Pentecost: Ordinary Women: Teresa of Avila

Our Pentecost series about ‘ordinary women’ has looked at modern women and Biblical women. We’ve learned about a couple of nurses and a labor activist, along with a queen, and a mother with her daughter-in-law. Now we turn from Mary Magdalene and Judith, two Bible women who have stories of radical response to God’s call in their lives, to a woman of the Renaissance.

Earlier this week was the feast day of Teresa of Avila, at 16^th century nun who reformed the Carmelite order. An insightful meditation on her life was written by Dana Kramer-Rolls for Episcopal Café. Kramer-Rolls notes that we don’t always “like words like “obedient,” “humility,” and we distrust “passion.”  We are much more comfortable with “justice,” “protest,” “resist,” which certainly have their place. But subjection to God also has Gospel approbation, and obedience and discernment ought to precede action or a contemplative life.” She goes on to say, “We face Teresa’s tension. For us the power of the Church now resides in the State, and we still struggle with discernment…the path of humility and obedience, however unpopular and painful, offers a path to peace beyond words, and a friendship with and passion for our Lord and our God beyond anything which the world offers.”

Teresa was a woman who lived the Sermon on the Mount. She knew that “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:3-4)

She was born in 1515 in Avila, Spain to a wealthy wool merchant, Alonso Sancez de Cepeda and Beatriz de Ahumada y Cuevas. After her mother died when she was 11, Teresa was sent to the Augustine monastery at Avila where she was often ill. During her sicknesses, she experienced religious ecstasy. She insisted that she rose to the ‘devotions of ecstasy’-perfect union with God. As promised, she found comfort in God’s presence in the visions.

Matthew 5:5 says, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Even though she did not seek it, Teresa found herself acting as a reformer. At 20, she entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. She almost immediately began to feel that reform was needed. As Kramer-Rolls says, it had become more like a social club. It wasn’t until she was 45 (in 1560) when the Franciscan Saint Peter of Alcantara became her spiritual advisor. With his support, and funding by Guimara de Ulloa, a woman of wealth, she established the monastery of San Jose in 1562 on the model of absolute poverty. She received papal sanction to the prime principle of absolute poverty and renunciation of property. She revived strict rules; and added ceremonial flagellation each week. In 1567 she began to establish new houses around Spain.

Teresa is well known for her visions. Throughout her life she was felt “hunger and thirst for righteousness”…and felt “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:6, 8). Starting in 1559, she had two years of visions of Christ present in bodily form, though invisible. Her most famous vision is immortalized in The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini, found in the Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. She explained, “I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it...”

Teresa was not just a person given to visions. She was a hard worker. Her life and witness convinced John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus to found Discalced Carmelite Brethren houses for men in 1568 and others over the next 8 years. As the Sermon on the Mount notes, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5: 7, 9)

Teresa offers a path toward union with God as outlined in her work The Interior Castle. She died in 1582. Forty years later she was canonized by Pope Gregory XV and in 1970 she and Saint Catherine of Siena were both named as Doctors of the Church by Pope Paul VI. They were the first women awarded this honor.

Her life was not without struggle, though. Jesus promises, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)

Teresa perhaps found comfort in those words. Her paternal grandfather had been Jewish but was forced to convert to Christianity, and in fact was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for reverting to Judaism. He was able to refute the charges and reassume a Christian identity when her father was a child. The stigma lingered in the family, though, prompting her mother to be especially fervent in securing Christian teaching for her daughter.  

Not everyone approved of her work and even other Carmelite orders persecuted her. In 1576 she was forbidden from founding convents. The Spanish Inquisition even considered whether she was a heretic. The trials continued until King Phillip II of Spain intervened and the Inquisition charges were dropped in 1579.

Even though the poem Christ has no body now but yours is attributed to Teresa, there is no record of it in her writings. Another prayer that was found in her books, in her own handwriting, could be a summary of the Sermon on the Mount and a hymn of praise to trusting in God.

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.

— St Teresa, The bookmark of Teresa of Ávila

Are there parts of the Sermon on the Mount that apply to your life?

Does the prayer above comfort you with the idea that ‘God alone suffices’? Is there another phrase in the prayer that seems important to you?