15 October, Tuesday, 28th Tuesday in Ordinary Time

Some notes on St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church —

1. St. Teresa of Jesus, 1515-1582, mystic and poet, also known as St. Teresa of Avila, was the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Order of both women and men in the 16th century. The movement was later joined by the younger Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites, OCD.

2. She was born Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda Davila y Ahumada either in Avila or in Gotarrendura, Spain. Her grandfather was a “converso,” a Jew forced to convert to Christianity or leave. He was later able to assume Catholic identity. Her father was a wool merchant and one of the wealthiest men in Avila. He was assimilated successfully into Christian society.

Her mother brought her up as a dedicated Christian. When she was seven, she and her brother Rodrigo tried to run away from home to seek martyrdom in the hands of the Moors, the term used for the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula.

When she was 11, her mother died. Grief stricken, she embraced the Blessed Mother as her spiritual mother. But, as a teenager, she loved to read romances, and cared about boys, clothes, and flirting. She believed she was a great sinner and so she was devoted to St. Augustine.

3. When she was 20, she decided to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, much to the disappointment of her devout father. She began devoting herself to prayer, spiritual reading, and meditation. Her zeal for mortification, however, caused her to become ill and she spent almost a year in bed. This worried her community and family. She nearly died and she attributed her recovery to the miraculous intervention of St. Joseph.

4. She began to experience ecstasies during prayer in which she perceived perfect union with God and enjoyed “blessings of tears.” She had progressed from simple “recollection,” through “devotion of silence,” to “devotions of ecstasy.”

Her confessor, the Jesuit Francis Borgia, assured her that her thoughts were divinely inspired. For more than two years, beginning on St. Peter’s Day, 1559, she experienced visions of Jesus in which Jesus presented himself in bodily form though invisible to others. In another vision, she experienced “transverberation,” where a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance through her heart, causing her ineffable and “sweet” spiritual and bodily pain, making her moan, but leaving her “all on fire wiith a great love of God.” This mystical experience inspired her whole life and motivated her to imitate the life and suffering of Jesus. During her raptures, she sometimes levitated.

5. The laxity of her convent, the daily invasion of visitors, and the weak observance of “cloister” disturbed prayer in the convent and grieved her. Motivated and supported by the Franciscan Fr. Peter of Alcantara, she resolved to found “reformed” Carmelite convents.

In 1562, she established the new convent of St Joseph. Its abject poverty scandalized the citizens and authorities of Avila. Only the support of the local bishop prevented the convent from being closed down.

6. She received papal approval for her primary principles of absolute poverty and renunciation of ownership of property. Her plan was to revive the earlier monastic rule with ceremonial flagellation, the Divine Office, and the “discalceation,” (non-wearing of shoes) of the religious. At the St. Joseph Convent, Teresa remained in seclusion for the first five years, mostly engaged in prayer and writing.

7. In 1567, she received permission from the Carmelite General to establish more convents. From 1567 to 1571, she established seven reformed convents. She also received papal permission to set up reformed houses for men. This she did with the help of the Carmelites John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus. They established the first monastery of Discalced Carmelites in Doruelo. Other monasteries were established.

But in 1576, Teresa began to be persecuted by the unreformed Carmelite members. The governing body of the Order forbade her to establish anymore reformed convents and ordered her to go into “voluntary retirement.” She obeyed and went to St. Joseph’s at Toledo. Her friends and supporters were subjected to attacks while she was accused to the Inquisition.

8. In 1579, her appeal to King Philip II of Spain bore fruit. The Inquisition dropped the cases against her. Her reform work resumed. Pope Gregory XIII allowed the appointment of a provincial superior for the reformed convents and appointed a “protective board” for the reform. All but one of the 17 convents were founded by her before she died. Many men’s monasteries owed their reform to her.

9. She fell ill while traveling from Burgos to Alba de Tormes and died either on the 4th or 15th of October 1582. The difference in dates is caused by the change from Julian to Gregorian calendar. She was 67 years old. Her body remains incorrupt and is buried in the Convento de la Anunciacion in Alba de Tornes. But her right hand and part of her upper jaw are in Rome; her hand in Lisbon; her left eye and left hand in Ronda, Spain; her left arm and heart in the museum of the Church of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes; one finger in the Church of Our Lady of Loretto, Paris; and one finger at the Sanlucar de Barrameda. Teresa was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, 40 years after her death. Pope Paul VI declared her Doctor of the Church in 1970 along with St. Catherine of Siena, the first two women to be awarded the distinction.

10. Her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus, and her books, The Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, and Conceptions on the Love of God are prominent works of Christian mysticism and contemplation. Her autobiography describes 4 stages in the ascent of the soul to God: meditation, the prayer of quiet, absorption in God, and ecstatic consciousness.

The Interior Castle illustrates the 7 castles within the castle of the soul that one’s soul can be in during one’s life. Of her poems, 31 are extant. An author of spiritual classics, St. Teresa of Jesus was one of the great mystics of Christianity, the great reformer of the Carmelite Order for both men and women.