St. Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus. Original name Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada.
Born March 28, 1515 in Ávila, Spain. She died October 4, 1582 in Alba de Tormes. Spain
She was canonised 1622; Feast day October 15.
Life
One of the great mystics and religious women of the Roman Catholic Church, and author of spiritual classics.
She was the originator of the Carmelite Reform, which restored and emphasised the austerity and contemplative character of primitive Carmelite life.
St. Teresa was elevated to doctor of the church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, the first woman to be so honoured.
Her mother died in 1529, and, despite her father’s opposition, Teresa entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at Ávila, Spain. Within two years her health collapsed, and she was an invalid for three years, during which time she developed a love for mental prayer. After her recovery, however, she stopped praying.
She continued for 15 years in a state divided between a worldly and a divine spirit, until, in 1555, she underwent a religious awakening.
In 1558 Teresa began to consider the restoration of Carmelite life to its original observance of austerity, which had relaxed in the 14th and 15th centuries. Her reform required utter withdrawal so that the nuns could meditate on divine law and, through a prayerful life of penance, exercise what she termed “our vocation of reparation” for the sins of humankind.
In 1562, with Pope Pius IV’s authorisation, she opened the first convent (St. Joseph’s) of the Carmelite Reform. A storm of hostility came from municipal and religious personages, especially because the convent existed without endowment, but she staunchly insisted on poverty and subsistence only through public alms.
John Baptist Rossi, the Carmelite prior general from Rome, went to Ávila in 1567 and approved the reform, directing Teresa to found more convents and to establish monasteries. In the same year, while at Medina del Campo, Spain, she met a young Carmelite priest, Juan de Yepes (later St. John of the Cross, the poet and mystic), who she realised could initiate the Carmelite Reform for men. A year later Juan opened the first monastery of the Primitive Rule at Duruelo, Spain.
Despite frail health and great difficulties, Teresa spent the rest of her life establishing and nurturing 16 more convents throughout Spain.
In 1575, while she was at the Sevilla (Seville) convent, a jurisdictional dispute erupted between the friars of the restored Primitive Rule, known as the Discalced (or “Unshod”) Carmelites, and the observants of the Mitigated Rule, the Calced (or “Shod”) Carmelites.
Although she had foreseen the trouble and endeavoured to prevent it, her attempts failed. The Carmelite general, to whom she had been misrepresented, ordered her to retire to a convent in Castile and to cease founding additional convents; Juan was subsequently imprisoned at Toledo in 1577.
In 1579, largely through the efforts of King Philip II of Spain, who knew and admired Teresa, a solution was effected whereby the Carmelites of the Primitive Rule were given independent jurisdiction, confirmed in 1580 by a rescript of Pope Gregory XIII.
Teresa, broken in health, was then directed to resume the reform. In journeys that covered hundreds of miles, she made exhausting missions and was fatally stricken en route to Ávila from Burgos, Spain.
Teresa’s ascetic doctrine has been accepted as the classical exposition of the contemplative life, and her spiritual writings are among the most widely read.
Her Life of the Mother Teresa of Jesus (1611) is autobiographical; the Book of the Foundations (1610) describes the establishment of her convents.
Her recognised written masterpieces on the progress of the Christian soul toward God through prayer and contemplation are The Way of Perfection (1583), The Interior Castle (1588), Spiritual Relations, Exclamations of the Soul to God (1588), and Conceptions on the Love of God.
For Teresa, prayer is the source of Christian life and the wellspring of all moral virtues. Prayer is not everything, but without prayer, nothing else is possible. By prayer does the soul continue the journey. And through prayer, God works, in mysterious, often unpredictable ways, as the soul works strongly also. Without the soul's active compliance, God will not move (though human effort cannot do what God alone must do).
Quotes from St. Teresa of Ávila
Let nothing Disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, Though all things pass, God does not change. Patience wins all things. But he lacks nothing who possesses God; For God alone suffices.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which Christ looks out his compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.
The surest way to determine whether one possesses the love of God is to see whether he or she loves his or her neighbor. These two loves are never separated. Rest assured, the more you progress in love of neighbor the more your love of God will increase.
Prayer is an act of love. Words are not needed.
They deceive themselves who believe that union with God consists in ecstasies or raptures, and in the enjoyment of Him. For it consists in nothing except the surrender and subjection of our will - with our thoughts, words and actions - to the will of God.
References
Saint Teresa of Avila | Biography, Facts, Prayer, Feast Day, & Works | Britannica
Teresa of Avila | Christian History | Christianity Today
TOP 25 QUOTES BY TERESA OF AVILA (of 286) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)