Get on Your Knees and Pray the Pious Cleric Holier Than Thou Art
Teresa of Avila was born Teresa Ali Fatim Corella Sanchez de Capeda y Ahumada in Avila, Spain. Less than twenty years before Teresa was built-in in 1515, Columbus opened up the Western Hemisphere to European colonization. Two years later she was born, Luther started the Protestant Reformation. Out of all of this alter came Teresa pointing the way from outer turmoil to inner peace.
Teresa'south male parent was rigidly honest and pious, but he may have carried his strictness to extremes. Teresa's mother loved romance novels but considering her husband objected to these fanciful books, she hid the books from him. This put Teresa in the middle -- especially since she liked the romances also. Her begetter told her never to lie but her mother told her not to tell her father. Later on she said she was always agape that no matter what she did she was going to do everything wrong.
When she was 7-years-one-time, she convinced her older blood brother that they should "become off to the land of the Moors and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there." They got as far as the road from the city earlier an uncle found them and brought them back. Some people have used this story as an early on example of sanctity, but this author think it's better used every bit an early on example of her ability to stir up trouble.
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Subsequently this incident she led a fairly ordinary life, though she was convinced that she was a horrible sinner. As a teenager, she cared only about boys, apparel, flirting, and rebelling. When she was 16, her father decided she was out of control and sent her to a convent. At starting time she hated it but somewhen she began to enjoy it -- partly considering of her growing love for God, and partly because the convent was a lot less strict than her father.
Still, when the fourth dimension came for her to choose between union and religious life, she had a tough time making the decision. She'd watched a difficult marriage ruin her female parent. On the other hand being a nun didn't seem like much fun. When she finally chose religious life, she did so considering she though that it was the only safety place for someone equally decumbent to sin as she was.
In one case installed at the Carmelite convent permanently, she started to learn and practice mental prayer, in which she "tried as hard equally I could to go along Jesus Christ present within me....My imagination is then dull that I had no talent for imagining or coming upward with bang-up theological thoughts." Teresa prayed this style off and on for 18 years without feeling that she was getting results. Office of the reason for her trouble was that the convent was not the safe identify she causeless it would exist.
Many women who had no place else to become wound upwards at the convent, whether they had vocations or not. They were encouraged to stay away from the convents for long flow of time to cut down on expenses. Nuns would arrange their veils attractively and vesture jewelry. Prestige depended not on piety only on money. There was a steady stream of visitors in the parlor and parties that included young men. What spiritual life there was involved hysteria, weeping, exaggerated penance, nosebleeds, and self- induced visions.
Teresa suffered the same problem that Francis of Assisi did -- she was also charming. Everyone liked her and she liked to be liked. She plant it too easy to sideslip into a worldly life and ignore God. The convent encouraged her to have visitors to whom she would teach mental prayer because their gifts helped the community economic system. Just Teresa got more involved in flattery, vanity and gossip than spiritual guidance. These weren't great sins perhaps only they kept her from God.
Then Teresa roughshod sick with malaria. When she had a seizure, people were so sure she was dead that after she woke up iv days later she learned they had dug a grave for her. Afterwards she was paralyzed for three years and was never completely well. Yet instead of helping her spiritually, her sickness became an excuse to stop her prayer completely: she couldn't be alone plenty, she wasn't healthy plenty, and and then along. Later she would say, "Prayer is an human activity of love, words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts from thoughts, all that is needed is the volition to love."
For years she inappreciably prayed at all "under the guise of humility." She thought as a wicked sinner she didn't deserve to get favors from God. But turning abroad from prayer was like "a baby turning from its mother'south breasts, what can be expected simply death?"
When she was 41, a priest convinced her to become back to her prayer, but she still found it difficult. "I was more broken-hearted for the hour of prayer to be over than I was to remain there. I don't know what heavy penance I would not have gladly undertaken rather than practise prayer." She was distracted oftentimes: "This intellect is and then wild that information technology doesn't seem to be anything else than a frantic madman no one can necktie down." Teresa sympathizes with those who have a difficult time in prayer: "All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles."
Yet her experience gives us wonderful descriptions of mental prayer: "For mental prayer in my stance is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking fourth dimension frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us. The of import thing is non to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs y'all to love. Love is not great delight simply want to please God in everything."
Every bit she started to pray again, God gave her spiritual delights: the prayer of tranquility where God's presence overwhelmed her senses, raptures where God overcame her with glorious foolishness, prayer of marriage where she felt the sun of God melt her soul away. Sometimes her whole body was raised from the ground. If she felt God was going to levitate her body, she stretched out on the floor and called the nuns to sit on her and hold her down. Far from being excited almost these events, she "begged God very much not to give me any more favors in public."
In her books, she analyzed and dissects mystical experiences the fashion a scientist would. She never saw these gifts as rewards from God simply the way he "chastised" her. The more than love she felt the harder it was to offend God. She says, "The retentiveness of the favor God has granted does more to bring such a person back to God than all the infernal punishments imaginable."
Her biggest error was her friendships. Though she wasn't sinning, she was very attached to her friends until God told her "No longer exercise I want you to converse with human being beings but with angels." In an instant he gave her the freedom that she had been unable to achieve through years of effort. Subsequently that God ever came first in her life.
Some friends, however, did not like what was happening to her and got together to discuss some "remedy" for her. Concluding that she had been deluded by the devil, they sent a Jesuit to analyze her. The Jesuit reassured her that her experiences were from God but shortly anybody knew about her and was making fun of her.
One confessor was and so sure that the visions were from the devil that he told her to make an obscene gesture called the fig every time she had a vision of Jesus. She cringed but did equally she was ordered, all the time apologizing to Jesus. Fortunately, Jesus didn't seem upset but told her that she was right to obey her confessor. In her autobiography she would say, "I am more afraid of those who are terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself." The devil was not to be feared simply fought by talking more almost God.
Teresa felt that the best prove that her delights came from God was that the experiences gave her peace, inspiration, and encouragement. "If these furnishings are not nowadays I would greatly doubt that the raptures come from God; on the contrary I would fear lest they be caused by rabies."
Sometimes, even so, she couldn't avoid complaining to her closest Friend about the hostility and gossip that surrounded her. When Jesus told her, "Teresa, that's how I treat my friends" Teresa responded, "No wonder yous have so few friends." Just since Christ has so few friends, she felt they should exist good ones. And that'south why she decided to reform her Carmelite society.
At the age of 43, she became determined to plant a new convent that went back to the basics of a contemplative gild: a simple life of poverty devoted to prayer. This doesn't sound like a big bargain, correct? Wrong.
When plans leaked out about her first convent, St. Joseph'southward, she was denounced from the pulpit, told by her sisters she should raise coin for the convent she was already in, and threatened with the Inquisition. The town started legal proceedings against her. All considering she wanted to try a simple life of prayer. In the face of this open war, she went ahead calmly, every bit if nothing was incorrect, trusting in God.
"May God protect me from gloomy saints," Teresa said, and that's how she ran her convent. To her, spiritual life was an attitude of dearest, not a rule. Although she proclaimed poverty, she believed in work, non in begging. She believed in obedience to God more than penance. If you practice something wrong, don't punish yourself -- change. When someone felt depressed, her communication was that she go some place where she could encounter the sky and take a walk. When someone was shocked that she was going to swallow well, she answered, "At that place'due south a time for partridge and a time for penance." To her brother's wish to meditate on hell, she answered, "Don't."
Once she had her own convent, she could lead a life of peace, right? Wrong again. Teresa believed that the most powerful and acceptable prayer was that prayer that leads to action. Skilful furnishings were improve than pious sensations that just make the person praying feel expert.
At St. Joseph's, she spent much of her time writing her Life. She wrote this book non for fun simply because she was ordered to. Many people questioned her experiences and this volume would clear her or condemn her. Because of this, she used a lot of camouflage in the book, post-obit a profound idea with the statement, "But what do I know. I'thou just a wretched woman." The Inquisition liked what they read and cleared her.
At 51, she felt it was time to spread her reform movement. She braved burning dominicus, ice and snowfall, thieves, and rat-infested inns to plant more convents. But those obstacles were easy compared to what she face from her brothers and sisters in religious life. She was chosen "a restless disobedient gadabout who has gone about education every bit though she were a professor" by the papal nuncio. When her former convent voted her in as prioress, the leader of the Carmelite gild excommunicated the nuns. A vicar full general stationed an officer of the law exterior the door to go along her out. The other religious orders opposed her wherever she went. She often had to enter a town secretly in the middle of the night to avert causing a riot.
And the help they received was sometimes worse than the hostility. A princess ordered Teresa to found a convent and then showed up at the door with baggage and maids. When Teresa refused to order her nuns to wait on the princess on their knees, the princess denounced Teresa to the Inquisition.
In another town, they arrived at their new house in the middle of the dark, only to wake up the next morn to detect that one wall of the edifice was missing.
Why was everyone so upset? Teresa said, "Truly information technology seems that now there are no more of those considered mad for being truthful lovers of Christ." No one in religious orders or in the globe wanted Teresa reminding them of the way God said they should live.
Teresa looked on these difficulties every bit adept publicity. Presently she had postulants clamoring to go into her reform convents. Many people thought almost what she said and wanted to learn about prayer from her. Soon her ideas almost prayer swept non only through Kingdom of spain simply all of Europe.
In 1582, she was invited to plant a convent by an Archbishop but when she arrived in the middle of the pouring pelting, he ordered her to leave. "And the weather so delightful also" was Teresa's annotate. Though very ill, she was commanded to attend a noblewoman giving birth. By the time they got there, the infant had already arrived then, as Teresa said, "The saint won't be needed after all." Too ill to leave, she died on October four at the age of 67.
She is the founder of the Discalced Carmelites. In 1970 she was declared a Doc of the Church for her writing and teaching on prayer, one of 2 women to exist honored in this manner.
St. Teresa is the patron saint of Headache sufferers. Her symbol is a heart, an arrow, and a book. She was canonized in 1622.
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Source: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=208