Saint of the Issue: Teresa of Avila

On October 15, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, mystic, and one of the greatest religious reformers in the history of the Church. 

Born on March 28, 1515 in Avila, Spain, Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada grew up in a wealthy noble family. A pious youth, at age seven Teresa convinced her brother Rodrigo to run away from home with her in an attempt to be martyred by the Moors in North Africa, but they were stopped by their uncle.

When Teresa was eleven, her beloved mother died. Teresa turned her grief to devotion, and she took Our Lady to be her spiritual mother. At this time, Teresa also became enamoured with worldly goods and began reading books of fashion, knights, and flowers.

After great resistance, she acquiesced to her family’s desire, and became a nun. Against her father’s wishes, she joined a lax Carmelite convent. At the convent, Teresa ceased to care for the faith and fell to gossiping and cared inordinately about her appearance. However, her piety was renewed through spiritual reading, and she began to spend her time in prayer and engaged in mortification.

Later in life, she became quite ill and bedridden. She began to experience deeper prayer in the forms of spiritual union, deep contemplation, and ecstasy. Christ began invisibly manifesting Himself to Teresa. Her friends became troubled at these supernatural occurrences, and contended that they were from the devil.

Teresa, however, with the help of her spiritual director, understood they were divine, and the ardency of her love for Jesus continued to grow. She developed a great desire to suffer for God, and famously said, “Lord, either let me suffer or let me die.”

As her supernatural occurrences continued, Teresa became embarrassed, and would ask her fellow nuns to hold her down when she began levitating.

She became distressed at the lack of love for Jesus that she found in her convent and sought to remedy this through the creation of a reformed order of Carmelites.

Though she faced fierce opposition, through the support of locals, the bishop, and her friend, St. Peter of Alcantra, Teresa founded the convent of St. Joseph in Avila which followed the constitution of the Reformed Carmelites. Out of penance, the nuns did not wear shoes, thereby earning their name the “Discalced,” or shoeless, Carmelites.

Teresa wished to extend this reform to men, and sought to meet a young, pious Carmelite friar whom she had heard about. In one of the most famous saintly friendships in the Church’s history, Teresa of Avila met John of the Cross in 1567, and the two began planning the creation of a Carmelite reform order for men.

The growth of the Discalced Carmelites caused great fear among the unreformed Carmelite order, which led to the attempted suppression of the Discalced Carmelites.

The new leaders of the Order were persecuted. Teresa was forced to leave her convent, and John of the Cross was nearly starved and placed in a tiny prison for nine months. Through the intervention of King Phillip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII, the new reform order was rescued and brought to general independence from the unreformed Carmelites in 1580.

On October 4, 1582, Teresa fell ill and died while on a journey. Her last words were, “My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another.”

St. Teresa was canonized in 1622, declared the co-patroness of Castile in 1626, and declared the first female Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope St. Paul VI. Her writings on mysticism are both profound and clearly written from the heart.

 Her Interior Castle of the Soul separates degrees of mysticism and closeness to God in prayer into seven castles. The Way of Perfection has often been considered her most accessible work for the average reader. In this text, she describes the holy life and its attainment. For the lover of hagiographies, her autobiography describes the struggles involved in the creation of the Discalced Carmelites and her conversion.

A simple nun, a repentant sinner, and, most importantly, a lover of Jesus, St. Teresa of Avila calls us to surrender ourselves to the will of God and commit more fully to a life of prayer and sacrifice. St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Featured image courtesy of David Monniaux via Wikimedia Commons