Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS) is a centre for research and formation that promotes spiritual formation and renewal, drawing on the rich resources of the venerable Carmelite tradition.
It is an apostolate of the Anglo-Irish Province of the Discalced Carmelites, based at the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, England.
OUR MISSION
CACS strives to achieve its mission through structured study and formation programmes in spirituality from the Carmelite perspective, especially Prayer and Spiritual Direction. At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, you are welcome to enter into the silence where God’s voice is heard in prayer, word and sacrament, inviting you to journey ever more deeply into a place of growth and wholeness. Our goal is to bring people to experience a life-transforming friendship with God through a lived experience of Carmelite spirituality that is authentic to its biblical roots.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Solemnity of Teresa of Avila
THE SOLEMNITY OF ST TERESA OF AVILA
Word & Wisdom is a weekly reflection on the Sunday’s scriptures and the wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. It promises to offer you real spiritual food to sustain you on the journey.
This Word and Wisdom Podcast is brought to you by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford (carmelite.uk.net).
To receive audio and written copies, subscribe by emailing podcasts@cacs.org.uk
To connect with our Living Prayer Podcast on Youtube, kindly click: https://www.youtube.com/@CACSOxford
Today, the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila, Reformer, Mystic and Doctor of the Church. Her writings continue to guide the faithful into the depths of prayer, reminding us that true progress lies not in experiences, but in intimacy with Christ. Saint Teresa of Avila identifies a perennial problem in the Christian contemplative life, one that still troubles prayerful souls today.
She points to the subtle danger of spiritual absorptive states, the unwitting tendency to become attached to spiritual delights or exalted states of being. Spiritual delights are mystical intensifications of God's presence. At times, they overflow into the senses and the inner faculties of memory, intellect, and will.
Teresa warns that this state of absorption, which can appear in different degrees, is extremely dangerous, at least for the brain and the head. In such moments, the contemplative enters a blissful, self-satisfying state that weakens the mind's freedom to reflect on the central mysteries of faith. Teresa gradually realised that mystical absorption and the pursuit of it led her away from reflecting on the sacred humanity of Christ.
Spiritual delights are a gratuitous grace of the Holy Spirit, yet our drives for pleasure and gratification cling to them. Teresa even intuited that mystical states have a physical dimension, involving shifts in dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin. Thus, even divine gifts can become habit-forming in our fallen nature.
For this reason, Teresa insists that contemplative strive to free themselves from this error and avoid such absorption with all their strength. Teresa's warning about spiritual delights and absorptive states is profoundly relevant today. Since the 1960s, New Age spirituality, psychedelic experimentation, and Eastern meditation practises have promoted altered states of consciousness as the standard of spiritual progress.
Increasingly, spirituality itself is judged by the presence or absence of such experiences. The saint describes such souls as birds flying about that do not know where to alight. In their compulsive seeking, they are blind to the rock on which to rest, and that rock was Christ.
Indeed, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh for our salvation, is infinitely greater than any mystical experience. The truth is that our human nature is overly zealous for mystical experiences, absorptions, raptures, visions, locutions, and the rest. Too often, this zeal distracts from a living relationship with the risen Jesus.
The evil one tempts us to believe that such experiences can replace meditation and Christ's humanity. We begin to equate absorption with progress. Teresa knew better.
She reminds us that Jesus is too good a companion for us to turn away from him and his most blessed mother. Therefore, we must place intimacy with Jesus above every mystical experience. The irony is that we may desire or even experience profound absorption, yet still, as Teresa observed, be losing a lot of time and not making progress in virtue or improving in prayer.
Authentic progress is measured by how steadfastly we gaze on Jesus and his holy face in love and obedience. Strikingly, the seventh dwelling place, Teresa's highest stage of prayer, is marked not by more extraordinary experiences, but fewer. Perhaps mystical experiences are given only to meet our human hunger for the extraordinary.
Beyond them, the soul discovers something greater, the luminous simplicity of faith in the risen Christ, which is in fact the highest mystical experience. On this feast of St. Teresa of Avila, we may receive her timeless wisdom with renewed courage to set aside the restless search for spiritual experiences and to rest with simplicity of faith in Jesus Christ, our true Rock and Companion.