‘REMEMBER that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing,” Saint Teresa of Ávila has said.
In her book the Interior Castle, she presented an allegory on how a soul, through prayer, attains union with God.
She said God dwells in a castle which is the soul. Through prayer, a soul travels from the dark outer place to the light in the center of the castle.
Virtuous extravert
Teresa of Ávila is a towering figure in the history of the Christian church. A mystic, the author of four books: the Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, Book of the Foundations and Life.
A reformer with charismatic personality, an outstanding teacher of Christian prayer, a founder of 17 convents, “few can rival the variety and depth of her mystical experiences” among the saints, Robert Ellsberg said in All Saints.
Teresa de Cepeda y de Ahumada was born on March 8, 1515, in the fortress city of Ávila, Spain, during the country’s golden age, when gold was poured to Spain from Latin America, and excellent Spanish readings was a plenty.
A cheerful and friendly girl, she grew in an atmosphere of piety, doing penances, praying and giving alms.
At seven, she wanted to be a martyr and desired to go to Africa, the land of the Moors, with her brother, Rodrigo, to be beheaded for Christ.
She loved stories about saints, and with his brother, would repeat “delights of heaven or the pains of hell forever and ever, and ever.”
Her mother died when she was 13 and before the image of the Blessed Virgin, implored with tears: “From now on, you shall be my mother,” noted Father Paolo Pirlo, SHMI, in My First Book of Saints.
Growing up, like any normal girl, she started to improve her hair, her hands, her looks and used a lot of perfume.
Her piety cooled off as an adolescent. Pretty, vivacious, an extravert in mind and manners, she wore “gaily flamboyant clothes,” which characterized the Castillian nobility.
Teresa took interest in reading the collection of books of her mother on chivalry, ladies and their knights, their feats of arms and illicit love affairs.
Never overlooked in crowds, she would also be flattered given a second look and “undoubtedly looked with interest and some longing at young men and enjoyed her effect on them,” according to John Beevers in Saint Teresa of Ávila.
Yes, she flirted a little, but Teresa admitted: “Yet I never felt the inclination to do much that was wrong for I had a natural detestation of everything immodest…but, if an occasion of sin presented itself, the danger would be at hand.”
Best and safest state of life
Uneasy about Teresa’s behavior, Don Alfonso, his father, placed her in an Augustinian convent for 18 months. She became ill, was sent home, and lived with a married stepsister to regain her health.
She also stayed for a few days with an uncle, who was a friar, where she realized that “all things are passing and the world is vanity,” and to be a nun is “the best and safest” state of life.
Teresa decided to enter religious life, but her father vehemently said no.
Teresa was able to convince her brother Antonio to be a Dominican friar so the two of them left toward the end of October 1536 to enter religious life, according to Beevers.
Antonio took her to the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. Don Alfonso was called by the Carmelites and Dominican friars and aware he was defeated in arguments gave his consent for Teresa’s vocation.
Teresa wore her habit on November 2. But by the end of her first year, her fainting spells and heart trouble were alarming so she was sent home, accompanied by a nun. When doctors admitted they could not cure her, Don Alfonso brought her to a quack doctor in Beceda. The harsh and painful treatment, which lasted for three months, aggravated her condition. Back to Ávila doctors declared her dying.
A grave was dug for her at the convent, but her father refused to have her buried.
After four days “life came back,” but the only thing she can move was a finger on her right hand.
Her dreadful distaste for food reduced her to a “bag of bones.” For nine months, she was carried on a sheet for mobility.
Her entreaties to be taken back to the convent was eventually approved by the nuns. After three years, she can move unaided, crawling on her knees and hands.
She desired solitude and her spiritual life deepened. Half invalid, she will be for the rest of her life, was the doctors’ verdict.
She sought cure from Saint Joseph. At 26, she could rise and her paralysis was cured.
Foundress of reformed monasteries
The Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation practiced strict rules on spirituality for centuries.
The Papal Bull of Mitigation in 1432, however, made it more like a “club than a convent,” according to Beevers. He described life in the convent: “A great number had no religious vocation; the nuns can stay with well to-do families with a companion nun to honor an invitation; the convent was always full of visitors, bringing food or exchanging gossips; in cells, nuns spent much of their time visiting each other; scent and jewelry were worn; habits were modelled with the latest fashions; and there was no enclosure.”
Determined on achieving holiness for all, she became so prayerful and lead a life of increasing sanctity.
She continued to experience a “consciousness of the real presence of God.”
The Lord said: “I will have thee converse now, not with men but angels.”
An angel appeared to her and with a “spear tipped with the fire of divine love, plunged it to her heart,” which she described as an “intense pain of ineffable sweetness…the union of a believer with God.”
Teresa lost the pleasure and joy of life in the convent. She prayed for how “little they have served God.”
While God gave her a vision of a place for the good, she also saw a vision of hell.
Teresa started planning to establish a convent, which made her unpopular, even denounced in the pulpit by a preacher of Saint Thomas church.
But she was supported by Father Ibañez, an influential Dominican and the Jesuits.
A young widow Maria de Jesus, who entered a Carmelite Convent in Granada but left before she was professed and who also wished for a reformed house of the Order, shared her ideas.
Maria walked barefoot to Rome and obtained permission to establish a reformed house of the Carmelites.
On August 24, 1562, Saint Joseph, the first house of Discalced Carmelites, was founded in Ávila, with four young women receiving the habit.
Unmindful of hardships and rigours of journeys, 16 more convents were added.
Malcolm Day in A Treasury of Saints commented that with Saint John of the Cross, who led similar reforms in monasteries, “she posed a formidable threat to existing orders and aroused much opposition from church authorities.”
She died in 1582 at the age of 67 in Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain, on a historic night when the Gregorian Calendar replaced the Julian Calendar.
She was beatified in 1614, canonized in 1642 and declared Doctor of the Church on September 27, 1970, by Pope Paul VI.
Her feast is October 15.
Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Laguna.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons