Teresa, Elijah, and poverty

Spiritual Life, Fall 2003 by Ackerman, Jane

WHETHER OR NOT TERESA OF JESUS knew the content of the Institution [of the First Monks], as some have thought, she was undeniably committed to the spiritual states that it associates with Elijah. She especially prized detachment from self and love of Christ that the work said the prophet was called to seek. Her reform was modeled, first and foremost, on Christ's life and, second, on what she knew of the lives of the "holy fathers" of the Order, chief of whom, of course, was Elijah. In The Interior Castle (1577), Teresa reminds her sisters of the spiritual life that legend said their ancestors had achieved on Mt. Carmel:

So I say now that all of us who wear this holy habit of Carmel are called to prayer and contemplation. This call explains our origin; we are the descendants of men who felt this call, of those holy fathers on Mount Carmel who in such great solitude and contempt for the world sought this treasure, this precious pearl of contemplation that we are speaking about. (Interior Castle 5:1:2)

In The Book of Her Foundations, she relates what she saw in 1580 as she approached Our Lady of Succor, a hermitage for Discalced men:

This house stood in a delightfully isolated and solitary spot. And as we approached, the friars came out in a procession to meet their prior. Since they were discalced and wore their poor, coarse woolen mantles, they inspired us all with devotion and moved me to tender feelings since it seemed to me that I was present in the flourishing time of our holy Fathers of old. In that field, they appeared to be like white fragrant flowers, and indeed I believe that before God they are, for in my opinion he is authentically served there. They entered the church singing the Te Deum with voices very restrained. The entrance to it is underground, as though through a cave, which represented that of our Father Elijah. (28:20)

In the following chapter, she comments again on the holy prophets: "For the love of our Lord I beg you to remember how soon everything comes to an end, and to remember the favor our Lord has granted us in bringing us to this order and the great punishment that will befall anyone who might introduce some mitigation." For the foundress, unmitigated Carmelite life achieved great solitude and the precious pearl of contemplation: "...fix your eyes always on the ancestry from which we come, those holy prophets. How many saints we have in heaven who have worn this habit! Let us adopt the holy presumption that with the Lord's help we will be like them. The battle will be brief, my Sisters, and the end is eternal" (29:33).

Father Elijah, the holy prophets, and the holy fathers were stamped on her mind. She may have seen Elijah's coat of skins in the coarse woolen mantles of those who approached her in 1580. The cordial, reverent hermits coming to greet their prior, embodied the fraternal relations, solitude, contempt for the world, and contemplation on Mt. Carmel. In Teresa's mind, her whole Order, her sisters, and she were spiritual descendants of those holy prophets.

Phillip of the Trinity has remarked that Teresa's great contribution to earlier Carmelite tradition consisted in grafting an apostolic desire to save souls onto the eremitical, contemplative spirit of the Order. This overlooks centuries of sincere Carmelite labor in mendicant service that coincided with an equally sincere orientation to contemplation before Teresa's lifetime. Adding desire to win souls for Christ to an inclination to solitude did not begin with the great foundress. Instead, her innovative contribution to the traditions of Elijan spiritual life that by her day included solitude, silence, repentance, humility, chastity, purity of heart, and zealous love was a fuller understanding of the poverty that she believed Elijah and the holy fathers experienced on Mt. Carmel.

Remembering the comment in 2 Kings 1:8 regarding the prophet's haircloth garment and his dependence on God in 1 Kings, as well as the reference to the destitution of the prophets in Hebrews, Christians often portrayed Elijah without possessions, clothed "in skins of sheep and goats, destitute," living in "deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth" (Heb 11:37-38). The association of Elijah with poverty existed in the Order from its beginning. The first Western residents of Mt. Carmel pursued a modest lifestyle in imitation of him. When they emigrated to Europe, the group appealed to Rome to become mendicant-that is, a "begging" order-during a period when the Church was divided over whether or not Christ had been materially poor. Carmelites chose institutional poverty for themselves....

Teresa's innovation, then, was not to introduce stricter collective and individual poverty into her reformed house-others had sought that reform before her and the ideal had always resided in the Order-but to deepen a spirituality of this long-standing element of Carmelite life and to link it explicitly to the "holy fathers" whose excellent existence on Mt. Carmel inspired her. Many things may have caused her to impress on her sisters how necessary poverty was to contemplation....