08/08/2014
THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA OF AVILA
CHILDHOOD
“ The Possession of virtuous parents who lived in the fear of God, together with God, together with those favors which I received from his Divine Majesty, might have made me good, if I had not been so very wicked , “ wrote Saint Teresa of Avila in the autobiography she completed towards the end of her life. She was an unusually active, imaginative and sensitive child born to Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Doña Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, on March 28, 1515. There were nine children of this marriage, of whom Teresa was the third, and three children of her father’s first marriage.
Piously reared as she was, Teresa became completely fascinated by stories of the saints and martyrs, as was her brother Rodrigo, her partner in youthful adventures. Once, when Teresa was seven, they made a plan to run away to the land of the Moors to be beheaded. They set out secretly, but had gone only a short distance from home when they were met by an uncle who brought them back to their anxious mother. With an instantaneous shift , she now bent her sight in their becoming hermits, piling up stones to construct little cells in the garden. Thus we see that religious thoughts and influences dominated the mind of the future saint in childhood.
YOUTH
The hermitages in the orchard soon tumbled down, and the would-be prioress began to turn her attention elsewhere. As the years passed, Teresa “began to the aware of the natural attractive qualities the Lord had bestowed on me- which people said were many “ Teresa was a magnet for attention, a sociable girl who could never help liking people, as long as they liked her. She basically let herself be swept with the tide, her heart divided between God and the world.
Teresa was only fourteen when her mother died, and she later wrote of her sorrow in these words: “ As soon as I began to understand how great a loss I had sustained by losing her, I was very much afflicted; and so I went before an image of our Blessed Lady and besought her with many tears that she would be gracious enough to be my mother”
At fifteen, “ I began to dress in finery and to desire to please and look pretty, taking great care of my hands and hair and about perfumes and all the empty things in which one can indulge, and which were many, for I was very vain….. For many years I took excessive pains about cleanliness and other things that did not seem in any way sinful”
Clearly the young girl could not be left without a female watchdog. And so her father decided to pack her off to a nearby Augustinian convent that ran a kind of finishing school where other young women of her class were being educated, preparing them for a devout domestic life.
For the nuns of Our Lady of Grace, Teresa conceived a deep and abiding affection. The novice mistress, Sr. Maria Briceño, who was in charge of the pupils, impressed the young Teresa with her piety and goodness. Gradually, in her tranquil new environment, she found her thoughts turning towards God; but, although prayer now became a part of her daily life – “But still, I had no desire to be a nun, and I asked God not to give me this vocation; although I also feared marriage.. “
It seemed to Teresa she had to make a choice, What direction should she take regarding her own future? Her mind toyed with the options, unable to decide finally one way or another. The indecision affected her health. She became ill with the first of many mysterious ailments that dogged her through life. For three months she wrestled with her fears but at last yielded. “ And although my will did not completely incline to being a nun, I saw that the religious life was the best and safest state, and so little by little I decided to force myself to accept it. “ Don Alonso was heartbroken when his favorite daughter sought his permission. Stubbornly he refused consent – Teresa would go only over his dead body!
CARMELITE
Undaunted about getting her own way she took her brother Antonio into her confidence. One November night they set out secretly together. This time it was not a game of unconsummated martyrdom but a continuing saga on the making of a mystic, reformer, Saint and Doctor of the Church who sums up without complication the meaning of her life with the words. “ Finally, Lord, I am a daughter of the Church”.
Teresa’s relationship with the Church was not only on the elementary level of birth, nourishment and a call to loyalty, but, was moreover, a transforming relationship involving risk and growth. She wanted instant mysticism but it took from ages 23-41 to realize that true growth is slow. Sanctity is learning to accept reality, being open to God’s word and of bringing our own will into conformity with His.
She understood that although union was a gift, it was not necessarily achieved overnight. Just as a child once conceived still takes up to nine months to become a viable person, so does the divine-human relationship require a sometimes lengthy period of careful nurturing. She knew the Lord was prepared to wait days, even years for us to respond. After all, hadn’t He waited almost twenty years for her? This is perhaps why she is so open about her own spiritual failures – to bolster our confidence today.
Teresa was at cross- purposes with herself. The more she prayed, the more she understood her faults. “When I was experiencing the enjoyments of the world, I felt sorrow when I recalled what I owed to God. When I was with God, my attachments to the world disturbed me. This is a war so troublesome that I don’t know how I was able to suffer it even a month, much less for so many years… For more than eighteen of the twenty-eight year since I began prayer, I suffered this battle and conflict between friendship with God and friendship with the world.”
Yet God kept rewarding her efforts. “Indeed, my King, You as One who well knew what to me would be most distressing, chose as a means the most delicate and painful punishment. With wonderful gifts you punished my sins! “ The worse she behaved, the better God seemed to like her. Every failure increased her anxiety. She considered this a terrible record but also reasoned that it might be the very thing to help those who are struggling with prayer: if God will stick with someone like her, He will stick with anyone.
It was a painful and slow growth, not one accomplishment by a miracle dispensing her from effort and pain. However, her life was beginning to blossom in holiness, steadfastness in prayer and love for others. People came to recognize these fruits of the Spirit operative in her changed demeanor and enemies gradually became friends and admirers. The Christ whom Teresa loved was forming her into His likeness and the transformation could not be hidden. She has become the personification of a respected and established religious, acknowledged to be seriously living her vocation. Yet she was somewhat restless. She felt she should be doing more for God, but what should the ‘ something more’ consist of ?
REFORMER
Little did Teresa know she was on the threshold of the most adventurous of her journeys. She would be asked to abandon security and set out to launch a reform that began with herself.
Teresa was a woman’s woman whose genius was expressed in the life she designed for her daughters. She had an intuitive grasp of what was suitable and helpful which she enshrined in practical legislation as well as spiritual insight giving birth to what is now known as the “Teresian ideal”: a small group of Christians who would be good friends of the Lord by striving to follow the evangelical counsels as closely as possible and living a life of prayer for preachers and theologians, the defenders of the Church; thus a life in service of the Church, in service to Christ. Carmel is not for ‘mystical high- flyers’ but for those whose feet are firmly on the ground. For Teresa, prayer was a definite apostolate, for “one moment of pure love is more useful to the Church than all good works put together, though it seems that nothing were done”
From the first foundation of the convent of St. Joseph on August 24, 1562, Teresa went on to found 16 more including 2 monasteries for friars, journeying across mountains, rivers, and arid plateaus on curtained carriages or carts drawn by mules through extremely poor roads. She and her companions endured all the rigors of harsh climates, scanty food, and “night spent in bad inns.”
SAINT, DOCTOR, DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH
At 64 her failing strength could no longer be conquered by her determined will. She had cancer of the uterus. At the convent in Alba de Tormes she patiently submitted to the prescribed remedies, though she knew in herself they were of no avail. The end was approaching and as the nuns gathered around her bed she whispered: “ Daughters, I beseech you to pardon the bad example I have set you, I who have been the greatest sinner in the world, and who have kept her Rule and Constitutions the worst. For the love of God may you keep the Rule and Constitutions with great perfection and obey your superiors.” Gradually she entered into a trance and summed up the meaning of her whole life with the words: “Finally, Lord, I am a daughter of the Church.” It was the evening of October 4, 1582.
Teresa was canonized on March 12, 1622 by Pope Gregory XV; after which, on September 27, 1970, was declared the “first woman Doctor of the Church” by Pope Paul VI.
