Saint Teresa never removes our humanity from our divinization in Christ. How could she? She always refers us to the humanity of Christ. For her (and this is just Christianity in action!) this was an indispensable part of the spiritual life. Humanity is what is taken up by Christ. As a result, Teresa specifically focuses on things like our relationships and our friendships. They are not good enough on their own. But, equal or unequal in virtue, these relationships can be transfigured in Christ by the Spirit.

Teresa talks about two sides of a friendship in which at least one person is so fully united in a will of love with God – contemplative quasi-continually, so to speak. In the Way of Perfection, chapter 7, she describes such persons like this:

On the one hand, they go about forgetful of the whole world, taking no account of whether others serve God or not but only keeping account of themselves; on the other hand, with their friends, they have no power to do this… they see the tiniest speck. I say that they bear a heavy cross.

Not because they judge their friends in the depths of their hearts! But because these people want only the best for their friends, no matter what might get in the way, however innocent. They will suffer just to see such a goodness achieved for those they love. They will speak and act towards this end, however much it may cost them. They do not judge the causes of a lack of perfection; but they recognize, through the signs of friendship, a lack of perfection. This pains them with a holy love. Their love is “spiritual”, in Teresa’s terminology – though the term she herself thinks sounds far from ideal!

This is the side as experienced by the one who loves with a truly spiritual, God-united love.

What about the other side: what about the person who has such a holy, spiritual friend?

What shall we do if we meet such a good, divinely transformed person? How should we feel? How should we react? We should, says Saint Teresa, thank God and gather around such a true friend in hope and love, forgetting about the requirements of detachment, since love of these persons is love of God:

Oh fortunate are the souls loved by such as these! Fortunate was the day they came to know them! …

Love such persons as much as you like. They must be few, but the Lord does desire that it be known when someone has reached perfection. You will be immediately told that speaking with him is unnecessary, that it is enough to have God. But a good means to having God is to speak with His friends, for one always gains very much from this. I know through experience. After the Lord, it is because of persons like these that I am not in hell…

“How fortunate”! “Love them as much as you like”!

Of course, in the measure that we are not loving Love that diffuses through a human person, we could stand to me more detached.

But, if we are really looking at the Love that has transformed our friend into love, like a Fire that burns without consuming and which purifies and radiates warmth, then Saint Teresa says: Do not impose a limit to how much you can love this creature! He or she will take you to the bosom of God!

What a wonderful perspective it is…! It is as if God is spreading a contagion of Fire-Love, and we are allowed to get warm and catch it.