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HollyS -> RE: A patron saint of BSDM? (1/23/2007 1:31:27 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyLupineNYC
Time to put all those years of catholic school to good use (no, put DOWN the old uniform…that is not what we are doing right now…well, maybe later if you are good…). Who would he or she be? What attributes and symbols? What is the background story? Discuss…
No contest, St. Teresa of Avila. She became a Doctor of the Church after entering the convent at age 20, where she was plagued by long periods of illness. While ill, she would study mystical and spiritually acetic works and find herself entranced in "spiritual ecstacy." She spiritually purged herself through the self-infliction of pain and suffering, often using self-torture to induce periods of trance or heightened awareness. She took over an existing order of nuns by papal decree and reformed them through the application of her strict rules: absolute poverty, giving up of all property, ceremonial flagellation every week, regular seclusion, and the ritual of going barefoot all the time.
As a mystic, she wrote extensively regarding her four stages of the ascent of the soul. From the Wiki:
The first, or "heart's devotion", is that of devout contemplation or concentration, the withdrawal of the soul from without and specially the devout observance of the passion of Christ and penitence.
The second is the "devotion of peace", in which at least the human will is lost in that of God by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given of God, while the other faculties, such as memory, reason, and imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction.
The "devotion of union" is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, a conscious rapture in the love of God.
The fourth is the "devotion of ecstasy or rapture", a passive state, in which the consciousness of being in the body disappears (II Cor. xii. 2-3). Sense activity ceases; memory and imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body and spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence and unconsciousness, and a spell of strangulation, intermitted sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. From this the subject awakens in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, productive of the trance.
Hrm.... sounds a bit like subspace to me.
In high school I managed to get a poster of Bernini's The Ecstasy of S. Teresa de Avila for my wall - told my devout mother she was a Doctor of the Church and an inspiration for good Catholic girls. I remember getting chills the first time I read the quote on which the sculpture is based... I was 15.
Smart and submissive, the leader of her order willing to be led by the Holy See, living in total subjugation to God and able to find peace through pain and testing... Sounds like my kind of woman.
~Holly, who wonders whatever happened to that poster...
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