The book of the foundations of S. Teresa Quotes

“0 Lord! What a great favor You grant to those children whose parents love them so much as to want them to possess their estates, inheritance, and riches in that blessed life that has no end! It is a great pity the world is now so unfortunate and blind that it seems to parents their honor lies in not letting the dung of this world's goods be forgotten and in not remembering that sooner or later these things will come to an end. And everything that has limits, even though it lasts a while, will eventually come to an end; and little importance should be given to it. Such parents want to sustain their own vanities at a cost to their children, and very boldly take from God souls
that He wants for Himself. And they take from these souls a good so great (God inviting them to be His guest) that, even were the good not to last forever, it would still be extraordinary to see oneself freed from the tiresomeness of the world and its laws; and the more goods people possess, the greater the tedium. Open the eyes of parents, my God.”
― Marc Foley, St. Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Foundations A Study Guide

“The art of the saints is the ability to draw good out of every situation, no matter how bitter or painful.”
― Marc Foley, St. Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Foundations A Study Guide

“The underlying dynamic here is that a want can easily be interpreted as a need. This happens in two ways. First, we can make our emotions the criteria of reality. "If I feel that something is true, then it must be true." Second, we can indulge a desire for so long that we become dependent upon its fulfillment. Eventually, we believe that we cannot live without the object to which we have become attached. We become trapped by our desires.”
― Marc Foley, St. Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Foundations A Study Guide

“Teresa says that false peace in the spiritual life is a state of complacency, which is the result of two factors working together. The first is the untroubled conscience of a soul that has gradually grown lax in the obligations of life. The second is settling into a comfortable lifestyle. The false peace that is engendered by these two factors is not the peace that is the fruit of doing God's will but of the complacent soul that lives an unruffled, undisturbed life because it has cloistered itself from the demands of charity (See Teresa's Meditations of Song of Songs , ch. 2).”
― Marc Foley, St. Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Foundations A Study Guide

“Questions. Teresa's communities, like any group, were composed of both introverts who gravitated toward solitude and extroverts who had a proclivity to make beelines to the front parlor. She also knew that we all tend to justify our natural bent. However, to do God's will, sometimes demands that we go against the grain of our personalities. In what ways does God frequently ask you to do things that go against your temperament?”
― Marc Foley, St. Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Foundations A Study Guide