Only Love

"... It is said that John (of the Cross), known for his severe austerity, was forever challenging Teresa (of Avila) about her excessive attachment to forms. At one point he convinced her to strip the walls of her cell of all the pictures of Christ, the Blessed Mother and the saints she had plastered there.

Teresa obeyed, but she was miserable. She prayed fervently for the poverty of spirit required for this important mortification, but detachment was not forthcoming. Instead, she had a vision of Christ. “Which is better?” he asked her, “poverty or charity?” Then he said, “If love is better, you must not give up anything that awakens love in you.” And so Teresa joyfully hung all her pictures back up...

I picture Teresa of Avila pounding the last nail into her wall, her beloved icons safely back in place. She rushes downstairs to the rectory, habit billowing, hammer in hand. “Father!” she cries. John looks up from the poem he is writing. Teresa breathlessly recounts her vision, beaming with relief. John cannot help himself but smile. “Very good, my daughter,” he says. And he means it. He would mean it because, as the author of Dark Night of the Soul, which depicts the spiritual journey through the void of unknowing to union of love with the Divine, he knew better than most that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” He must have been pleased to see his greatest spiritual companion come to this realization through experience. Teresa had become “a lamp unto herself.”

...For John of the Cross, the journey to liberation (union) involves passage through the desert of the unknown, where the seeker suffers the excruciating loss of everything that ever caused her to feel connected to her God and assure her that he was with her. This dark night of the soul, says John, is the true beginning of the spiritual life. Teresa of Avila, author of The Interior Castle, saw the soul as a beautiful crystal, perfectly clear, with many facets leading to the central chamber, where the King of Kings is calling her inward to have union with Him. For Teresa, the path home to God was to simply be still and go within. She calls this contemplative practice “the Prayer of Quiet.”

These two great mystics lived the classical spiritual paradox: when the lover at last achieves the object of her passionate longing and unites with the Beloved, she is obliterated and there is no one left to enjoy the fruits of union. There is only love. Atman and Brahman are one in the same, after all. Form is no other than emptiness. Emptiness is no other than form..."

- Mirabai Starr

Ecstasy of St. Teresa - Gian Lorenzo Bernini.