness. What is kindled in us is not only a desire for God, but a process of being caught up into the crucible of refining love.
As we learn from her, we are challenged that to love God is to love the world ever more deeply; to long for holiness is to desire the well being for the other. This way, this truth, this life in Christ is not an escape; it's not philosophical abstraction; its profoundly practical. As Teresa herself said: 'accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul’.
Teresa's pattern of following Christ is particular to her: her social context, nationality ancestry, gifts. Her discipleship was shaped by her experience of illness, the wisdom of others and the reality of a troubled Europe. In that, we have much in common with her. What unites us is that, in baptism, we are drawn into a sustained awareness of living in the movement of God's love; a movement which pours out into creation; is made manifest in Jesus's life, death and resurrection; and which wells up within us as the first fruits of the Spirit.
Like us, Teresa knew physical frailty, sickness and convalescence. Like us, she went through periods when her pray life felt arid or lax. Like us, she was frustrated by some of the attitudes within the church's institutional life. Amidst all of this, she showed discipline in habits of devotion and had an awareness of the presence of God which was so intense she underwent a profound spiritual awakening.
That might feel quite unlike our discipleship: and yet, why are we not alienated by her? Perhaps it's because she does more than chronicle her visions or heightened states of consciousness. Rather than stand apart from us, her experience of God's holiness is directed towards drawing others into an understanding of Christian life as friendship with God.
Yes, she was a challenging and not always popular reformer and founder of religious houses. Yes, she was a unique spiritual writer, influencing Spanish literature as well as theological writing. It's an impressive legacy. But it pales into insignificance alongside the deep desire to know Jesus and her commitment to point others to the God who is with us. The one who, to return to Dylan, came down to us. She draws us back to the compelling fire of love divine.
In his book on Teresa, Rowan Williams says: 'what is perhaps most striking about her is her ability to preserve intact a simple and coherent sense of the requirements of the Christian gospel through all the complexities of her life in the Church, through all the wearing negotiation with secular and ecclesiastical authorities that occupied her almost to her last breath.'
Her writing in Life, expresses struggle and conflict. Victory is brought about by God's grace in disciplines of prayer; the shaping of Christian lives in friendship, sacraments and conversation in a culture concerned with status. She established her spiritual authority; she begins to describe the experience of union with God in relation to human growth. In The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle she continues to develop how the incarnate Christ is to be communicated to the world in our human lives; she explores how we keep God at the centre - witnessing to the joy of that sense of belonging.
It's a long road... but God's come down to us.
Way. Truth. Life. All found in Jesus, the incarnate Word, drawing us into the Father's love; bringing reconciliation to troubled world by his cross.
Way. Truth. Life. All flowing from the Spirit as we wait for redemption; as we pray in our weakness; breathing through us in hope.
Jean Vanier wrote of Jesus: 'his body is the body of God and gives meaning to the body of each person'. In this Eucharist we encounter Christ - his broken body touching our weakness; enabling us to be his body bringing joy, dignity, forgiveness and hope to others.
For Teresa awareness of this movement of God's love is dependent on what she called the 'living book' of lives lived in prayer and compassion. In the power of the Spirit may we who eat the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom be such a living book; reflecting God's love breath by breath.
© Julie Gittoes 2016
