TERESA MARGHERITA of the HEART of JESUS, Saint. — Born Anna Maria Redi, niece of the physician-poet Francesco, she was born in Arezzo on 15 July 1747. Educated by the Benedictine nuns of S. Apollonia in Florence, she entered the Carmel of S. Teresa in the same city on 10 September 1764 and died there on 7 March 1770. Her body is preserved incorrupt.
Her spirituality is distinguished by a perfect balance of all the fundamental aspects of the spiritual life: she is a great mystic, yet ever devoted to asceticism, she is consumed in the constant service of many sick sisters. Nourished by Sacred Scripture, dogma, and liturgy, she experienced the most pronounced contemplative aridity. The dominant note of her inner life was the study of hiddenness: she is the saint of the hidden life. Her spiritual journey led her from the Sacred Heart to the Trinity. Having fully assimilated the teachings of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, she then lived them in a personal way through the imitation of the hidden life of the Soul and Heart of Christ; from there she ascended to the search for intimacy with the Most Holy Trinity through a combination of ascetic and liturgical practices crowned by profound trinitarian contemplation. She then devoted herself entirely to the Church, overflowing with the abundance of the impulses of the Holy Spirit of which she felt personally gratified. She is the purest and most perfect realization of the Teresian ideal. She was canonized on 19 March 1934. She is the youngest saint of the Teresian Carmel.