The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila, also known as St. Teresa of Jesus, on October 15th. She was born in Avila, Spain in 1515. Her family consisted of her mother, father, and twelve siblings. She described her parents as devout in her autobiography. Teresa began her spiritual journey early on and read the lives of the martyrs when she was nine years old. She had a great desire to die a martyr’s death and repeatedly told her parents that she wanted to see God. It was in her childhood that she learned that “all things of this world will pass away” and God alone is “for ever, ever, ever” (Vida).
At the age of twenty she entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. Her religious name was Teresa of Jesus. While she was in the monastery she became seriously ill with malaria and spent four days in a coma, looking as though she would die. During her illness she realized her own weakness and resistance to God’s call. It greatly changed her spiritual life. She recovered, but shortly after her father died and all of her siblings emigrated to America.
Teresa was a rather prolific writer considering that she had no academic education. She relied greatly on the teachings and great resources of theologians, men of letters, and spiritual teachers. She was a woman of reform and set about reforming the Carmelite Order. In 1562 her first reform was Carmel in Avila with the support of the Bishop, Don Alvaro de Mendoza, and the approval of the Order’s Superior General, John Baptist Rossi. In 1580 she received approval from Rome for her own separate Province and so began the Discalced Carmelite Order which she established with her good friend, St. John of the Cross.
She wrote many books throughout her lifetime. Her most famous work is her own autobiography, The Life of St. Teresa (Vida), The Way of Perfection, a commentary on the Our Father, her most famous work on prayer, The Interior Castle, various works for her Carmelite Order, and Book of the Foundations. It is easy to see why St. Teresa is one of the four women saints to be given the title Doctor of the Church.
Swimming the Depths 