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"God, deliver me from gloomy saints." - - Saint Teresa of Avila
Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada was born at Avila, Castile, Spain, 28 March 1515, daughter of a nobleman. She was to become one of the greatest Christian mystics and also a great reformer. She is known for her Life or Autobiography, The Interior Castle, and the Way of Perfections.
"The kernel of Teresa's mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages (Autobiography, Chs. 10-22):
The first, or "heart's devotion", is that of devout contemplation or concentration, the withdrawal of the soul from without and specially the devout observance of the passion of Christ and penitence.
The second is the "devotion of peace", in which at least the human will is lost in that of God by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given of God, while the other faculties, such as memory, reason, and imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction. While a partial distraction is due to outer performances such as repetition of prayers and writing down spiritual things, yet the prevailing state is one of quietude.
The "devotion of union" is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, a conscious rapture in the love of God.
The fourth is the "devotion of ecstasy or rapture", a passive state, in which the consciousness of being in the body disappears (II Cor. xii. 2-3). Sense activity ceases; memory and imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body and spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence and unconsciousness, and a spell of strangulation, intermitted sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. From this the subject awakens in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, productive of the trance. (Indeed, St. Theresa herself was said to have been observed levitating during mass on more than one occasion.)
Teresa is one of the foremost writers on mental prayer. Her definition was used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Mental prayer is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us."
The above is from Wikipedia, the rest is from six or seven different sites about St. Teresa.
About her life:
She grew up reading the lives of the saints and when she was seven she and her brother Roderigo decided to run away to Africa and ask the Moors to behead them so they could be martyrs. They didn't get very far before an uncle found them and took them home. They then decided to be hermits and tried building cells from stones in their garden.
Teresa's mother died when she was about 14 and she began to be more frivolous and rebellious than before. She loved to read chivalric tales (romances) as had her mother, but her mother had always hidden them from her husband, who disapproved of such books. Teresa was beautiful and spirited, loved clothes and music and loved to flirt with boys. She thought that she was "wicked."
After her mother's death, her father sent her to a school in Avila run by Augustinian nuns. After a year and a half at the school, she became very ill with malaria and went into a coma when she was taken home. For a period of days or weeks, she seemed to be dead except that her body was still warm enough to give the family hope. Her grave was dug, though, before she recovered. Once well, she visited relatives. When she returned home, she was afraid that her father was going to arrange a marriage for her and didn't know whether she wanted to marry or go into the convent. After reading the Letters of St. Jerome, she decided on the convent.
Her father refused to allow her to enter the convent so she went secretly to the Carmelite convent outside Avila. At some point after she had made her vows as Sister Teresa de Jesus a year later, she was again very sick and her father had her brought home. During the three years she was at home she began to practice mental prayer and at times attained the "prayer of union" when the soul's powers are absorbed in God. Her legs were paralyzed during this time.
When she recovered and returned to the convent again, she quit practicing mental prayer, falling into the habit of sitting in the convent parlor visiting with the other nuns and their visitors. (The convent was not cloistered and many of the nuns apparently had no vocation at all but had entered the convent to escape marriage, those being the only respectable options for women at the time.) Like St. Francis of Assisi, Teresa was charming and well-liked, which helped each of them found new religious orders but could also be a distraction from prayer. It took Teresa some time to break the habit of socializing, which she enjoyed more than she thought she should, and return to serious prayer. She made a lot of excuses to herself about how she really wasn't well, etc., about her failure to pray. Reading St. Augustine's Confessions was helpful to her during this time. After she returned to mental prayer, she never abandoned it again. As time went by, she had visions and heard inner voices. She was concerned about whether these came from God or Satan and regularly consulted priests for confession and guidance.
Sometimes when she had visions she was lifted into the air or levitated. She asked God to stop sending her such experiences because the other nuns saw them. Her most famous vision is known as the Transverberation; she saw an angel standing beside her with a golden lance with a flaming tip that he repeatedly pierced her heart with. Carmelites remember the Transverberation of St. Teresa's Heart on August 27. Jesuit and Dominican priests examined her and her writings (she was ordered to write about her spiritual experiences by her confessors) and concluded that they were genuine spiritual experiences from God, not from Satan. Many of the nuns in her convent, and townspeople as well, mocked her for her spiritual experiences. When she complained to Jesus in prayer that people were talking maliciously about her, Jesus replied "Teresa, that's how I treat my friends." She responded, "No wonder you have so few friends."
At age 43, Teresa decided to found a new Carmelite order that went back to the basic of Carmelite spirituality. They are the Discalced Carmelites, Discalced meaning "shoeless" because they wear sandals, a more austere practice, even with thick socks, in cold weather. The Discalced Carmelites are (or were) cloistered, and maintain silence most of the day. She ran into opposition from her own convent and civil authorities as well but eventually got her way and founded the first of the Discalced Carmelite convents at Avila, named after St. Joseph. While living there she wrote her Life, having been ordered to do so by the Inquisition. She was careful in what she wrote and would follow up the expression of a profound thought with statements like "But what do I know. I'm just a wretched women." The Inquisition was pleased with her humility. (Some men can be so easily fooled by an intelligent woman!) When she was 51, she felt that she should spread the reforms. She was often opposed; a papal nuncio called her "a restless disobedient gadabout who has gone about teaching as though she were a professor," Teresa founded at least six more convents before her death, and assisted Carmelite friars in founding two Discalced Carmelite monasteries. Although the Discalced Carmelites were more austere, they weren't completely somber, at least not when Teresa was around. They sang and danced at times and feasted as well as fasted.
When someone was shocked that Teresa was going to eat well, she answered, "There's a time for partridge and a time for penance."
St. Teresa died on October 4, 1582, but her feast is on October 15 because the Gregorian calendar came into use the day after her death. She had been asked to build a new convent by an archbishop but when she arrived, in pouring rain, he ordered her to leave. "And the weather so nice, too," she commented. She became ill and could not return home to Avila. After she was given the Last Rites, the priest asked her where she wanted to be buried, thinking she would want to return to Avila. She asked if they couldn't "spare a little ground" where she was and she was buried there at Alba de Tormes but later her body was returned to Avila.
St. Teresa is one of the incorruptibles; her body has never decayed. Her heart was removed from her body after her death and can also be seen in Avila. It's said to show traces of the Transverberation.
In 1970, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherina of Siena were the first women to be named Doctors of the Church.
"Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains everything. God alone is enough."
Saint Teresa of Avila
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