HUMILITY IS THE FOUNDATION OF PRAYER

God is greatly pleased when He beholds a soul in its humility making His Son a Mediator between itself and Him, and yet loving Him so much as to confess its own unworthiness, even when He would raise it up to the highest contemplation, and saying with St. Peter: "Go away from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man."

I know this from experience, it was thus that God directed my soul, I have understood that the whole foundation of prayer must be laid in humility, and that the more a soul humbles itself in prayer, the more God lifts it up.

I do not remember that He ever showed me any of those marvelous mercies of which I shall speak at any other time than when I was as one brought to nothing, by seeing how wicked I was. 

Moreover His Majesty contrived to make me understand matters that helped me to know myself, but which I could never have even imagined of myself.

St. Teresa of Avila

(09-04-02)