{"id":19188,"date":"2013-06-06T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=19188"},"modified":"2013-06-13T14:21:08","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T21:21:08","slug":"patron-saint-of-chess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/06\/06\/patron-saint-of-chess\/","title":{"rendered":"Patron Saint of Chess"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I mentioned<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Today I set aside some time and tracked down Avila’s text. It comes from The Way Of Perfection<\/em><\/span>\u00a0in the section where she is speaking about prayer:<\/p>\n

\n

\"Teresa\"“But you may be sure that anyone who cannot set out the pieces<\/span> in a game of chess will never be able to play well<\/span>, 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<\/span>! He will not be able to move out of our check nor will He desire to do so<\/span>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It is the queen which gives the king most trouble<\/span> in this game and all the other pieces support her. There is no queen who can beat this King as well as humility<\/span> can; for humility brought Him down from Heaven into the Virgin’s womb<\/span> and with humility we can draw Him into our souls by a single hair. Be sure that He will give most humility<\/span> to him who has most already and least to him who has least. I cannot understand how humility exists, or can exist, without love<\/span>, or love without humility, and it is impossible for these two virtues to exist save where there is great detachment<\/span> from all created things…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This is an error which we all make: if a person gets so far as to spend a short time each day<\/span> 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<\/span>; and then they expect him to have the rare virtues<\/span> 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<\/span>, and thought that, in order to give checkmate<\/span>, it would be enough to be able to recognize the pieces<\/span>. But that is impossible, for this King does not allow Himself to be taken except by one who surrenders wholly to Him<\/span>.” <\/em><\/span>–\u00a0The Way of Perfection
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…and for this work she has become the Patron Saint of Chess \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The article Patron Saint of Chess<\/a> first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[593,2199,566],"class_list":["post-19188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-chess","tag-fr-donald-calloway","tag-st-teresa-of-avila"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19188"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19199,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19188\/revisions\/19199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}