Our devotion to God begins with our thoughts about God. God waits for those who are seeking. Osuna promotes the devotional practice he calls Recollection. It represents a focusing and directing of the mind. Recollection is prayer: It includes vocal prayer… mental prayer… and passive prayer. There is a warning about the problem of distractions during our meditations. Osuna related a concept similar to that of Brother Lawrence. All people are invited to seek God. We are to use all effective methods for our devotions.
We are called to be thankful during our devotional exercises. It is looking at Jesus through the windows of a gospel vignette and perceiving, that is, imaging the gospel that was being relived at that moment in Teresa. Full presence was the objective, and the imaging collected her soul in remembrance and recollection L, 9, 5 , two words that eventually name the prayer described. The Reality, the Christ, was not seen; he was in darkness, as happens between two friends in a dark room L, 9, 6. The imaging process puts the Presence in better focus and makes for a more integrated experience.
Sometimes the total experience is strong as in the peak experience of the Ecce Homo L, 9, 1 or relating St Augustines conversion to herself L, 9, 7. In both cases there is a deep grasp of her whole self as well as the Lord and a profound self-offering in love. At other times the images are relatively weak pointers to Jesus, of a piece in the early years with her fragmented psyche and her moral ambivalence, and in later years the limited input possible to her in the face of the pervasive graces of infused contemplation.
Similarly, the peak experiences were probably watersheds that gathered the daily streamlets and showed the cumulative effect of many lesser efforts, or else they were significant mystical graces such as the gustos the grace of quiet or infused love in the Ecce Homo incident. Teresas prayer seems to manifest the same ebb and flow, summits and plains that marked her ecstatic experience later on.
In her practice of prayer from the beginning there are high points of contact in which she is present to Jesus in pure faith; when this sense faltered and needed shoring up, she moved into a simple gospel reflection.
The first moment is the counterpart of imageless prayer; the second corresponds to imaged prayer. This order was reversed in her mystical years L, 23, 1 , when she learned to begin with the gospel scene and let herself be transported into absorption in God. Whatever the order of these two elements of her experience, her prayer seems to include both approaches, neither one in its pure state, but custom- made to suit her own personality and the grace of the time. Her prayer was a combination of encounter and integration, immediate presence and the meditative use of images.
When Teresa lost sight of the role of the image in her prayer, as she did toward the end of her eighteen-year struggle, thus from to , she was in danger of floundering L, She seemed to be falling too facilely into mystical absorptions without bringing her self into the prayer.
At least this was the fear of the two directors she consulted, when she continued to observe a lack of improvement in her life. Eventually they concluded she was deceived by the devil L, 23, This erroneous judgement was a blessing in disguise.
While the verdict almost crushed her, it did lead her to consult some young Jesuits, who returned her to the pattern of imaged contemplative prayer. This was liberation for Teresa. Through their help she was able to see through the excessively abstract and possibly unrealistic prayer and reinstate the role of the image as well as mortification outside prayer as guards against illusion L, 22, ; 23, ; 24, 2. In her religious climate once there was an experience of felt-presence to God, particularly in an intense, apparently mystical.
Teresa strove to turn aside from everything corporeal, including the Sacred Humanity L, 22, 3. Her delight in mystical absorptions was so great, that there was no one who could have made me return to the humanity of Christ L, 22, 3. This was a temporary and much regretted departure from her Beloved L, 22, 4. This error was not only prejudicial to the Risen Lord; it fostered an illusory prayer unconnected with her life, as Diego de Cetina told her.
Such prayer lacked foundation, the foundation or real life mediated by the image of the Sacred Humanity L, 23, According to Cetina technique was less important than her affective state.
He proceeded to urge her to free herself for a full surrender to God by cultivating a more authentic prayer, that is, a more wholehearted desire for God a return again to prayer and the denial of contrary desires mortification.
She was not to repeat this mistake again. For the rest of her life she never took her eyes off Jesus. Teresa translates her experience into doctrinal terms in the description of active recollection W, , passive recollection C, 4, 3 , in discussing the role of the Sacred Humanity L, 22 , and in distinguishing meditation and simplified affective prayer C, 6, 7. Active recollection moves the center of consciousness from the outside to the Presence within, closing ones eyes literally and as the symbol of rejection of outside competitive forces W, 28, 6.
In passive recollection the movement within just happens and an intense recollection ensues. Until the Lord moves in this sovereign way, Teresa counsels the readers to practice, not discursive prayer, but simple attention to what the Lord is doing. She vehemently opposes stopping the mind C, 4, 3, 4 , or holding ones breath C, 4, 3, 6 , or trying not to stir or to allow the intellect or desires to stir. The ill-conceived. Simple attention to the experience or to supportive imagery is the best human cooperation.
In Teresa there are no dichotomies between imageless and imaged contemplative prayer. Attention to the divine Presence is capital; shutting oneself within oneself is the defense against exteriority; whatever contributes to one or the other of these two basic attitudes is valid centering prayer. Teresas teaching in the later dwelling places does not change. In the higher stages of spiritual growth we are to seek the presence of God if it is not already a given reality in our prayer.
We are not to sit around like dunces wasting time waiting for what was given us once before C, 6, 7, 9. Two ways of seeking are available, one discursive thinking, the other representing truths to the intellect by means of the memory C, 6, 7, The former is meditation, and that is no longer an option at this stage C, 6, 7, But recalling the mysteries of Christs life and letting them speak to the contemplative whom God has brought to supernatural things and to perfect contemplation is another C, 6, 7, Teresa states her position in a clear synthesis of much that we have said.
Referring to the simple loving recall of the mysteries of Christs life, she writes: I say that a person will not be right if he says he does not dwell on these mysteries or often have them in mind, especially when the Catholic Church celebrates them. Nor is it possible for the soul to forget that it has received so much from God, so many precious signs of love, for these are living sparks that will enkindle it more in its love for our Lord The mere sight of the Lord fallen to the ground in the garden with that frightful sweat is enough to last the intellect not only an hour but many days, while it looks with a simple gaze at who he is and how ungrateful we have been for so much suffering C, 6, 7, Conclusions By way of summary I would like to draw the following conclusions from what we have considered: 1 Teresas method of mental prayer was neither purely imageless or merely imaged.
Her emphasis on real encounter has affinity with the Pennington form of centering prayer, but her use of the image places her more properly in the Kelsey stream. If we must choose one or the other category, it would be imaged centering prayer with the rider that the sense of the real Presence is the heart of he r prayer.
The older name, simplified affective prayer, or even active recollection, which is basically Teresas own choice are probably more accurate designations but less likely to be immediately intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries. John of the Cross A, 2,12, 8; 2,13, 4. Does this face pit the two saints against each other in their teaching about the transition to contemplation? This is an age-old debate, which deserves study in the context of centering prayer.
My own bias is that they differ in emphasis but not in substance. Their divergences are due to the nature of their writings and to their own. Teresa is the pragmatist who deals in the concrete order; John is the theoretician who deals in absolutes and not in how-to teachings. The guided imagery does not seek to find the Lord but to bring more of the self into the prayer.
Simple reflections and affective outpourings serve to bring together the imaginativeintellectual affective self before the Lord. At the same time she is a corrective against horizontalism. Placing her in the context of todays literature on centering prayer serves to make her teaching more actual.
Her method is a model of simplicity: get in touch with the Lord present within and nurture that presence by simple reflections and affections. The way from meditation to contemplation is rendered more smooth, a gradual shift, perhaps without the rupture of the crisis form of the dark night described by St. John of the Cross N, 1, 8, 3.
Once again Teresa vindicates her title as Doctor of the Church and teacher of prayer, especially for practical spiritual direction. May God be glorified in this beautiful Daughter of the Church.
Thomas E. Bede Publications, , pp. In the latter collection the last two pages of the article are edited, so that only one method of centering prayer is suggested, that of dark faith. One of the chief contributions of this article is thereby lost. A full presentation of these three forms of centering prayer is recorded by Ernest E. Mary E. Giles New York: Paulist Press, The Classics of Western Spirituality. References to this book will be by page within parentheses in the body of this article.
References to the works of St Teresa are from the I. John Main, OSB insists that the mantra is always retained in centering prayer. Jean de Ia Croix Paris: Aubier, See his Una classica esperienza di preghiera, Rivista di Vita Spirituale, 29 , , esp. Teresas solution to her inability to meditate discursively, according to Dicken, was the development of her method of affective prayer, an ancient conversational form of prayer known to history but temporarily obscured in the sixteenth century milieu of highly organized discursive meditation.
The prayer is affective activity with very little imagination and intellectual content, contemplative in orientation, and unlike highly intellectual discursive meditation compatible with the ligature and impossibility to meditate associated by St.
John of the Cross with the passive dark night of the senses. I heartily agree with these observations, as will be seen in this third part of my study. Open navigation menu. Close suggestions Search Search. User Settings. Skip carousel. Carousel Previous. Carousel Next. What is Scribd? Explore Ebooks. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All Ebooks. Explore Audiobooks. Rodrigo rated it it was amazing Nov 28, Since our community serves a broad range of ages, we do not encourage content that could make a majority of our users uncomfortable.
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He connects and places his reflections in the context of the gospel beatitudes — the vision of O my God, create purity in my heart, for not only do vain thoughts occupy it and ugly ones sully it, but also bitter thoughts scatter it, and I am often so distressed by some insult that my heart is constrained by huge bundles of thoughts and I am thrown from one side to another, blind and anxious, imagining vengeance for the injury and how to find an opportunity to avenge myself.
Her writings and her life have convinced me that she was successful in finding Him! At the end of or beginning ofOsuna returned to Spain. It is proper for you to leave all this in order to know God in the negative way we have expounded, for as Saint Gregory says, whatever we see in contemplation is not God; what we know of him is only true when we fully realize that we can spirituap nothing of him.
Osuna entered the Order of Friars Minor of the Regular Observance when Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros was spearheading a reform movement that encouraged believers to nourish a simple, Christ-centered, inner spirituality. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies.
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