Teresa de Ahumada was born at Avila in Spain in 1515 of parents who were particularly religious and charitable and whose virtues left their mark on their whole family. She admits to having had keen desires as a child to serve God, but losing them later. She was extremely intelligent and lively with a genius for friendship. As a boarder in an Augustinian convent she slowly regained her attraction to prayer with the help of a nun who spoke to her of her own experience and spiritual life in a way that moved her deeply. At first Teresa felt a great resistance to any thought of becoming a nun herself, but at the same time disliked the loss of independence that marriage would bring. Once she had decided to follow the vocation to which God was clearly calling her, and being unable to get the consent of her father, she took matters into her own hands and entered the Convent of the Incarnation in 1536 and was professed the following year at the age of 22. Within a year her health gave way and for three years she was undergoing treatment while staying with her uncle. Her uncle gave her Francisco de Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet to read. It was this book that launched her on the path of mystical prayer. In ‘Life’ chapter 4 she describes how God flooded her with gifts of grace - “The Lord began to be so gracious to me on this way of prayer that he granted me the favour of leading me to the Prayer of Quiet, and occasionally even to Union…”

Mother Foundress

God gives to founders of religious orders all the grace they need for their important role in his kingdom, and Teresa had gifts both of nature and of grace in its fullness. In 1562 she gathered together some young and likeminded Sisters and worked for reform, founding a new Carmel, St Joseph’s in Avila, which returned to the ideals of the original 13th century group of hermits who lived by the Primitive Rule of St Albert on Mount Carmel.

In 1567, experiencing a powerful call to further the apostolate of prayer she began to found more Carmels at the request of the Superior General Fr John Baptist Rubeo. Altogether she was to found 17 Carmels in Spain. Meanwhile in 1568 she had founded the first convent of the friars at Duruelo with the help of St John of the Cross. The friars were to combine a contemplative life with an active ministry to God’s people. The Carmelite nuns and friars together with the lay Carmelites were to become known as the Order of Discalced Carmelites, to distinguish them from the Carmelites of the Primitive Observance.

                      

Spiritual Teacher and Writer

While still at the convent of the Incarnation, St Teresa was ordered to write an account of all the graces of prayer she had experienced so that her confessors might be able to understand them better. Reluctant at first and feeling unqualified for this, she nevertheless set to work and finished the first draft of her ‘Life’ just two months before she founded St Joseph’s. She was in fact a born writer, vivid and spontaneous, with a wealth of imagination and expression, and completely transparent in her narrative of her relationship with God and especially with Christ’s humanity. This account is best understood in its ecclesial and sacramental framework. She experienced Christ not only in her prayer but above all really and substantially in the Eucharist, Christ’s body broken for us and his blood shed for us. The Eucharist was truly at the very centre of her life. She completed the final version of the Life three years later at St Joseph’s, in 1565. At about the same time she began writing ‘The Way of Perfection’ at the urgent request of her young Sisters, so that they would never lose all the advice and teaching she gave them on prayer and on their life together, practical advice that all could share. At the same time she wrote the ‘Teresian Constitutions’ reinterpreting the Rule in the light of her own charism. Her loving dedication to Christ our Lord and her spirit of totality in God’s service are thus instilled into her daughters and sons as they follow on her way.

In 1567 she started to found the convents of the Reform and by 1573 she was beginning to write the ‘Book of Foundations’ which she only managed to complete in the year of her death in 1582. Meanwhile she had written her ‘Commentary on the Song of Songs’ between 1572 and 1575. Then in 1577 while her ‘Life’ was with the Inquisition Fr Gracian ordered her to write another book about her prayer in the third person, and herself recognising how far she had advanced in the mystical life she began writing ‘The Interior Castle’, completing it in the same year. These major works of St Teresa along with her lesser ones give us today a treasury of teaching on the spiritual life which is both deeply inspiring and accessible to all. Throughout her life she was also writing numerous letters in which her rich personality comes across even more vividly. Better than any history they record in a living way her actual experience of each event as it happens and introduce us moreover to the many people she had to deal with and work with in the course of her foundations, notably Gracian, her preferred guide and her other Carmelite companions.

Doctor of the Church

St Teresa of Jesus is revealed in all she writes as utterly human, wise, generous and warmhearted, broadminded and humorous, the most attractive and winning of saints. She was canonised in 1622 and in 1965 Pope Paul VI named her ‘Principle Patron of Catholic Writers of Spain’. But it is not just her writing that we value, it is above all her teaching on prayer and relationship with God. Her doctrine comes from her own mystical experience of the Spirit’s working, an experience that was abundant and comprehensive. And it is this that gives her the special charism of witnessing to the Divine mysteries of the Christian revelation in such a way that all the faithful and the whole people of God are built up by it. The charism marked her out as a true teacher accredited by God, which was eventually recognised officially when Pope Paul VI in 1970 proclaimed her the first woman Doctor. As he said in his homily at the Mass, “We have conferred – rather we have acknowledged – St Teresa of Jesus’ title of Doctor of the Church.”

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