Daily Reading for October 15 • Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila taught us to pay attention to the potential of our humanity and to the process of growing into the fulfillment of our baptismal promises. Openness to God’s spirit at work in our lives can lead to the transformation of our desires. Eventually, our desires become less and less fragmented and we desire more and more what God desires. Assuming that God desires the well-being of humanity, a person transformed by him then lives in a way that furthers the actualization of that desire of God. Our desires become consonant with God’s. Yet this intensification of personal encounters with God is not a matter of smooth, always ascending biographies. On the contrary, breaks, leaps, bounds, detours, and crises necessarily form a part of this concept of growth and are often the needed impetus toward the next step in the maturation process. “In spiritual growth nothing can be forced. Periods of growth occur, as well as creative incubation periods—containing regressive arrests and progressive spurts of growth.”

The guide on this way of growth, as in all concepts of Christian spirituality, is God, or rather the Holy Spirit. Thus spiritual growth can be more precisely characterized as growth guided by God’s good Spirit. It is growth toward freedom and maturity, particularly freedom from various kinds of dependency and slavery. And it is growth that is progressive, a process beginning with the purgative way, continuing with the illuminative way, leading towards the fulfillment in the unitive way. It is like a science of psychological health. Holiness is true wholeness of the human incarnate spirit.

From “Freedom to Souls: Spiritual Accompaniment According to the Carmelite Tradition” by Michael Plattig, O. Carm., in Tending the Holy: Spiritual Direction Across Traditions, edited by Norvene Vest. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com