Saint Teresa of Avila and Lent

Lent is the penitential season in the Church's liturgical year; it begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with the celebration of the Paschal Mystery (Easter Triduum). During Lent, the Church reflects the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert in fasting and prayer (CCC 540, 1095, 1438). So on this occasion we learn from Saint Teresa of Avila how we pray.

At the beginning of her reform of the Carmelites, St Teresa of Jesus was asked by the nuns of her first foundation – the monastery St Joseph in Avila – to teach them how to pray. In her response, she chose the spirit of Lent as her guide; she chose the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 6. Her answer to the cloistered nun's request was The Way of Perfection, her first book of teachings. In it, she presents her meditations on the Our Father, the prayer of the Lord – the core of chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew.

At the beginning of her book (Ch. 4) St Teresa lays out the proper foundations for a life of prayer: "I shall enlarge on only three things, which are from our constitutions, for it is very important that we understand how much these three things help us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us.

"The first of these is love of one another; the second is detachment from all created things; the third is true humility, which even though I speak of it last, is the main practice and embraces all others" (W4, 4).

St. Teresa's connection to the spirituality of Lent is now clear: love of one another relates to alms giving; detachment points to fasting; and, the essence of prayer is rooted in humility. This is Teresa's masterful insight to a life of prayer for her nuns and to all of us today.

Humility is a relational word that acknowledges that God is the creator and man is indeed the creature. The virtue of humility shows that God is the author of all Good and humanity recognizes their total dependence on God and on His goodness and mercy. In the words of the Church, humility avoids inordinate ambition of pride, reveals a contrite heart, and provides the foundation for turning to God in prayer (Cf. CCC 2559).

St. Teresa by highlighting humility solves the situation presented by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them" (Mt 6,1); piety to be seen by men is pride; and the antidote of pride is the virtue of humility, as Teresa rightly points out.

Therefore, to obtain the inner and outward peace that the Lord promises, St. Teresa's counsels, for a fulfilling life of prayer, is to be centered in humility – for it embraces fully both almsgiving and fasting; in her words, it embraces both love of neighbor and detachment of all things. Thus, immersed in the virtue of humility, our prayer life will flourish and the spirituality of Lent will always present in your life.