Psalm 100
The declaration of a just ruler
I will sing of kindness and justice -
to you, Lord, will I sing.
My thoughts shall follow the way of perfection:
when will you come to me, Lord?
I will walk with an innocent heart
through the halls of my palace.
I will allow no evil thing in my sight.
I will hate the man who retreats from perfection:
he may not stay near me.
The wicked of heart must leave me;
the plotter of evil I will not acknowledge.
The man who plots against his neighbour in secret:
I will suppress him.
The haughty of eye, the puffed-up and proud -
I will not support them.
I will turn my eyes to the faithful of the land:
they shall sit with me.
Whoever walks in the way of perfection -
he shall be my servant.
The haughty shall not live in my palace;
the slanderer shall not stand in my sight.
Each morning I will suppress
all the wicked of the land.
I will rid the city of the Lord
of all that do evil.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
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October 15th - Saint Teresa of Avila
Virgin, Reformer of the Carmelite Order (1515-1582)
"By their fruits you will know them," says Our Lord of those who claim to be His
followers. The fruits which remain of the life, labors and prayer of Saint
Teresa of Avila bear to her virtue a living and enduring testimony which none
can refuse to admit. She herself wrote her life and many other celebrated
spiritual works, and much more can still be said of this soul of predilection,
whose writings and examples have led so many souls to high sanctity.
Born in 1515 in the kingdom of Castile in Spain, she was the youngest child of a
virtuous nobleman. When she was seven years old, Teresa fled from her home with
one of her young brothers, in the hope of going to Africa and receiving the palm
of martyrdom. Brought back and asked the reason for her flight, she replied: "I
want to see God, and I must die before I can see Him." She then began, with her
same brother, Rodriguez, to build a hermitage in the garden, and was often heard
repeating: "Forever, forever!" She lost her mother at the age of twelve years,
and was led by worldly companions into various frivolities. Her father decided
to place her in a boarding convent, and she obeyed without any inclination for
this kind of life. Grace came to her assistance with the good guidance of the
Sisters, and she decided to enter religion in the Carmelite monastery of the
Incarnation at Avila.
For a time frivolous conversations there, too, checked her progress toward
perfection, but finally in her thirty-first year, she abandoned herself entirely
to God. A vision showed her the very place in hell to which her apparently light
faults would have led her, and she was told by Our Lord that all her
conversation must be with heaven. Ever afterwards she lived in the deepest
distrust of herself. When she was named Prioress against her will at the
monastery of the Incarnation, she succeeded in conciliating even the most
hostile hearts by placing a statue of Our Lady in the seat she would ordinarily
have occupied, to preside over the Community.
God enlightened her to understand that He desired the reform of her Order, and
her heart was pierced with divine love. The Superior General gave her full
permission to found as many houses as might become feasible. She dreaded nothing
so much as delusion in the decisions she would make in difficult situations; we
can well understand this, knowing she founded seventeen convents for the
Sisters, and that fifteen others for the Fathers of the Reform were established
during her lifetime, with the aid of Saint John of the Cross. To the end of her
life she acted only under obedience to her confessors, and this practice both
made her strong and preserved her from error. Journeying in those days was far
from comfortable and even perilous, but nothing could stop the Saint from
accomplishing the holy Will of God. When the cart was overturned one day and she
had a broken leg, her sense of humor became very evident by her remark: "Dear
Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, it is no wonder You have so few!"
She died October 4, 1582, and was canonized in 1622.
The history of her mortal remains is as extraordinary as that of her life. After
nine months in a wooden coffin, caved in from the excess weight above it, the
body was perfectly conserved, though the clothing had rotted. A fine perfume it
exuded spread throughout the entire monastery of the nuns, when they reclothed
it. Parts of it were later removed as relics, including the heart showing the
marks of the Transverberation, and her left arm. At the last exhumation in 1914,
the body was found to remain in the same condition as when it was seen
previously, still recognizable and very fragrant with the same intense perfume.
Reflection: The devotion of Saint Teresa of Avila to Saint Joseph, virginal
father of Jesus, is proverbial. She said she had never asked anything of him
without receiving what she requested. In the eighteenth century the Carmelite
churches named for him numbered over one hundred and fifty. Let us imitate this
holy Foundress and invoke Saint Joseph for our needs, both spiritual and
temporal.
Sources: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud
et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 12; Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a
compilation based on Butler's Lives of the Saints and other sources by John
Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).
Bible Quote:
The whole Law is fulfilled in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Gal. 5:14
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