Is the Generosity Monk married? Yes!
I like to tell people that I am married to a modern day Teresa of Avila. Not really, though my wife is a spiritual director. She is Jenni of Littleton and today is our 20th wedding anniversary. In her honor enjoy this selection of poems, quotes, maxims of Teresa of Avila. I love them all, especially the last one which captures her response to God’s extraordinary generosity.
“Let nothing disturb thee;
let nothing dismay thee:
All thing pass; God never changes.
Patience attains all that it strives for.
He who has God finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.”
“It seems as if Thou didst subject those who love Thee to a severe trial: but it is in order that they may learn, in the depths of that trial, the depths of Thy love.”
“However many years life might last, no one could ever wish for a better friend than God.”
“It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are…We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness.”
“God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.”
“Always think of yourself as everyone’s servant; look for Christ our Lord in everyone and you will then have respect and reverence for them all.”
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
“May it please His Majesty that the extraordinary generosity He has shown this miserable sinner serve to encourage and rouse those who read this to abandon completely everything for God. If His Majesty repays so fully that even in this life the reward and gain possessed by those who serve Him is clearly seen, what will this reward be in the the next life?”
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
References: “Poem IX”, in Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila ed. E. Allison Peers, Vol. 3 (1963) 288. Ch. XXV. “Divine Locutions. Discussions on That Subject” §22 & 23. Cover material: The Interior Castle. First Mansions, Ch. 1, trans. by E. Allison Peers (1961) 18; First Mansions, Ch. 2: The Human Soul, trans. By the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), rev. and ed. by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman. Fourth Mansions, Ch. 3: Prayer of Quiet, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman. Maxim 25 in “Maxims for Her Nuns” in Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila ed. by E. Allison Peers, Vol. 3. (1963) 257. Neuberger, Anne E. A Circle of Saints: Stories and Activities for Children Ages 4-8. (New London, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2009) 72. Teresa of Avila The Book of Her Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008) 138.