Haven’t You Seen This for Yourselves?

“I want also to tell you something else.  If it seems the Lord has already given us virtue, let us understand that actually it has been received and that he can take it away, as in fact often happens, but not without his wonderful providence.  Haven’t you seen this for yourselves, Sisters?  I have.  Sometimes I think I am very detached; and as a matter of fact when put to the test, I am.  At another time I will find myself so attached, and perhaps to things that the day before I would have made fun of, that I almost don’t know myself.  At other times I think I have great courage and that I wouldn’t turn from anything of service to God; and when put to the test, I do have this courage for some things.  Another day will come in which I won’t find the courage in me to kill even an ant for God if in doing so I’d meet with any opposition.  In like manner it seems to me that I don’t care at all about things or gossip said of me; and when I’m put to the test this is at times true—indeed, I am pleased about what they say.  Then there come days in which one word alone distresses me, and I would want to leave the world because it seems everything is a bother to me. And I am not alone in this.  I have noticed it in many persons better than I, and know that it so happens.”—Teresa of Avila, writing to her fellow nuns in The Way of Perfection, ch.38, par.6.

One doesn’t have to be a religious, or even particularly religious to recognize the phenomenon Teresa talks about.  The philosophical explanation (not wrong) of a virtue ethicist like Aristotle is that most people simply don’t have virtue, in the human sense of that word.  Human beings tend to be incontinent or at best continent: we know more or less what we ought to do, what is admirable—not to care about petty things, to be courageous and loyal on behalf of those to whom we belong, to let criticism slide.  But there are days when, though we know this, it is impossible to live it; and then one “would want to leave the world because it seems everything is a bother.”

This is why the secular world has its tricks and treats for getting along—its “life hacks” and “happiness boosters.”  And again—as with the secular philosophy—there is value in advice like “Have a small square of dark chocolate” or “Read a fun book, not Facebook.”  One can do all of that, and still agree with St. Teresa’s basic claim that most of us don’t have ownership of the good in our good nature.

That is not a reason not to strive for natural virtue—we should—nor is it a reason to abandon natural helps—we should use them.  But it is, for religious persons, a reason to hold out hope for ourselves and the rest of the world even in the days and months and years when one word alone distresses.