St. Christopher Ladies Guild Woman of the Month

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582; canonized March 12, 1622)

When calling to mind the image of a Catholic nun, few might consider words like sensual, fiery, impetuous, free-spirited, and beautiful. The idea of a nun reading a romance novel or wildly dancing at a festival seems counterintuitive to the stereotype of nuns as austere, solemn, virginal, and quiet. Even fewer might entertain the idea of a nun prone to deeply sensual experiences that can arouse the body and soul. Yet, the famous Bernini statue “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” reveals a nun, writhing on the ground in a provocative manner, succumbing all of her bodily senses to the will of God as an angel penetrates her heart with a spear. The woman depicted here is not a lunatic or a fanatic–it is St. Teresa of Avila, the first female Doctor of the Church and master of the art of contemplative prayer. Bernini’s dramatic representation of St. Teresa’s self-professed vision of an angel piercing her heart is only one example of the zealous and fervent way that this saint lived and loved the Lord. Her life and legacy compel us to redefine the generalized perception of how a pious woman should think, behave, and act, ultimately encouraging us to strive for more passion in our own relationship with God. 

Born into a Catholic family on March 28, 1515, St. Teresa’s father was one of the wealthiest merchants in Avila. As a young girl, she enjoyed many comforts and luxuries. She was notorious for reading romance novels, indulging in fine food, and Spanish folk dancing. With many friends and a reputation for being a beautiful free-spirit, she attracted the eyes of several men. When she was twelve years old, her mother died in childbirth and St. Teresa was sent to live and learn at the easy-going Carmelite convent of the Incarnation, an order that she eventually joined in 1534. St. Teresa’s total willingness to leave her comfortable life and adopt the simple, pious lifestyle of a religious nun appears to have come naturally and without displeasure (Book of my Life, 15). 

Despite having lived as a nun for more than twenty years, St. Teresa confesses that her sublime love affair with God did not start to heat up until her late-thirties (Starr, xxi). Arguably, this turning point in St. Teresa’s life might not have transpired without the influence of many historical, personal, and transcendental factors. From a historical standpoint, the sixteenth century proved to be a particularly volatile time to be a Catholic nun in Spain. Not only was the Catholic Church suffering from the political and religious threats of the Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition, but the Carmelite Order was undergoing its own internal revolution, led largely by St. Teresa. In 1555, St. Teresa and a group of fellow Carmelite nuns left the Order of the Incarnation, with its looser rules and access to many modern conveniences, to start their own religious order of the Carmelites that favored a cloistered life with strict rules on fasting, restraint, and even self-flagellation. They were called the first order of the Discalced Carmelites because they wore no shoes and walked barefoot. Many Carmelites of the Ancient Order felt criticized and took defensive action, swaying church leaders to threaten excommunication for St. Teresa and her followers. Ultimately, the Bishop of Avila became St. Teresa’s ally. He recognized the new Carmelite Order as legitimate and encouraged St. Teresa to travel throughout Spain to create new ministries and reform existing orders of religious life. To this day, St. Teresa remains the only Catholic female to reform an all-male religious order, the Carmelite Monastery run by her dear friend, St. John of the Cross. Her work to transform religious life had a profound influence on the acceptance of the Catholic Church during the Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition. Today, the Carmelites maintain two independent branches, those of the Ancient Observance and those who live according to the way of St. Teresa of Avila.

Personally, St. Teresa suffered a terrible health setback just three years after taking holy orders. Doctors of today who study accounts of St. Teresa’s symptoms believe she may have suffered from some form of epilepsy throughout her life that provoked seizures and trances, sometimes causing residual side effects like pain, paralysis, and memory loss lasting for days, weeks, and even months. The most serious of these episodes nearly brought Teresa to her death. In her autobiography, she reflects on this scary time in her life, stating, “I sometimes thought that if I were to recover my health only to go out and miss the mark all over again, it would be better to stay sick. But I still believed that I could be of greater service to God if I were well. This is how we deceive ourselves: we do not surrender entirely to God’s will, even though he is the one who knows what is best for us” (Book of my Life, 35). During her eight-month long recovery St. Teresa had to relearn how to walk and care for herself independently, but she also developed a sense of humility and deep yearning to be closer to God. She began to move away from prescribed prayer devotions in favor of a more contemplative form of prayer. 

St. Teresa devoted most of her remaining life to mastering contemplative prayer. To St. Teresa, prayer is an artform whose ultimate goal is to discover one’s soul, which she believed was unified with God himself (Life Intro xxix). On the request of her superiors, St. Teresa documented her journey with contemplative prayer in her three major works: The Book of my Life, The Way of Perfection, and Interior Castle. Her writings and devotion to this artform prompted Pope Paul VI to grant her the title of Doctor of Prayer posthumously in 1970, making St. Teresa the first female doctor of the Catholic Church. Arguably the most influential of her writings is Interior Castle, intended as a manual to Carmelite nuns on how to navigate through the seven layers of your inner being, which she metaphorically compares to the seven mansions within a castle. The seventh and innermost mansion of the castle contains only your soul, in its purest form, uninhibited by any corporal or worldly attachments. She states, “in the centre of the soul there is a mansion reserved for God himself” (Interior Castle, 276). According to St. Teresa, not all of us will receive the grace necessary to visit the seventh mansion in this lifetime. Those who do achieve divine union with Almighty God are granted the wisdom to know and fully understand sacred truths, like the Blessed Trinity, while souls who have only ventured to the outer mansions must rely upon blind faith alone (Interior Castle, 277). Her writings are intensely erotic and include vivid descriptions of transcendental and out-of-body experiences, mystical visions, and corporal sensations that St. Teresa claims are sent by God and can only occur through this journey of contemplative prayer into the innermost mansions of your soul.

The most famous of these transcendental experiences is unquestionably the Transverberation, depicted in the well-known baroque statue by Bernini. St. Teresa’s own meditation on this experience, translated by Mirabai Starr, is provided below for your consideration. It may be hard for many of us, particularly those who have yet to receive the grace to enter the seventh mansion, to understand or even believe that such an intimate encounter with a heavenly body is actually possible here on Earth; however, St. Teresa’s life and quest to divinely unite her soul with the Lord certainly offers the possibility that a deeper, more passionate relationship with God can be attained if we continue to open each mansion door that is before us.

You can find the St. Teresa of Avila novena here.