The Way of Perfection

Among many favours I have received from our Lord, not the least was my intimate acquaintance with the very Reverend Mother Teresa of Jesus, now in glory, because in her I have witnessed the splendour of the gifts of our Lord and of His divine grace. These are evidenced by the convents founded by her according to the primitive Rule of our Lady of Mount Carmel, without any mitigation, but with as much religious observance and recollection, with such austerity, such unceasing prayer and as much manual labour as our weak human nature is able to bear. She herself was a living example of that manner of life, and she fully trusted that our Lord would grant to His servants spiritual and bodily strength to persevere to the end. So great were the charity and fervour of this Mother, such her solicitude for the perfection of her daughters, that she did not content herself with the good example and the instructions she gave while alive, but wished that, even after her death, her words might remain and continue the work she had begun on earth. As one truly hungering after our Lord, and greatly experienced in all that concerns the religious life, she wrote the advice and the explanations contained in this book, so that the sadness caused to the nuns by her bodily absence might be counterbalanced by her spiritual presence; for indeed she seems living even in the dead letters. This, then, is one of the consolations with which her spiritual daughters may alleviate the sorrow caused by her death; another being the certainty that, where she now is, she will not abandon those whom she so ardently loved, because, so far from being less, charity is much greater in heaven than on earth.

It is no small consolation to see, albeit after her death, her spirit still alive in the doctrine of this book, which she composed through zeal for the spiritual improvement of her daughters, and which she earnestly requested me to get printed.

There being various manuscript copies, it was unavoidable that there should be many passages at variance with what she had written; this could only be obviated by printing the whole work, and therefore I willingly complied with her request.

CrossReach Publications