St.Teresa of Avila

St.Teresa of Avila is one of the foremost spiritual leaders and saints of the Catholic Church. Through her vision leadership, courage, intense spirituality and unalloyed attachment to Christ, she became the greatest champion of the Counter-Reformation and worked hard through the revolutionary changes she brought about in monastic life to diminish the impact of the havoc wrought by the Protestant Reformation in the Christian world.

She is undoubtedly a real and great feminist in the sense that she could accomplish her vision of life in spite of great obstacles in life. Alone, she faced all the challenges and ordeals in putting into practice her vision of monastic life with out any help from the official circles. Traveling the length and breadth of Spain, she established convents which became beacons of spirituality.

Her indomitable courage was shown in her determination to found new convents with no money in her hand to buy houses or property. When someone asked her how she could establish convents with no financial resources, her reply was: “Teresa and this money are indeed nothing; but God, Teresa and these coins would suffice.” She had no means of transportation for her extensive journeys except donkey carts. At one time when her cart overturned, she complained to God about her ordeal. She heard a voice within her telling her: “This is how I treat my friends.” She answered: “Yes, My Lord, and that is why you have so few of them.”

According to Benedicta Ward, “Teresa was more than a religious and a national figure: she was a mystical writer of unique power. She wrote a great deal and every page reveals the impress of her personality; her humor , her vigor, her common sense, her practicality all emerge in a prose as colloquial and earthy as any writer” ( The Life of Theresa of Jesus,p.53) As Allison Peers, another commentator of her work puts it, “ Probably no other books by a Spanish author is as widely known in Spain as the Life or the Interior Castle of St. Teresa…with the single exception of Cervantes’ immortal Don Quixote” (The Life of Theresa of jesus,p.40)

She wrote four books: “ Life”, her autobiography; “The Way of Perfection” for the spiritual direction of her sisters; “Foundations”, for their edification and encouragement; “The Interior Castle” for the instruction of faithful in general.

Her first convent “St. Joseph” was established at Avila in spite of the vigorous opposition of the city mayor on account of the fact that the convent was an unendowed one, in the sense that it would have to depend purely on voluntary donations of the people. The mayor thought that it would become a big burden on the city. But she went on with her plans.

She became very ill towards the end of her life and on her way to visit a certain Dutchess, she fell seriously sick and was taken to one of her convents. She told the sister in whose hands she would die: “At last, my daughter, the hour of death has come.”

Teresa died in 1582 and she was canonized forty years later. In 1970 she was declared a doctor of the Church, the first woman to attain that honor. She became the model for two other great saints who came after her: St. Therese of Child Jesus and Edith Stein.

Biographical Details

She was born in 1515. Grandfather Juan Sanchez was a Jewish convert. Her parents Alonso and Beatriz de Ahumeda settled down in Avila. Teresa was the third of the nine children. Her mother died at the age of 33. She was sent to a boarding school after her mother’s death. When Teresa announced her decision to join the convent, her father was heart-broken and was opposed to it. But she persuaded her brother Antonio to join the religious order and one day both of them left home to join their respective religious orders. She joined the convent of the Incarnation.

In those days, convents were places where young girls who could not pay enough dowry or widows without means stayed. Hence, there was a lot of laxity and worldliness experienced in convents in those days. Teresa became a victim of this spirit of worldliness.

She fell ill in 1538 and to recuperate from her illness, she went to her sister’s house. On the way, she stopped at her uncle’s house and stayed there a few days. There, she happened to read a book called “The Third Spiritual Alphabet” by Francis de Osuna. That was a watershed in her life. Osuna bases his theory on a manner of prayer, starting with recollecting the senses, entering within, and detaching oneself from transient things. It was Osuna’s work that led her to contemplation.

Her illness later became serious and she fell into a coma. It was presumed that she was almost dead. But, then, she recovered and from that time onwards, she began to be serious about her prayer life. Again, there was a relapse in her life as she began to become more involved in worldly affairs and slowly began to lose her interest in prayer. In 1549, her father died which affected very deeply. The real conversion happened in her life when she happened to see the image of Jesus crowned with thorns during one of her visits to the chapel. She became remorse-stricken and burst into tears for a long time.

“So long was my distress when I thought how ill I had repaid him for those wounds that I felt my heart was breaking, and I threw myself down beside him, shedding floods of tears and begging him to give me strength once for all so that I might not offend him.”(Life 115)

From 1554-56, she began to develop a certain amount of mysticism in her prayers—locutions, visions, and raptures. Teresa wanted a spiritual advisor badly and she found such a person in Fr. Juan de Pedanos. Under his direction, she began to advance in her spiritual life. His successor, Fr. Alvarez too helped her immensely.

Between 1567-71, she established 7 convents, of which two were for friars. Her convents were to be dependent totally on alms and not on endowments. She spent a lot of her time in adoration. She put as prioresses women of stature—strong and compassionate as she was. As she still belonged to her original house, she was appointed the prioress of the Incarnation. She assumed the job against the protests of some of the inmates. Her visions and prayers continued. When she finished her term there, she went back to St. Joseph’s. On Oct.4,1582,she died, repeating over and over again the psalm 51.

The following words of St.Teresa summarise beautifully her vision of Christian spiritual life: “There is no need for wings to find Him. All one needs to do is to go into solitude and look at Him with oneself”(The Way of Perfection)

The Major Works of St.Teresa:

The Way of Perfection:

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This was written during the height of controversy which raged over the reforms St.Teresa enacted within the Carmelite Order. It had a two fold purpose: 1)to teach her daughters to love prayer and 2)to minimize the ravages being wrought by the Reformation.

In the first chapter, St. Teresa mentions the reasons behind the founding of the convent of St. Joseph’s in Avila: “ to busy ourselves in prayer for those who are defenders of the Church.”

The following are some of her major statements on prayer, the conditions required for it and the impact of prayer on one’s life.

“Honor and money go together…He who hates money cares little for honor…If the rule of poverty is kept, chastity and all other virtues will be fortified.

It seems very wrong that great houses should be built with the money from the poor…Let our houses be small and poor in every way.

Three things are necessary for prayer: love for each other, detachment from all created things and true humility.”

She asks the sisters to choose confessors with learning, for, “learning is a great help in giving light upon everything.”

“Often commend to God any sister who is at fault and strive for your own part to practice the virtue which is the opposite of her fault with great perfection.

“If one of you should be cross with another because of some hasty word, the matter must be at once put right and you must betake yourselves to earnest prayer.”

She expresses her unworthiness: “ It was a wonderful thing to give me the vocation to be a nun; but I have been so wicked ,Lord, that thou couldst not trust me.”

“True humility and detachment go together. They are two sisters who are inseparable. You must embrace them and love them….Poverty and self-indulgence make bad company…We have to cease to care about ourselves and our own pleasures, for the least that any one who is beginning to serve the Lord truly can offer Him is his life.

“Let each of you ask herself how much humility she has and she will see what progress she has made. Our honor, sisters, must lie in the service of God, and if anyone thinks to hinder you in this, she had better keep her honor and stay at home.”

She prays to God: “Thou knowest, my God, that if there is anything good in me, it comes from no other hands than Thine own.”

She speaks on humility: “Humility brought him down from Heaven into the Virgin’s womb and with humility, we can draw Him into our souls by a single hair.”

“Even if the whole world should blame you , and deafen you with its cries, what matter so long as you are in the arms of God?…O Lord, all our troubles come to us from not having our eyes fixed upon thee….We must have a holy boldness, for God helps the strong…and He will give courage to you and to me.

Humility is the principal virtue which must be practiced by those who pray.”

“Do you suppose that, because we cannot hear Him, He is silent? He speaks clearly to the heart when we beg Him from our hearts to do so.”

“If Thou Lord , art willing to suffer all this for me, what am I suffering for thee? Take up this cross…Be deaf to all detraction, stumble and fall with your spouse.”

“The aim of all my advice …is that we should surrender ourselves wholly to the Creator, place our will in His hands and detach ourselves from the creatures….When you have received the Lord, and are in His presence, try to shut the bodily eyes and to open the eyes of the soul and look into your own hearts…He will reveal Himself to you wholly..

This is very important for nuns: the holier they are, the more sociable they should be with the sisters.”

This is her prayer to the Lord: “ I beseech thee, Lord, then, to deliver me from all evil for ever, since I cannot pay what I owe, and may perhaps run farther into debt each day. And the hardest thing to bear, Lord, is that I cannot know with any certainty if I love Thee and if my desires are acceptable in Thy sight. O my God, deliver me from all evil and be pleased to lead me to that place where all good things are to be found.

The Interior Castle:

St. Teresa gets the idea of the mansions in one of her visions where she sees a crystal globe, made in the shape of a castle, containing seven mansions. She got this vision on the eve of the festival of the Holy Trinity.

This book is one of the most celebrated books in Mystical theology. The mythical figure of mansions gives it a certain unity. Mansions are not arranged in a row. This figure is used to describe the whole course of the mystical life—the progress of the soul from the first mansion to the seventh. The door by which the soul enters the castle is through prayer and meditation. This was begun on June2,1577 in Toledo and completed at St.Joseph’s ,Avila on Nov.29,’77.

Excerpts from the book are given below where she tells the devotee how to move through the different stages of spiritual growth to reach the state of union with the Lord.

First Mansions:

“The door of the entry into this castle is prayer and meditation. If it is prayer, it must be accompanied by meditation.

Humility must always be doing its work like a bee making its honey in the hive. Without humility, all work would be lost.”

“At this stage the soul is still absorbed in worldly affairs. Every one who wishes to enter the Second Mansions will be well advised to put aside all unnecessary affairs.True perfection consists in the love of God and of our neighbor, and more nearly perfect is our observance of these two commandments, the nearer to perfection we shall be.”

Second Mansions:

“(In spite of our failures) the Lord is anxious that we should desire Him and strive after His companionship. Here the devils once more show the soul those vipers—ie.the things of the world—and they pretend that earthly pleasures are almost eternal.

“All that the beginner in prayer has to do is to labor and prepare himself to bring his will into conformity with the will of God. The more he practices it, the more he will receive of the Lord…If you sometimes fall, do not lose heart…for even out of your fall God will bring good….Let them place their trust not in themselves but in the mercy of God.

It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls—without getting to know ourselves.”

Third Mansions:

“Whenever I think of myself I feel like a bird with a broken wing and I can say nothing of any value. We have offended God and however faithfully we serve Him, it should never enter our heads that we can deserve anything…What matters is whether we make a complete surrender of our wills to God. Let us practice humility which is the ointment of our wounds.

Fourth Mansions:

Here she deals with the difference between sweetness or tenderness in prayer and consolations and speaks of the happiness she gained from learning how different was thought from understanding.

“Sweetness that we get from meditations proceeds from our own nature, though of course, God plays a part in the process.This spiritual sweetness arises from the actual virtuous work which we perform.

The important thing is not to think much, but to love much ; do then , whatever most arouses you to love.

What I call consolations from God, and elsewhere have termed the Prayer of the Quiet, is something of a very different kind.

Here the person who does most is one who thinks least and desires to do least…all these interior activities are gentle and peaceful.The soul must just leave itself in the hands of God…Let the soul put a stop to all discursive reasoning, yet not to suspend the understanding…the will then should be left to enjoy it and should not labor except for uttering a few loving words.”

The Fifth Mansions:

She explains here how the soul is united with God.

“Serve His Majesty with humility and simplicity of heart and praise Him for His works and wonders.

The soul is in a state where it can neither see nor understand. God implants Himself in the interior of the soul in such a way that when it returns to itself, it cannot possibly doubt that God has been in it.

How you will ask, can we become so convinced of what we have not seen? That I do not know; it is the work of God.

We cannot enter by any efforts of our own ;His Majesty must put us right into the center of our soul and must enter there by Himself. Nor does He desire the door of the faculties and senses, which are asleep , to be opened to Him.”

She uses the image of the silkworm-butterfly to explain the transformation that happens to the soul when it is united with God.

“The soul is like the silk worm –making use of frequent confessions, good books etc, to live and nourish itself until it is fully grown. When it is fully grown, it builds the house in which it is to die—the house is Christ…May His Majesty Himself be our Mansion as He is in this Prayer of Union.

Let us spin our cocoon…Let us remove our self-love and attachment to earthly things…let us practice penance, prayer , mortification etc. Let the silk worm die…then we shall see God and shall ourselves be as completely hidden in His greatness. We must bear our cross in one way or another for as long as we live.

The soul has now delivered itself into His hands and His great love has so completely subdued it in that it neither knows nor desires anything save that God shall do with it what He wills.

She points out that the love of neighbor is essential for spiritual life.

“If you see a sick woman to whom you can give help, never be affected by the fear that your devotion will suffer, but take pity on her” Sixth Mansions:

The Lord grants special favors, but also gives trials. She enumerates the trials.

“There is another way in which God awakens the soul-this awakening of the soul is effected by means of locutions.”

She mentions the various occasions when God suspends the soul in prayer by means of raptures, ecstasies etc.

“One kind of rapture is this: the soul, though not actually engaged in prayer, is struck by some word, which it either remembers or hears spoken by God.

When the soul is in this state of suspension and the Lord sees fit to reveal to it certain mysteries, such as heavenly things and imaginary visions, it is able to describe these subsequently.

The soul becomes one with God. It is brought into this mansion of the empyrean Heaven which we must have in the depths of our souls.

For when He means to enrapture this soul, it loses its power of breathing, with the result that although its other senses sometimes remain active a little longer, it cannot speak.

Complete ecstasy does not last long.

The whole aim of meditation is to seek God and once He is found and the soul grows accustomed to seeking Him again by means of the will.”

Seventh Mansions:

Deals with favors granted to souls that have attained entrance to the seventh mansions.

“When our Lord is pleased to have pity upon this soul and which he has taken spiritually to be His bride, He brings her into this mansion to be His bride…

The Lord unites the soul with Himself, but He makes it blind and dumb, as He made St.Paul.

In this Mansion, everything is different. Our good God now desires to remove the scales from the eyes of the soul so that it may see and understand something of the favor of which He is granting it…The spiritual marriage takes place in the deepest center of the soul which must be where God Himself dwells…the Lord appears in the center of the soul not through an imaginary , but through an intellectual vision…This instantaneous communication of God to the soul is a great secret and a sublime favor.

Spiritual Betrothal is different. Here the two persons are frequently separated.

St. Teresa gives examples to show the nature of the union—as two candles joining together, or rain falling into the sea.

It is quite certain that, when we empty ourselves of all that is creature and rid ourselves of it for the love of God, that same Lord will fill our souls with Himself….the soul is at peace. In other mansions there are always times of conflict, trial and weariness…but they are not such of a kind as to rob the soul of its peace and stability.”

These reflections of St.Teresa as described in her works show what a great spiritual person she is. She was traveling, establishing convents, guiding her sisters and acting as their spiritual guide. It is in the midst of these onerous tasks that she wrote such profound works of great depth and insight. It is no wonder that she was declared a Doctor of the church.