The Elixir of Life

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The Experience of Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila is one of the greatest masters of the spiritual life. Early on she did not have friends who shared her love of God and pursuit of holiness and she found it very difficult to make progress on her own. She writes: “A great evil it is for a soul to be alone in the midst of so many dangers. It seems to me that if I should have had someone to talk all this over with it would have helped me…For this reason I would counsel those who practice prayer to seek…friendship and association with other persons having the same interest… I believe that those who discuss the joys and trials they undergo will benefit themselves and those who hear them, and they will come away instructed; and even without understanding how, they will have instructed their friends.” (The Book of Her Life, Chapter 7:20.)

Then she found a handful of friends who had her same goal of union with God and holiness. She made a priority to spend time with them talking about their spiritual journey and from that time she made great progress and the journey was way more enjoyable.

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What is Spiritual Friendship?

Spiritual Friendship occurs when we find another person or a handful of people who share our love for God and want to grow in union with him. We love each other unconditionally, that is, just because we think they make the world a better place by being in it. But we love this friend with a demanding love, meaning, we want them to reach all their potential for goodness and we are committed to help them as they are committed to help us in return.

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We Prioritize spending time with our spiritual friends

Because we were made to engage and experience more and more of reality, of truth, beauty and goodness. The fullness of reality is God.

We have our own experiences, but we need not be limited to these. We can have the joy of a much richer experience of reality and of God by sharing it with each other in friendship. It can become a multiplication of the engagement with reality and thus a multiplication of joy.

And we know the way to union with God and holiness is not easy. It is fraught with many dangers and difficulties coming from the world the flesh and the devil. This is why we need one another.

By sharing life together and by our conversations, we can enrich each other with our virtues and stretch each other by our differences. We can encourage and challenge one another to persevere in our journey to God.

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What should we do if we want to have spiritual friendships?

The first and most important thing is to commit to friendship with Jesus through daily meditation and a resolution.

Through the daily practice of meditating or thinking about the Word of God and our faith through the Rosary or with Scripture

we spend time thinking about the highest thing in reality, our faith and we spend time loving the highest good – God.

We add to meditation a daily resolution. We end every meditation with a simple concrete thing to remember and do based on our meditation. This enables us to practice and grow in virtue each day.

Daily meditation feeds us with the best part of reality, which then enables us to talk about it with our friends. A daily resolution helps us grow in virtue so we can help our friends grow in virtue as well.

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Everyone needs a spiritual friend and better yet a handful, a small group of them.

Take the initiative to invite others to share life with you regularly. It takes no extra time. Have a meal or a drink, take a walk, watch a game, go hunting or fishing or quilting. Just do what you normally do but do it with others.

Then have a good conversation with them. Talk about everything that is true, and beautiful and good. 

Don’t talk about the news or entertainment. News is the opposite of deep, specialized knowledge, because it’s just the superficial, transitory and unreliable gossip everyone’s already talking about anyway. And Entertainment is the opposite of art and meaningful skills, because the whole point of entertainment is that it allows you to avoid doing anything yourself.

Most importantly, talk about what you have been reflecting and thinking about in daily meditation!

Teresa of Avila was so deeply convinced she needed this kind of friendship and good conversation that she writes: “Of myself I know and say that if the Lord had not revealed this truth to me and given me the means by which I could ordinarily talk with persons who practice prayer, I, falling and rising, would have ended by throwing myself straight into hell.”