Her legacy of courage, strength and good humor continues to inspire today.
Reading the early life of St. Teresa of Avila is quite entertaining. The young saint was mischievous and dramatic, and most people would not have picked her for future canonization.
Yet this is why reading about her early life is so hopeful. If she could become a saint, and a great one, there is hope for the rest of us. Watch this video to learn five things you probably didn’t know about the first St. Teresa.
Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, to a pious family. While her heart was in the right place, guided by her devout mother’s religious instruction, Teresa was headstrong and impulsive from a young age.
At age 7, she decided she should be a martyr—perhaps having a similar thought to what Flannery O’Connor later wrote, “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” She convinced her brother Rodrigo to join her, and the two tried to run away.
Two little kids running away to be martyred—what could possibly go wrong? Their foolproof plan was foiled when their uncle saw them outside the city walls and sent them back home.
When Teresa was 11, her beloved mother died. She was heartbroken but wisely deepened her devotion to Mary as a spiritual mother.
As she entered her teens, however, the pretty and well-to-do young woman naturally attracted attention. She entered a period of frivolity—she wrote later that during this time, she occupied her mind with little but boys, clothes, flirting, and rebelling. Certainly many parents of teens can relate to what her father did next. Deciding she was out of control, he sent her, at age 16, to be educated at an Augustinian convent.
At first Teresa hated the convent, but as she grew closer to God, she was surprised to find that she began to enjoy it. But faced with the decision to pursue either religious life or marriage, she found, was not an easy choice. Her parents’ marriage had been difficult, so she knew marriage was no fairy tale, but she was not especially drawn to religious life either.
When she finally chose religious life, it was less out of attraction to that vocation than because she worried that living in the world would offer too many temptations to someone easily swayed by sin, as she was. Her discernment process again offers hope. She did not seem like a natural fit for a religious vocation, yet became a great and inspired leader.
Teresa chose to enter a Carmelite convent, but after she arrived, the atmosphere there disturbed her. The sisters had become lax in their religious observance, constantly entertaining visitors and paying more attention to their appearance and social prestige than to God.
Teresa herself wrote frankly about how hard she found it to persist in prayer:
I was more anxious 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 practice prayer.
Nonetheless Teresa persisted in mental prayer and God rewarded her. She began to have mystical experiences in prayer, including periods of profound contemplation and even heavenly visions.
The spiritual malaise in her convent continued to bother Teresa, but it was not until she met Franciscan priest St. Peter of Alcantara, who became her spiritual director, in 1560, that she began to take real steps toward reform. She founded a reformed Carmelite convent, called St. Joseph’s, which aimed at correcting the laxity she had found elsewhere. The austerity and rigor of the new monastery, established in 1562, at first caused some scandal, but with the local bishop’s permission they succeeded and soon earned general approval.
Teresa spent the first five years after the convent’s founding living there in pious seclusion and devoting herself to prayer and writing. The convent’s success, however, gave her confidence, as did the guidance of God in prayer and of her spiritual superiors.
Teresa spent the rest of her life founding dozens of Carmelite monasteries, for both men and women, throughout Spain. She faced countless trials and obstacles in this work, particularly from other Carmelites who did not appreciate her efforts to reform their way of life, yet she retained her sense of humor through it all. “May God protect me from gloomy saints!” she was known to exclaim.
The legacy of this extraordinary woman is hard to put into words. She was canonized in 1622, only 40 years after her death, and was one of the first women to be declared a Doctor of the Church. The tireless work she put into reforming her order played a key role in the Catholic Reformation, a period of renewal following the founding of Lutheranism. Her quick wit (and occasional sharp tongue) accompanied a rare courage and energy, coupled with deep love for God and compassion for others.
Teresa was the last person you could call mild-mannered or soft-spoken. Her strong character and lasting legacy make her a valuable role model today.
She shows us that religious reform and renewal start from within—from within the Church, from within a religious order, and most of all from within the human heart. And reform will never happen unless good women and men speak up and take a stand.
