St. Teresa of Avila

 St. Teresa  was born Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda  near Avila, Spain, of a large, aristocratic family, 28 March, 1515; died at Alba de Tormes, 4 Oct., 1582. She was the third child of Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda by his second wife, Doña Beatriz, who died when the saint was twelve years old or little less.  St. Teresa was brought up by her saintly father who was fond of reading good books, and a tender and pious mother of many virtues. After her mother's death and the marriage of her eldest sister, Teresa was sent for her education to the Carmelite monastery of the Incarnation at Avila in 1535, but owing to illness she left at the end of eighteen month. She remained with her father for some years and occasionally with other relatives, notably an uncle who made her acquainted with the Letters of St. Jerome, the main source for her to adopt the religious life.

Being unable to obtain her father's consent, she left secretly his house to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at Avila, which has then 140 nuns. The wrench from her family caused her a pain which she ever afterwards compared to that of death. However, her father at once yielded and Teresa took to her solemn profession.

After one year in the convent she became seriously ill again and underwent a three-year period of medical treatment and recovery that she was reduced to a most pitiful state. Even her partial recovery was through the intercession of St. Joseph, her health remained permanently impaired. During these years of suffering she began the practice of mental prayer, but fearing that her conversations with some world-minded relatives, frequent visitors at the convent, rendered her unworthy of God's grace bestowed on her in prayer. She felt that something was missing and found it difficult to pray.

In 1554, while praying before a statue of the wounded Christ , she underwent a profound spiritual conversion. As she wrote: "When I fell to prayer again and looked at Christ hanging poor and naked upon the Cross, I felt I could not be rich. So I besought him with tears to bring it to pass that I might be as poor as he." St. Teresa identified herself spiritually with Mary Magdalene and St. Augustine whose ' Confession ' deeply influenced her. " As I began to read the Confession, " she said:" it seemed to me I saw myself in them." She received encouragement from  Francis Borgia, and Peter of Alcantara to accept her mystical and visionary experiences as having their origin from God. Her  "intellectual visions and locutions", that is manifestations in which the exterior senses were in no way affected, the things seen and the words heard being directly impressed upon her mind, and giving her wonderful strength in trials, reprimanding her for unfaithfulness, and consoling her in trouble. Unable to reconcile such graces with her shortcomings, which her delicate conscience represented as grievous faults, she had recourse not only to the most spiritual confessors she could find, but also to some saintly laymen, who, never suspecting that the account she gave them of her sins was greatly exaggerated, believed these manifestations to be the work of the evil spirit. The more she resisted them the more powerfully did Christ ( His Majesty) work in her soul. The whole city of Avila was troubled by the reports of the visions  and the experiences of this nun. She was exposed to misunderstanding, gossips and even persecution. But the encouragement of St. Francis Borgia and St. Peter of Alcantara, and a number of Dominicans, Jesuits, and secular priests who discern God's work  guided her on a safe road.  Then, after twenty five years or more of unreformed Carmelite life, she felt the need to found a house of her own where the Carmelite rules would be strictly observed.

In 1562, she established with thirteen other nuns a convent in Avila under the patronage of St. Joseph.  In the same year she composed the account of her spiritual ' Life' , a mode of life marked by personal poverty, signified by the coarse brown wool habit, leather sandals, and beds of straw, manual work, abstinence from meat, and solitude. That first convent would become the prototype for sixteen others she founded. She always signed herself Teresa de Jesus. In 1566, she wrote 'The way of Perfection', and 'Meditations on the Song of Songs'. In her masterpiece " The Interior Castle", she forms one of the most remarkable spiritual biographies with which only the "Confessions of St. Augustine" can bear comparison.  It is a disguised autobiography written in the third person, while her life was in the hands of the Inquisitions. The book describes a mystical life through the symbolism of seven mansions, with the first three mansions as the premystical journey to God and the next four mansions as growth in the mystical life. With the imagery of the Song of Songs in the background, Teresa saw spiritual betrothal occurring in the six mansion and spiritual marriage in the seventh. For her the test of growth in mystical life was love of neighbor. To this period belong also such extraordinary manifestations as the piercing or transverberation of her heart, the spiritual espousals, and the mystical marriage. A vision of the place destined for her in hell in case she should have been unfaithful to grace, determined her to seek a more perfect life. 

Four years later, after the first convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of St. Joseph, she received the visit of the General of the Carmelites, John-Baptist Rubeo (Rossi), who not only approved of what she had done but granted leave for the foundation of other convents of friars as well as nuns. In the "Book of Foundations" she tells the story of these convents, nearly all of which were established in spite of violent opposition but with manifest assistance from above. Everywhere she found souls generous enough to embrace the austerities of the primitive rule of Carmel. Having made the acquaintance of Antonio de Heredia, prior of Medina, and John of St. Matthias ( later known as St. John of the Cross ), whom Teresa convinced to remain a Carmelite, and to collaborate with her in the reform of the order, she established her reform among the friars in 1568, the first convents being those of Duruelo (1568), Pastrana (1569), Mancera, and Alcalá de Henares (1570). Between 1562 and 1582 she would found seventeen Discalced convents while traveling across Castilian countryside by mule.

Not surprisingly, this effort would evoke as much opposition from the unreformed friars as her earlier  reforms of Carmelite nuns had done. A new epoch began with the entrance into religion of Jerome Gratian, inasmuch as this remarkable man was almost immediately entrusted by the nuncio (papal ambassador) with the authority of visitor Apostolic of the Carmelite friars and nuns of the old observance in Andalusia, and as such considered himself entitled to overrule the various restrictions insisted upon by the general and the general chapter. On the death of the nuncio and the arrival of his successor a fearful storm burst over St. Teresa and her work, lasting four years and threatening to annihilate the nascent reform. The incidents of this persecution are best described in her letters. The storm at length passed, and the province of Discalced Carmelites, with the support of Philip II, was approved and canonically established on 22 June, 1580.

St. Teresa, old and broken in health, made further foundations at Villanueva de la Jara and Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Granada (through her assistant the Venerable Anne of Jesus), and at Burgos (1582). She left this latter place at the end of July, and, stopping at Palencia, Valldolid, and Medina del Campo, reached Alba de Torres in September, suffering intensely. Soon she took to her bed and passed away on 4 Oct., 1582. After some years her body was transferred to Avila, but later on reconveyed to Alba, where it is still preserved incorrupt. Her heart, too, showing the marks of the Transverberation, is exposed there to the veneration of the faithful. She was beatified in 1614, and canonized in 1622  St. Teresa was one of the first two women to be named a Doctor of the Church in 1970 in recognition of her outstanding contribution to mystical theology and Christian spirituality.

PERFECTION: " The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior or delights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy but in having our will so much in conformity with God's will that there is nothing we know He wills that we do not want with all our desire, and in accepting the bitter as happily as we do the delightful when we know that His Majesty desires it."  Teresa de Jesus

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Carmelite, Doctor of the Church
The Interior Castle, The Third Dwelling Places, Chapter 1

“Say ‘Yes’ when you mean ‘Yes’”, like Mary.

His Majesty well knows that I can boast only of His mercy, and since I cannot cease being what I have been, I have no other remedy than to approach His mercy and to trust in the merits of His Son and of the Virgin, His Mother, whose habit I wear so unworthily, and you wear. Praise Him, my daughters, for you truly belong to our Lady. Thus you have no reason to be ashamed of my misery since you have such a good Mother. Imitate her and reflect that the grandeur of our Lady and the good of having her for your patroness must be indeed great…
But one thing I advise you: not because you have such a Mother or Patroness should you feel secure; [don’t pride yourself on anything!]…

We seem to think that everything is done when we willingly take and wear the religious habit and abandon all worldly things and possessions for Him – even though these possessions may amount to no more than the nets St. Peter possessed, for he who gives what he has thinks he gives enough. This renunciation is a good enough preparation if one perseveres in it and doesn’t turn back …There is no doubt that if a person perseveres in this nakedness and detachment from all worldly things he will reach his goal. But this perseverance includes the condition – and note that I am advising you of this – that you consider yourselves useless servants, as St. Paul, or Christ, says; and believe that you have not put our Lord under any obligation to grant you these kinds of favors. Rather, as one who has received more, you are more indebted

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