May 21, 2026

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.

Teresa wrote these words in the late sixteenth century, a period when she was exhausted from decades of founding convents across Spain, navigating Church politics, and managing her own failing health. She kept this note tucked in her prayer book, not as a polished theological statement, but as a personal reminder she returned to on hard days. The joy here is not about circumstances being easy — her circumstances rarely were — but about a settled confidence that what is most real does not disappear. That kind of joy has nothing to do with mood, which is exactly what makes it worth thinking about on a Tuesday morning.