Teresa of Jesus, Saint

TERESA OF JESUS, Saint. - Reformer of the Carmelite Order, mystical writer, in the world Teresa de Ahumada, b. in Avila (Spain) on 29 March 1515, d. on 4 Oct. 1582 at Alba de Tormes.

I. ACTIVITY

Her childhood was fervent; in her youth, however, she experienced a period of dissipation, from which she recovered when at the age of 16, after the death of her mother Beatrice, she entered as a boarder with the Augustinian nuns. Having returned to her father's house at the end of 1533, she managed it until, secretly, given her father Alfonso Sanchez de Cepeda's opposition, she left it to enter the Carmelite monastery of the Incarnation in Avila; she took the habit there on 2 Nov. 1536.

Even in the convent, an initial period of great fervor was followed by lesser fidelity, and this time for a long while. In the year of her religious profession (1537) she fell gravely ill and underwent such a kind of treatment that, after having endangered her life, it left her in a pitiable state, all curled up on herself like a ball of yarn (Vita, c. 6). At that time, however, she devoted herself fervently to prayer and was favored with certain graces of infused contemplation. But these disappeared when T., having recovered from her illness through the intercession of St. Joseph, whom she fervently invoked, began to associate with excessive frequency with people of the world and became so distracted that she even abandoned mental prayer. Her father's death (1543) impelled her to take up the practice of it assiduously again, and from then on she never abandoned it: but in her the struggle between the demands of God and those of a worldly spirit lasted a full 18 years, as she herself relates. Her definitive conversion to a life of fervor came at about the age of 40, and was due to providential encounters that recalled her to a greater seriousness of life. With fervor the mystical graces also returned, infused contemplation returned, which in two years (in 1557)

reached ecstasy, and the interior locutions began, to which in 1559 the visions were added; famous is that of the "transverberation," which was renewed several times. These graces were for T. the occasion of many tribulations, because at first the people she consulted on the matter believed her deceived by Satan, but she was later reassured by saintly persons, among whom were St. Francis Borgia and St. Peter of Alcantara. In 1560 she made the "vow of the most perfect" and labored tirelessly in the founding of her monasteries, which from the year 1567 began to multiply. She reached the summit of the mystical life (seventh mansions) around 1570; it seems that the grace of the mystical marriage must be referred to 18 Nov. Her last extensive spiritual account, of 1581, the year before her death, presents her in a state of profound peace: "The imaginative visions have ceased. Yet it seems to me that I always have before me the intellectual vision of the Three divine Persons and of the Humanity of Our Lord... The interior locutions still continue... However strong the desires (to work) may be, I desire more the fulfillment of God's will and the possibility of contributing to his greater glory... I love only God: and this love, it seems to me, far from diminishing, is always increasing, in proportion to the desire that the Lord be served by all" (to the bishop of Osma). She died after an ecstasy that lasted 14 hours, at the age of 67. Her body remained incorrupt and for a long time flexible.

The work of T. as reformer fits into the general movement of Catholic religious reform which was centered on the Council of Trent (1545-63): an air of renewed fervor breathed throughout the Europe that had remained Catholic. The Carmelite Order, of which T. was a part, in Castile was far from flourishing, and her own monastery did not even have obligatory enclosure. Feeling the need for greater solitude in order to devote herself to the life of prayer, to which she felt driven by the contemplative graces she enjoyed, she joyfully welcomed the idea, which arose in a conversation among friends, of founding a reformed monastery of strict enclosure, and she later had confirmation of it in her interior locutions. On 24 Aug. 1562 she succeeded in founding it, despite the very great opposition she encountered in Avila, but T. had to abandon it on the very day of the foundation, having been promptly recalled to her monastery of origin; only after a year was she able to join her first companions.

The four years that followed were those of the spiritual organization of the new foundation: T. gave it an eminently apostolic spirit: her daughters would become intimate friends of the Lord with a life of total self-giving, and would use their power of intercession to draw down divine graces upon the Church and in particular upon its priesthood. The "penitential" life of the Discalced Carmelites finds its special motive in the intent to respond to the needs of the Church. In these same years T. made the first draft of her Constitutions, which make more concrete the return to the "primitive" Rule of Carmel, which in 1432 had been mitigated precisely in its central precept, which is the great retirement of life. With specific provisions of enclosure, solitude and silence, T. created in her monasteries so characteristic an environment of retreat that she could write: "we intend to live not only as nuns, but as hermits" (Cammino di perfezione, 13, 6), and proclaim that the whole ideal of her daughters lies in wishing to live "alone with Him alone" (Matobiografia, 36, 29), solely intent on pleasing him and on praying for the needs of the Church, accompanying prayer with immolation.

The general of the Order, Fr. Giovan Battista de' Rossi, who in 1567 went to visit T. in her monastery and approved its institute and Constitutions, gave her the order to spread her reform: that same year T. set her hand to the work by founding the monastery of Medina del Campo and did not cease founding others until her death, reaching a total of eighteen monasteries. Only during the years 1576-79, in which within the Order itself the storm against the reform raged, did she have to interrupt these characteristic pilgrimages of hers across Spain with which she founded her "dovecotes of the Virgin." So that her Daughters could be suitably guided in their spiritual life, she had found it necessary to have fathers of the same Order who lived a life similar to theirs, and she had obtained from the father general the founding of convents of "contemplative" fathers. Thus was born, with the cooperation of St. John (v.) of the Cross, the reform of the Discalced Carmelite fathers (1568). After some time, however, most painful conflicts of jurisdiction arose between the nascent branch and the old trunk, and the father general himself was so displeased by them that he ordered T. to remain shut up in a monastery. But then the storm was calmed and a year before her death, in 1581, T. had the joy of seeing her Constitutions excellently ordered and approved in the Chapter of Alcalà. She thus left her Institute perfectly oriented and organized.

II. MYSTICAL DOCTRINE

Without having properly devoted herself to study, T. loved reading greatly, and in fact penetrated numerous spiritual books that sharpened her great intelligence and enriched her conception of the interior life, which she later set forth in her mystical works. Her gifts as a writer are not limited, moreover, to this field; in her very extensive correspondence she touches on the most varied subjects with lively narratives and evocative descriptions of her foundations. Her mystical writings, however, deserve quite singular attention, because they offer a most notable and foremost contribution to the progress of spiritual science. More than properly doctrinal and theological, T.'s mysticism is descriptive; it refers to the experience of contemplative souls and especially, often concealed by anonymity, to her own personal experience, on which her exposition effectively hinges. T., however, knew how to frame contemplative and mystical graces so well within the whole of the spiritual life and to indicate so clearly their relation to the other elements of the interior life, that the whole of her teaching constitutes a true doctrine of the contemplative life and serves as an excellent guide for souls of the spiritual life. Its main points can be summarized in 5 points. - 1. Concept of perfection. T. does not confuse Christian perfection with contemplative graces: her thought on this is clear and constant: «It is clear that the highest perfection does not consist in interior sweetnesses nor in great raptures nor visions, nor in the spirit of prophecy; but in our will being so conformed to that of God that there be nothing of which we understand that he desires it, that we do not will it with all our will, and that we accept with the same cheerfulness the sweet and the bitter, once we know that His Majesty wills it (Foundations, 5, 10). - 2. Contemplative graces. Nevertheless T. greatly esteems contemplative graces and believes that to this «fountain of living water» God in a certain way invites all, although not all must drink from the fountain with the same abundance. She holds that God willingly grants these graces to souls that prepare themselves for them by a life of continual prayer and generous self-giving, and that they constitute a shortcut to arrive more quickly at holiness. They are therefore truly desirable; but being divine gifts that God grants «to whom he wills, when he wills», we cannot entertain any claim regarding them. Furthermore, extraordinary graces must be distinguished from contemplation: supernatural visions and locutions, which are much more subject to deception and which cannot be desired because that would be like opening the door to various illusions. - 3. Contemplative asceticism. There exists, therefore, a form of asceticism that prepares the soul to receive contemplative graces from God, an asceticism practiced in the monasteries of the Discalced Carmelite nuns founded by T., and the Saint attests that for the most part, in fact, the vast majority of her daughters came to obtain such graces. This asceticism, described in the Way of Perfection, consists fundamentally in the heroic practice of various virtues, which work in the soul a complete detachment from creatures, and in the active exercise of an intense mental prayer whose progressive development T. sets forth. - 4. Infused contemplation. In her Interior Castle, from the «fourth mansions» onward T. describes the various forms of infused contemplation, characterized by the greater or lesser passivity of the soul that receives God's gift: sometimes in a way that does not suppress all personal cooperation (semi-passive prayer, of the type: prayer of quiet), sometimes so as to absorb the soul totally in such a way that there is no place for its personal activity: yet the soul acts, because it knows and loves (prayer of union, totally passive). Each of these two types of prayer knows various nuances. The most important are those of the prayer of union, which can be simple union (fifth mansions) or become ecstasy through the irruption of God's action and the profound manifestation of the divine object (sixth mansions), or else takes a form that is in a certain way permanent, although the experimental union with God does not always present the same intensity (seventh mansions). In the Teresian schema of mystical graces, «true» visions appear only in the sixth mansions (when the soul in contemplation reaches ecstasy), and the imaginative ones tend to disappear in the seventh mansions. - 5. Christological mysticism. T. had a profound sense of Christ's mediating function also throughout the whole mystical life. Not only did she never wish to admit that it is fitting to remove the remembrance of Christ's Humanity for the development of contemplation, but she positively recommended to the soul that practices prayer to cultivate contact with Him who, even in the world of mystical graces, is the way that leads to the Father. She was and always is Teresa of Jesus.

The works of St. T. were published a very short time after her death. The major ones are: the Autobiography, the Way of Perfection, the Foundations, the Interior Castle or Mansions; the minor ones: the Spiritual Relations, the Thoughts on the Love of God, the Exclamations, the Admonitions, the Poems, and two writings of an organizational and administrative nature: the Constitutions and the Manner of Visiting the Monasteries of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns. For the most part they are still preserved today in autograph manuscripts. In the edition of Luis de León (1588), the Foundations are missing from among the major ones. They were progressively translated into all the principal European languages and down to our own days they continue to spread throughout the world in renewed versions and multiple editions. In Italy there exist two recent versions of the Works: the first by the Discalced Carmelite fathers Egidio di Gesù and Federico del S.mo Sacramento, gathered in a single volume (Milan 1932; 2nd ed., Rome 1950); the second is by M. N. Morando (4 vols., Rome, ed. S. Paolo, 1945-50). These works are certainly among the most widely read spiritual works. In this way they nourish in the Church a broad spiritual current. With regard especially to mysticism, it must be recognized that T.'s descriptions, so precise, she who was endowed with an extraordinary gift of introspection and a special talent for expression, have provided scholars with material so abundant and important that it has made it possible to renew in a certain way the study of mysticism, giving it a broader documentary basis. But the especially precious influence of the great Saint in the Church consists in the admirable diffusion of her Institute: the monasteries of Discalced Carmelite nuns are at present 700 scattered throughout the world, about fifty of which are in Mission lands.

ART

The authentic features of St. Teresa of Avila, during her lifetime, were portrayed by the Carmelite friar Juan de la Miseria. The portraits and engravings of the seventeenth century derive from him.

St. Teresa is usually depicted in a moment of ecstasy, when an Angel pierces her heart with a golden dart. The most remarkable among the depictions of this mystical scene is due to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome (v. reproduction vol. II, pl. xcii). Of the same kind is the Vision of St. Teresa, painted at the same time by Guercino, now preserved at the Brera in Milan. The statue by Pierre Legros in the Cathedral of Turin, half a century later, also depicts the Saint in ecstasy, but there is no Angel beside her.

In a painting, now in the Museum of Antwerp, P. P. Rubens depicted Christ appearing to St. Teresa as helper of souls in Purgatory. In the church of the Scalzi in Venice Gian Battista Tiepolo painted the Glory of St. Teresa. See pl. CXLI.

Witold Wehr