Today, the Church celebrates the Memorial of Saint Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish mystic who was born on 28 March 1515 and died on 4 October 1582. At her Baptism, she was given the name of Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada. It was thanks to her mother's desire to raise her as a Christian that Teresa first became fascinated with the lives of the saints. At the age of seven years, she ran away from home along with her brother Rodrigo and set off in search of martyrdom among the Moors - Muslim inhabitants who once populated the Iberian peninsula and the islands off the coast of present-day Italy during the Middle Ages.
Following the death of her mother, Teresa pursued her studies with the Augustinian nuns in Ávila but eventually - on 2 November 1535, at the age of twenty years - she entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila, seeking to live a contemplative life. However, there was a prevailing malaise among the 150 nuns who lived in that Monastery. Every day, many visitors would arrive, many of them of high social and political rankings. The spirit and practice of prayer became so lax that this was of great concern to Teresa, so in the early 1560s, she resolved to found a reformed Carmelite convent and to correct the laxity that she had discovered in the Convent of the Incarnation and elsewhere.
In 1563, Teresa moved into a newly-established Monastery of Saint Joseph (San José) and lived for the next five years in pious seclusion. She revived the earlier, stricter rules which had been part of the life of cloister and also added new rules such as three disciplines of ceremonial flagellation every week and the practice of discalceation, a term which refers to the removal of a nun's footwear. In time, this revived Order became known as the Discalced Carmelites.
In total, seventeen reformed convents for women, and as many for men, were founded throughout Spain over the next twenty years, though not without much resistance and opposition.
Teresa died on 15 October 1582. Her last words were: My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another. Pope GregoryXV canonized her in 1622 and on 27 September 1970, Pope Paul VI conferred upon her the distinction of Doctor of the Church.
Teresa's life and her commitment to the disciplines of the spiritual life were a sign to her generation (cf Lk 11:29) of the enduring importance of faith. May her prayers help us to cultivate lives of devotion and prayer in our times.
Have a great day.
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