This saint (yet another Peter) lived at the same time as Teresa of Avila. He lived with an interiority that was extraordinary. To give one example: Peter had lived as a brother within an order for three or four years when his superior chid him for not serving any fresh fruit to the brothers when he was on meal duty. Peter responded that he did not know of any fresh fruit. His superior pointed up to fig trees directly above where Peter regularly sat to eat. Peter, apparently quite honestly stated that he had never once been conscious of those trees before.

Throughout his life, Peter lived not only apart from worldly influences–Butler tells us, “From the time [Peter] put on the religious habit to his death, he never looked on any woman in the face”–but apart from the very environment himself. He lived so dissociated from the world, he avoided looking beyond himself (not even into a woman’s face or up to a fig tree), and here is how he was described:

These were the marks of a truly religious man, who studied perfectly to die to himself.

Really? Is this what Jesus–who loved to eat and drink, and who always noticed people like Zaccheus up in a tree, children clamoring around him, a woman at a well, a rich young man–meant about losing one’s life for the Gospel?

I can certainly respect that Peter of Alcantara was extraordinarily introverted, shy, and not worldly or even particularly sensate. And I believe this did not prevent him from being a good man. What I cannot respect is that his ways of being represent “the marks of a truly religious man,” as if disconnecting from trees and from others is in any way preferable to noticing and savoring the figs, bonding deeply with others irrespective of their gender, and living within and through one’s body. If so, as I suggest above, Jesus himself failed miserably at being “truly religious.”