Few are those who have delved into spirituality to the extent of Saint Teresa of Avila.

And her perceptions ring loudest during Lent, and in a time when threatening winds blow from all sides.

When that happens, she instructed, in The Life of Teresa of Jesus, we should recall Jesus and His apostles on the rollicking Sea of Galilee during the famous storm.

Who is this, Who calms any tempest?

And better yet, these questions: “What am I afraid of? What have I been thinking of?”

With Jesus the answer should be “nothing,” including evil.

As Saint Teresa said, “Well now, if this Lord is powerful, as I see He is, and know He is, and if the devils are His slaves (and of that there can be no doubt, for it is an article of Faith), what harm can they do to me, who am a servant of this Lord and King?

“How can I fail to have fortitude enough to fight against all hell?”

Taking a Cross in her hands, the saint thusly and then confronted the evil spirits that often haunted her, as they haunt all of us, seen and unseen, noticed or not.

“It certainly seemed as if I had frightened all these devils,” she wrote, “for I became quite calm and had no more fear of them—in fact, I lost all the fears which until then had been wont to trouble me.

“For, although I used sometimes to see the devils, I have hardly been afraid of them again—indeed, they seem to be afraid of me.”

We cause our own fright, our own unease, our own dis-ease, she pointed out, “because we make ourselves liable to be terrorized by contracting other attachments—to honors, for example, and to possessions and pleasures.

“When this happens, they join forces with us—since, by loving and desiring what we ought to hate, we become our own enemies—and they will do us much harm.”

Quite a perspective!

We in effect give devils the equipment—the weapons—to use against us.

“If only we will hate everything for God’s sake and embrace the Cross and try to serve Him in truth, the devil will fly from these truths as from the plague.

“He is a lover of lies and a lie himself. He will have no truck with anyone who walks in truth. When he sees anyone blind enough to find comfort in vanities–and such vanities!—for the vanities of this world are like children’s playthings—he sees that he is indeed a child, and treats him as one, making bold to wrestle with him, first on some particular occasion and then again and again.”

Please Lord, that we not be one of these!

Indeed.

As the great saint, a doctor of the Church, said, fears are hard to understand because they are so counterproductive.

“‘Oh, the devil, the devil!’ we say, when we might be saying, ‘God! God!’ and making the devil tremble.”

And the earth quake beneath him.