The Daily Prayer
TUESDAY, October 15, 2019
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
In sixteenth-century Spain, where women had little voice, Teresa of Avila stood out as a spiritual giant, reforming her Carmelite order, founding seventeen new communities, writing four books, and challenging countless men and women to grow in the life of prayer. As attested to by her writings and by her friends and disciples (including John of the Cross), Teresa’s own prayer life was perhaps her most important gift to the church. “Prayer,” she wrote, “is nothing but friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with Him who we know loves us.”
Teresa of Avila said, “Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and that there is only one glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.”
Purify our hearts, O Lord, to long for the one true thing and be distracted by nothing. Amen.
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