Christocentrism of Charism – Buggert - CarmelStream

xlvii. See e.g. Luti, Teresa of Avila's Way, pp. 94 ff.
xlviii. Thompson, Fire and Light, pp. 144, 147. See the Life,
22.1, p. 140.
xlix. Thompson, Fire and Light, p. 146.
l. Ibid., 146.
li. On this matter, see the excellent work of Catherine Mowry
LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, San
Francisco, CA: Harper, 1991.
lii. Thompson (Fire and Light, p. 146) correctly points out how
this same issue was very much at stake in the Arian crisis and
Nicean response to Arius. Is Jesus merely a dispensable finite
medium through which the God of salvation can be encountered or
is Jesus himself in his humanity the Self-gift of God to us?
Nicea's response was that Jesus is not merely one among several
dispensable finite media in and through which the divine can
work. For God to be the God of salvation, i.e. for God to be
God-for us, God must "do" or "be" God in Jesus. Hence the Son is
"one in being" with the Father, or else there is no salvation.
liii. Life, 22.9.
liv. Ibid., 22.10, p. 148.
lv. Neil O'Donoghue, Mysticism for Our Time, Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1989, p. 29. See the Life, chapter 22, #10. O'Donoghue
goes on to point out (p. 30) that Teresa is affirming the way of
the humanity of Christ as the staple of contemplative prayer,
even though she allows a secondary place to another state in
which for a short period of time, the humanity is transcended.
Teresa, indeed, appreciated the symbolic and historical character
of the human person, because of which the experience of God must
always be mediated. For Christians, the humanity of Christ acts
as the primary mediation of the divine.
lvi. Life, 22.7.
lvii. The Interior Castle, 6.7.6, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D.
and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., New York: Paulist Press, 1979, p.
145.
lviii. Ibid., 146.
lix. O'Donoghue, Mysticism for Our Time, p. 30.
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