St. Teresa of Ávila, from an Early 20Th Century Print

�t. Teresa o� Jesus BORN 1515; DIED 1582 greatest treasures on the practice of contempla- VIRGIN, RELIGIOUS, AND(�t DOCTOR. Teresat iveo� prayer. Áv ila) OF THE CHURCH Teresa was born in Ávila, a city near the foot FEAST DAY: OCTOBER 15 of a mountain range that separates it from Ma- drid, in the province of Castile. She was the N TIMES OF GREAT CRISIS, God raises up great third of nine children of the saintly Alonso San- saints. The crisis of the Protestant revolt in chez de Cepeda, and his pious second wife Be- Ithe sixteenth century was one of the worst atriz Davila y Ahumada, and had three older in the history of the Church, and fractured half-siblings. She was an infectiously gay child Christianity remains its legacy today. St. Tere- in a happy and devout family. She was espe- sa of Jesus not only responded to God’s call to cially close to her brother Rodrigo, near to her reform her own religious order, but by her life in age. By seven, she loved reading the lives and writings also gave the Church some of her of the saints; the thought of eternity fascinat- ed both the children. Desiring martyrdom by the Muslims as a “cheap path” to Heaven, the two children eloped and got as far as the river in the valley below Ávila before being brought home by an uncle. Following this debacle, the two decided to be hermits, piling stones in the garden as makeshift hermitages, although they never finished them. Teresa also often sought solitude in her room. When Teresa was fourteen, her mother died. Around the same time, Teresa and Rodrigo began reading romances. Their influence on her was marked: she became less devout and more vain, wearing perfumes and fashionable cloth- ing. Worried about her behavior, her father sent her the next year to be educated by Augustin- ian nuns in Ávila. A year and a half later, she came home sick, and as a result was never particularly well educated or learned. Toward the end of her teens, an uncle gave her the Letters of St. Jerome to read. By then already considering life as a nun, she asked her father’s permission to enter the Carmelite convent in Ávila. Her father adamantly refused, so she secretly, and with much anguish, left home. Her father then gave up his opposition to her vocation. The next year, at twenty-one, Teresa took her first vows, but a year later again fell ill. Her father brought her home. The medical treatment to which she was subjected worsened her illness (probably malaria). She sank into a cataleptic state for St. Teresa of Ávila, from an early 20th century print The Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) grants the original purchaser (parish, local parochial institution, or individual) permission to reproduce this handout. several days and a grave was dug. However, Satan, and was deeply mortified when her secret she revived and recovered enough to return to became public knowledge. Priests she consult- the convent, although she remained paralyzed in ed gave her opposite opinions as to the source her legs for three years and experienced many of her experiences. Her best spiritual direction years of poor health. came from a Franciscan, St. Pedro de Al- Like many of the convents and monas- cántara, who came into her life when she teries of the period, Teresa’s had relaxed its was forty-two. She experienced spiri- originally austere rule. Particularly nota- tual espousal and mystical marriage to ble were the daily visits to the convent by our Lord, and many nuns witnessed both women and men, which consumed her levitating while at prayer. At for- much of the nuns’ day. Charming, ty-four, an extraordinary event oc- affectionate, curred, which she called “transverber- imaginative, ation of the heart.” and with a An angel with a lively and burning face ap- sweet-tem- peared to her in pered wit, bodily form and Teresa habitually spent thrust a lance of much time visiting, giving less gold with an iron and less time to prayer. She rationalized point tipped with fire through her that better nuns than she were doing the heart. She experienced an enor- same thing, that she was ill much of the mous, but tremendously sweet, pain time, and that she was too humble to con- that left her on fire with love of God. verse with God since she was not already She both wanted to die so as to be living a life of prayer. This went on un- PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLES DAVID united to God, and to live to suffer til, following her father’s death, his con- for God’s love. With the Psalmist, fessor told her that she was in spiritual she cried: “As a deer longs for flow- trouble. She then committed herself ing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O to prayer, but still did not experience God” (Ps 42:1). a full conversion, always eager for the The following year, 1560, a niece time allotted to prayer to be over and who was one of Teresa’s fellow nuns aware of how poorly she measured gave her the idea to found a new, up. Eventually, she read St. Augus- small, more perfect convent. One hun- tine’s Confessions, which described his dred forty women lived in their convent, own reluctance to commit himself fully and Teresa later exclaimed, “Experience to God and his subsequent wholeheart- has taught me what a house full of women ed conversion. She also began medi- is like. God preserve us from such a state!” tating on an image of the suffering Je- She proposed to found a community of no sus during his Passion and prayed for more than sixteen women who observed help to St. Mary Magdalene, another strict enclosure, nearly perpetual silence, saint who had undergone a great con- and austere poverty, never eating meat and version. Finally, at forty, Teresa gave fasting more strictly from the middle of Sep- her heart completely to her Lord. tember through the conclusion of Lent. They Teresa then entered into the period of her were to wear coarse habits and sandals rather most rapid spiritual growth. As she dwelt in than shoes. Teresa obtained the needed approv- contemplative prayer, she experienced interior als, but almost immediately there was an outcry communications and visions. This frightened not only from the nuns but also from many out- her, since the case of a woman whose “mystical side the convent, especially at the prospect of an experiences” had been exposed as the fraud of a unendowed convent that might become a public Satan-worshipper had recently become widely burden. The license from the Carmelite order known. She asked a number of people, in con- was immediately withdrawn. However, several fidence, whether her experiences might be the of her priest friends encouraged her, and one of product of an overwrought imagination or of her married sisters began building a house that St. Teresa of Jesus (St. Teresa of Ávila) ~ Page 2 She both wanted to die so as to be united to God, and to live to suffer for God’s love. appeared to be for her own family. During the As Teresa’s fame grew, Italian Carmelites construction, one of Teresa’s little nephews was began to oppose her reforms. In 1575, the or- crushed by a collapsed stone wall. Lifeless, he der restricted her work. However, an appeal was taken to Teresa, who restored the living child to the Pope by the king of Spain resulting in to his mother. Approval for the new convent fi- papal creation of a separate discalced province nally came from Rome, and it opened in her sis- in 1580 (Discalced Carmelite Order or OCD; ter’s “home” in1562. there are about four thousand Discalced Car- In 1567, Teresa received permission to found melites, men and women, today). The newness additional convents. Over the remaining fif- of her work also put her at risk of being brought teen years of her life, she founded sixteen more before the Spanish Inquisition. Her obedience women’s convents and two men’s monasteries to her spiritual directors, to her superiors, and using the new rule, which came to be called “dis- to the Church went a long way to alleviate con- calced” (unshod). They were all over Spain, cerns about her orthodoxy. some several hundreds of miles distant from In 1560, when Teresa was forty-five, her spir- Ávila. On one journey in the midst of a rain- itual director instructed her to write of her ex- storm, the wheel of her carriage broke, throwing periences. Ever practical, she was concerned her into the mud. She shook her fist skyward that it took time from her spinning, but did so and famously exclaimed to God, “If this is how out of obedience. Five years later, her autobiog- you treat your friends, no wonder you have so raphy The Life appeared, a work comparable to few.” Altogether, forty new foundations were St. Augustine’s Confessions written at the end of established for women and men in her lifetime, the fourth century. In 1573 she wrote The Way the remainder done under the guidance of her of Perfection as spiritual guidance for her nuns, great collaborator St. John of the Cross, whom and in 1577 wrote the classic of mysticism The she met when he was twenty-five and she fifty- Interior Castle, a book that explained the path to two. Like her, he was a mystic and great spiritu- high states of contemplation.

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