Advent advice from Saint Teresa Benedicta

Advent advice from Saint Teresa Benedicta December 16, 2011

During Advent we prepare to receive the Lord. We are alert and watchful, we make straight the path for the Lord, we repent of our sins to make a worthy dwelling for the Lord in our hearts.

At the same time, we acknowledge that it is the Lord Himself who prepares us to receive Him.  It is He who initiates all movements and graces within our hearts.

These two previous statements lead to a logical question: How do I prepare to receive the Lord if ultimately it is He who prepares me?

This question regarding the Lord’s workings in our souls has puzzled people of faith throughout the centuries.  Questions such as these have arisen: If it is all done by God’s grace, what can I possibly do?  If I try hard to prepare myself, am I denying God’s ability to work within me?  If all is grace, can I blame God if I am not properly prepared since He did not prepare me?

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as Saint Edith Stein, sheds some light on this dilemma in her 1919 work Philosophy of Psychology and Humanities.  She writes:

“There is a state of resting in God, of complete relaxation of all mental activity, in which you make no plans at all, reach no decision, much less take action, but rather leave everything that’s future to the divine will… This state might have befallen me after an experience that exceeded my power, and that has completely consumed my mental lifepower and deprived me of all activeness.  Compared to the cessation of activeness from the lack of lifepower, resting in God is something completely new and unique.”

Saint Teresa Benedicta’s insight is simple yet tremendous.  She asserts that the state of resting in God where you find total peace must be preceded by the complete consumption of your lifepower.  After you have done everything within your power and ability, after having used up all your human energies, only then can you rest and place everything in God’s hands.

She contrasts this with someone who simply rests in God without having consumed all his or her lifepower.  This would be someone who does absolutely nothing and says, “God will take care of it.”  The former is someone who does all that is humanly possible and then says, “God will take care of it from here because there is nothing else I can do.”  The difference between these two attitudes is enormous.

This insight is helpful as we prepare during the Advent Season.  We prepare by doing that which is within our power and ability, and then we turn it over to God.  We cannot sit doing nothing hoping God will act, this would be presumptuous.  We do what we can and ask the Lord to help us make up for what we are lacking.

Click here for more information on the arrest, deportation and martyrdom of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and other Jewish-Catholics.


Browse Our Archives