Patron Saint of Chess
The other day I mentioned that I recently had several opportunities to hear Fr. Donald Calloway speak. During one of his talks he said something concerning St. Teresa of Avila that I had never heard before. He said that in one of her books she spoke about the game of chess. In my childhood I played chess a lot with my Dad, so my ears immediately perked up when he mentioned the game.
Today I set aside some time and tracked down Avila’s text. It comes from The Way Of Perfection in the section where she is speaking about prayer:
“But you may be sure that anyone who cannot set out the pieces in a game of chess will never be able to play well, and, if he does not know how to give check, he will not be able to bring about a checkmate. Now you will reprove me for talking about games…[but] if we play it frequently, how quickly we shall give checkmate to this Divine King! He will not be able to move out of our check nor will He desire to do so.
It is the queen which gives the king most trouble in this game and all the other pieces support her. There is no queen who can beat this King as well as humility can; for humility brought Him down from Heaven into the Virgin’s womb and with humility we can draw Him into our souls by a single hair. Be sure that He will give most humility to him who has most already and least to him who has least. I cannot understand how humility exists, or can exist, without love, or love without humility, and it is impossible for these two virtues to exist save where there is great detachment from all created things…
This is an error which we all make: if a person gets so far as to spend a short time each day in thinking about his sins, as he is bound to do if he is a Christian in anything more than name, people at once call him a great contemplative; and then they expect him to have the rare virtues which a great contemplative is bound to possess; he may even think he has them himself, but he will be quite wrong. In his early stages he did not even know how to set out the chess-board, and thought that, in order to give checkmate, it would be enough to be able to recognize the pieces. But that is impossible, for this King does not allow Himself to be taken except by one who surrenders wholly to Him.” – The Way of Perfection
…and for this work she has become the Patron Saint of Chess 🙂
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