Oct 15 2019 Commemoration of Teresa of Avila

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.”


Teresa of Avila was born in 1515 in Spain. She joined a Carmelite religious order. She battled illness for many years, and was deep in pray during her times of illness. Eventually she decided that the order had strayed from Christ’s call, and founded a ‘reformed Carmelite’ order, and began numerous other reformed houses, which were very strict, and entirely cloistered. She was known as a person of deep prayer, and mystic.

As a person of the world and a person of action, I always feel challenged to read about these early church mystics. It’s a life I can’t imagine. It’s a way of deep prayer and vision I cannot imagine. And generally, their writings are full of imagery and poetry that don’t resonate. That’s not to say the writings aren’t beautiful, and genuine. They’re just very different from how I think and process things. I suspect much of Teresa’s writing would fall in that category. But the quote of hers that was included in the Morning Prayer summary from Mission St. Clare, resonated deeply.

Christ has no body now but yours. As a person of faith who believes God-in-Jesus was fully human, and lived and died, and was resurrected and ascended to God, God-in-human form is not here any more. While I also believe God-in-the-Spirit is in all of us, and that God-the-Creator is great enough to fix or console anything here on earth, I love the image that in the absence of God-in-Jesus, we are it. We are the eyes that he looks compassion on the world. The hands through which he blesses the world, and the feet through which he walks to do good.

I also believe that God-the-creator can do anything on this earth, and doesn’t really need me, my hands or my feet. I say this because I’ve heard deeply religious folks balk at the idea that God needs my hands or feet. True enough.

Needed or not, I believe I am here to be Christ’s hands and feet. If the God-the-Holy Spirit is fully divine, wouldn’t it be easier for that fully divine, fully God in spirit to accomplish God’s will, with an extra pair of hands? Besides, many hands make light work.

This idea, that Christ has no body here on earth but ours, that’s beautiful, and it provides my literal and critical brain with something to wrestle with. It provides me with an image or concept of how I’m involved in the salvation of this world, of bringing God’s kingdom here.   

This morning, I’m thinking about mystics, and how their time of deep thought and visions can provide us with ways to think about God, and see our relationship with God and the world. Mystical writing is generally difficult for me to read, because of all of the right-brain language. But I am committed to try to learn a little more about mystics, and see what they have to teach me, just like Teresa was able to.