The extraordinary vehemence and passion, the daring realism of St. Teresa reminded Evelyn of Vittoria.  She found the same unrestrained passionate realism in both; she thought of Belasquez’s early pictures, and then of Ribera.  Then of Ulick, who had told her that the great artist dared everything.  St. Teresa had dared everything.  She had dared even to discriminate between the love of God the Father and God the Son.  It was God the Father that inspired in her the highest ecstasy, the most complete abandonment of self.  In these supreme moments the human form of Jesus Christ was a hindrance, as in a lower level of spiritual exaltation it was a help.

“The moment my prayer began to pass from the natural to the supernatural, I strove to obliterate from my soul every physical obstacle.  To lift my soul up, to contemplate, I dared not; aware of my imperfection it seemed over bold.  Nevertheless I knew the presence of God to be about me, and I tried to gather myself in him.  And nothing could then induce me to return to the sacred humanity of the Saviour.”

But how touching is the saint’s repentance for this infidelity to the Divine Bridegroom.

“O Lord of my soul, of all my goods, Jesus crucified, I shall never remember without pain that I once thought this thing.  I shall think of it as a great treason, and I stand convicted before the Good Master; and though it proceeded from my ignorance, I shall never expiate it with tears.”

Just as every variation of habit, of fashion is noticeable to those who live outside themselves, so the changes and complexities in the life of the soul are perceived by them who live within themselves.  The saint relates how for many months she refrained from prayer, and as we know that prayer was the source of all her joy, a joy touching ecstasy, often above the earth and resplendent with vision, we can imagine the anguish that these abstinences must have caused her.

“To destroy confidence in God the Demon spread a snare, his most insidious snare.  He persuaded me that owing to my imperfections I could not, without being wanting in humility, present myself in prayer to God.  This caused me such anguish that for a year and a half I refrained.  For at least a year, for the six months following I am not sure of my memory.  Unfortunate one, what did I do!  By my own act I plunged myself in hell without demons being about to drag me there.”

This scruple is followed by others.  The saint suspects the entire holiness of her joy in prayer, and she asks if these transports, these ravishments, these moments in which she lies exhausted in the arms of the Beloved Bridegroom, were contrived by the Demon or if they were granted to her by God.  Her anxiety is great, and men learned in holy doctrine are consulted.  They incline to the belief that her visions proceed from God, and encourage her to persevere.  Then she cries to her Divine Master, to the Lord of her soul, to her adorable Master, to the adorable Bridegroom.