Date: January 13, 2008

Podcaster: stlocds

Episode Description: Saint Teresa of Avila - Spiritual Testimonies #59
(written in Seville, 1576)
The degrees of infused prayer
Part 2 (13, 14, 15.16)

An impulse is what I call a desire that sometimes come upon the soul, and even very habitually, without any preceding prayer. But suddenly there comes to it a remembrance of its separation from God, or of some word it hears that refers to this separation. This remembrance is so powerful and has such force sometimes that in an instant the soul seems to be beside itself. It's as though you were suddenly given some unknown and very painful news, or like a great and sudden shock that takes away the mind's discursive power to console itself; the mind remains as if absorbed. So it is here, except that the pain serves such a purpose that the soul comes to know that the purpose is worth dying for.

The fact is that it seems everything the soul understands then adds to its pain, and that the Lord doesn't want it to profit in its entire being from anything else. Nor does its will appear to be alive, but it seems to be in so great a solitude and so forsaken by all that this abandonment cannot be described in writing. For the whole world and its affairs give it pain, an no created thing provides it with company, nor does it want any company but only the Creator; and it sees that having such company is impossible unless it dies. Since it must not kill itself, it so dies with the longing to die that there is true danger of death; an it finds itself at though hanging between heaven and earth. It doesn't know what to do with itself. And from time to time God gives it a knowledge of Himself in a strange and indescribable way so that it might see what it is missing. There is no knowledge on earth, at least of what I have received, equal to this divine knowledge. In the half hour this prayer lasts, there is sufficient time to leave the body so disjoined and the arms so straight that the hands can't even write; and the pains are most severe.

Nothing of this is felt until that impulse passes. The soul has enough to do in experiencing what is happening interiorly. Nor do I believe it would feel heavy bodily torments. Yet it is in possession of its senses, and it can speak an even see â€" but no walk because the forceful blow of love prostrates it. But unless God gives this impulse nothing is gained even were one to die for it. It leaves the greatest effect and improvement in the soul. Some learned men explain it one way, others another way; none of them condemns it. The soul understands clearly that this impulse is a great favor of the Lord. Were it very frequent one's life would no last long.

In the ordinary impulse there comes this extremely tender desire to serve God, along with tearful wishes to leave this exile. But since there is freedom for the soul to consider that it is the Lord's will that it go on living, it is consoled by this though and offers Him its own life, begging Him that it be fore no purpose other than His glory.


The Collected Works of Teresa of Avila Volume I. Spiritual Testimonies Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez O.C.D. ICS Publications Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, D.C. 1980 ISBN 0-9600876-6-4 (v. 1)