The Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love, Having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire, To the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved. In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace Which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, Making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him To an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him.
Sing to the Lord a new song, For he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
The Lord has made known his salvation. He has openly shown his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
He has remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Burst out and sing for joy, yes, sing praises!
Sing praises to the Lord with the harp, With the harp and the voice of melody. With trumpets and sound of the ram's horn, Make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.
Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. So you testify and consent to the works of your fathers. For they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore also the wisdom of God said, 'I will send to them prophets and apostles; and some of them they will kill and persecute, That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.'Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers! For you took away the key of knowledge. You didn't enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in, you hindered."
As he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be terribly angry, and to draw many things out of him, Lying in wait for him, and seeking to catch him in something he might say, that they might accuse him.
We celebrate today Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and reformer who reshaped Carmelite religious life and became the first woman declared a Doctor of the Church — a title that honors her profound theological wisdom about prayer and the soul's journey toward God.
There's a sharp contrast at work in these readings that's worth sitting with. Paul opens Ephesians with one of the most expansive visions in all of Scripture — we were chosen *before the foundation of the world*, gathered up into a divine plan that stretches across all of time and history, destined for adoption as beloved children. The scope is almost dizzying.
And then Luke gives us something much darker: religious leaders who have inherited the legacy of the prophets but have quietly become their enemies. Notice how the accusation isn't that they ignore the prophets — they *build their tombs*, they honor them publicly. The problem is that honoring the past has become a way of avoiding the living Word standing right in front of them. They've taken the key of knowledge, as Jesus says, and locked the door.
Teresa understood this tension from the inside. She spent years in a kind of comfortable, respectable religious life before she encountered the living God in prayer — really encountered him. What changed everything wasn't more information about God, but genuine relationship with him.
That's the invitation underneath both readings. God's plan isn't an abstract theological architecture to admire from a distance. It's a relationship we're being drawn into, right now, on an ordinary Tuesday or Wednesday, in the middle of whatever is hard or beautiful or unresolved in our lives.
Consider what follows from that:
Where might we be honoring the idea of faith while keeping the living God at arm's length? What would it mean, today, to actually enter through the door rather than study it? And what might we be afraid to find on the other side?