Nada te turbe

Let nothing disturb you. God alone suffices.

They found these lines written in her breviary after she died. Nine short lines, a bookmark she wrote for herself, and they have outlasted almost everything else she wrote — which is saying something, since she also wrote the <em>Interior Castle</em>.

In English

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

In Spanish

Nada te turbe,
nada te espante,
todo se pasa,
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia
todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene
nada le falta.
Sólo Dios basta.

Her Other Famous Prayer

Christ has no body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good.
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.

About These Words

Teresa reformed the Carmelites in the teeth of opposition from her own order, travelled Spain by cart in poor health, and had a famously dry humour about it — she is supposed to have told God, after being thrown from a mule into a river, that if this is how He treats His friends, no wonder He has so few.

The second prayer here is widely attributed to her but is not found in her writings; it is a modern composition in her spirit. It is included because people look for it, with that caution attached.