“Prayer is nothing more than spending a long time alone with the One I know loves me.”
— Saint Teresa of Avila
Born in Ávila, Spain, on March 28, 1515, Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada grew up in a devout, noble family. An imaginative and spirited child, she was obsessed with stories of saints and martyrs, going so far as to run away with her brother at age seven with the goal of being martyred by the Moors.
When Teresa was 14, her mother passed away. Deeply grief-stricken, she knelt before a statue of the Virgin Mary, asking her to take over as her spiritual mother. This loss prompted a temporary shift in her religious focus, though she struggled during her teenage years with the appeal of worldly interests, romance novels, and fashion.
In 1535, at age 20, she secretly fled her father's home to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila. While her father was initially opposed to the move, he eventually consented, providing a generous dowry and acquiring a private room for her.
Shortly after taking her vows, Teresa developed a severe illness that caused temporary paralysis. During her three-year convalescence, she began to practice mental prayer. For nearly two decades, Teresa found herself torn between worldly pleasures and her deep spiritual calling. This tension broke when she was 39, leading to profound spiritual awakenings that directed her toward religious Catholic reform and mysticism.
Teresa was smart, popular, witty, and stubborn. She could be a savvy politician. She had to know how to wheel and deal within the restrictions placed on women in 16th-century Spain to get what she wanted and what she was convinced God wanted.
She knew how to work with Bishops and Kings in order to advance her Carmelite reform and her new monasteries where her teachings would be lived.
One of the most well-known representations of Teresa is Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s magnificent marble sculpture of the saint in ecstasy. Teresa is reclining off the cloud she lies on, while a smiling angel is poised to shoot a flaming dart into her heart. The sculpture is based on an actual event in her life, in which Teresa of Avila describes being filled with God’s love.
But while ecstasies and other spiritual experiences were common in Teresa of Avila’s mystical life, they never prevented her from being grounded in reality, or from being totally human. When a prioress fretted about a nun whose fainting spells were supposedly due to ecstasy, Teresa told her to make sure the woman was eating enough, and to keep her busy. And, for those who would have preferred a stroll in the garden to kitchen duty, Teresa of Avila reminded them that “God walks among the pots and pans.”
Saint Teresa was warm, outgoing, and unfailingly loyal. She deeply loved her nuns and her family. Her down-to-earth letters are full of motherly concern about their health and even their financial problems.
She wanted her nuns to have fun; in fact, in her Rule, she called for two periods of recreation every day—a healthy balance to the intense hours of prayer and work. La Madre herself even brought out the castanets and tambourine, dancing and singing for convent recreations. Teresa had no patience with gloomy personalities. “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us!” she wrote.
The Convent of the Incarnation, which Teresa of Avila entered at 20, was a large place—and financially strapped. In Teresa’s day, up to 200 nuns lived there. Nuns who came from wealthy families had servants and comfortable quarters; Teresa herself had a large suite with its own kitchen, which can still be seen today. With this busy round of socializing and coming and going, the nuns’ personal prayers went on the back burner.
As Teresa realized that God was calling her into a deeper relationship with Him, she felt that, in her current setting, she couldn’t achieve the recollection and attention to prayer she needed. She and some friends brainstormed about starting a small convent, based on the hermit roots of the Carmelite Order in the Holy Land. Here, a loving community of only a few nuns would focus on a life dedicated to prayer—so that in Teresa’s plan, “all would be known, all would be loved,” which she felt couldn’t happen easily in a huge religious house.
Being few in number, Teresa of Avila reasoned, the nuns also would have few needs. This would free them for the life of prayer they came for. But the prayer Teresa envisioned was not simply to be repetitive recitations or purely out of obligation. It was to flow from a deep friendship with Christ.
Prayer, she explained, “means taking time frequently to be alone with the One who we know loves us.” Teresa of Avila wanted all her nuns to enjoy mutual respect and equality. She set the example herself by putting aside her title of Doña, common among upscale Spanish families, and chose to be called simply Teresa of Jesus.
During the period of her life when she had already reached the highest stages of mystical prayer and union with God, Teresa of Avila was simultaneously juggling many demanding down-to-earth duties that would challenge the busiest multitasker.
Teresa lived in a whirlwind of activity. While re editing her manuscript on prayer (her censor/editor was aiming to keep her away from the clutches of the Inquisition), she was also corresponding with the superiors of her convents about issues ranging from personnel problems to property lines.
Perhaps Teresa of Avila’s greatest gift to busy people committed to the spiritual journey is the truth that ordinary life and holiness are not in conflict. There need be no separation from immersion in the real world and its challenges, and ongoing, prayerful union with God. When she died, the following thoughts in her handwriting were found written in the margins of her breviary. We don’t know if Teresa composed what has come to be called “Saint Teresa’s Bookmark” or not, but its message is one we know inspired her.
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things pass away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
They who have God
lack nothing.
God alone is enough.
Teresa of Jesus never set out to be a writer; she was content living a life of prayer as a cloistered nun. But as the founder of many convents and also a businesswoman, Teresa of Avila soon discovered that writing came with the territory. She wrote nine books and hundreds of letters. Fortunately for us, Teresa’s confessors and superiors ordered her to write some of the books that have come down to us today. Others were written at the urging of her nuns who were in need of guidance.
Today, we have six major and four minor works that are her authentic writings. Teresa’s major works are The Book of Her Life(autobiography), The Way of Perfection, The Interior Castle, The Book of the Foundations, Meditations on the Song of Songs, and the Letters (almost 500 extant). Her so-called minor writings are Spiritual Testimonies, The Visitation of Convents, Soliloquies, and her Poems.
Three Poems of Saint Teresa
God alone is enough
God alone is enough
Let nothing upset you,
let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins
all it seeks.
Whoever has God
lacks nothing:
God alone is enough.
I Will Just Say This
I Will Just Say This
We
bloomed in Spring.
Our bodies
are the leaves of God.
The apparent seasons of life and death
our eyes can suffer;
but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright:
they are God
Himself,
we will never
perish
unless He
does.
I Would Cease to Be
God dissolved my mind – my separation.
I cannot describe my intimacy with Him.
How dependent is your body’s life on water and food and air?
I said to God, ‘ I will always be unless you cease to Be,’
And my Beloved replied, ‘And I would cease to Be if you died.’
From: Love Poems from God, by Daniel Ladinsky. Copyright © 2002by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.