St. Teresa of Jesus Novena
O most loving Heavenly Father! We thank you for the great gift you gave us through your beloved St. Teresa of Avila, virgin and doctor of the Church. Her life was a great example of prayer, sacrifice and faith in You. We humbly pray for her most holy intercession… (Mention your intentions)
St. Teresa, we know that you are a powerful intercessor because of your close relationship to the Holy Mother and Jesus through prayer. Open wide the doors to the interior castle of our hearts and souls so that we may know how to pray! Pray for us, that we may have the gift of prayer. St. Teresa of Avila, you are an example of prayerful holiness that we will try to follow. You are in heaven praising God. With your seat of honor, please beg God to bring me to eternal rest with you.
Our Father… Hail Mary… Glory be…
Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us! Amen
With closer examination, we find that clinging to our disordered attachments actually resist God, and refuse His will for us. His will is represented by the present moment and what actually “IS”. This can be difficult to understand, but the only reality that exists, is the present moment.
God is only in the present moment and the only way we can embrace union with God is in and through the present moment. The concepts of past and future only exist in our heads as mental constructs. The illusion of a past based on memory and an imagined future have no reality of their own. Nothing ever happened in the past, it happens in the present. Nothing will ever happen in the future, it happens in the present.
We cannot affect change in the past—its gone. Nor in the future, it hasn’t happened yet. In actual fact, there is never a time when our life is not “this moment” and the only place where true action can occur is right now. This ever flowing, now, is always our only opportunity for interaction and communion with God!
So by its very nature, an attachment which is a clinging or preoccupation with some past event, is a serious detriment to our spiritual life. This is why the healing and purification of our memory is so important. The memory is the reason for our unwillingness to honor and acknowledge and embrace the present reality.
This resistance is always characterized by some form of negative judgment or complaint. To complain is always non-acceptance of what “IS” and signals an underlying disordered attachment. Don’t complain, either accept a situation or acknowledge that it exists and change it.
In serious cases the soul becomes trapped in its compulsion to deny the present reality and to live through memory and anticipation. This separation from our Divine Source will be experienced as guilt, regret, shame, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of unforgiveness.
These experiences are the fruit of clinging to a disordered past expectation that was unsuccessful, replaying it over and over in our head where we ignore the present reality – God, who essentially becomes an enemy that must be resisted or denied.
“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Mat.6:24)
About the author: Erin Foord has been a Secular Discalced Carmelite for 40 years. He served as President of the California-Arizona Provincial Council from 2014-2017. He gave this conference as part of an Ongoing Formation class for the Santa Clara , CA OCDS community.