April 2, 2023 - "Saint Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada"

In about 1524 Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada and her older brother secretly left their home in Avila, Spain to travel, “begging bread for the love of God,” to travel to Muslim lands in North Africa to offer themselves for martyrdom. At a bridge leading out of the city their uncle met them and marched them back home.  Teresa was born into a large family which included her father and mother, three sisters, and nine brothers.  Her father was a wealthy Spanish merchant, and her family came from a converso (Jewish convert) background.  Teresa entered a Carmelite convent in her native Ávila at the age of twenty.  The house was quite lax—more like a residence for wealthy maidens than a house devoted to prayer and penance.  In 1543 she lost the closeness of her relatives: her father died and all her siblings, one after another, emigrated to America.  Twelve years later, when Teresa was thirty-nine, she had a powerful religious conversion.  She decided to devote herself more seriously to prayer and to establish a new reformed Carmelite community.
 
Teresa’s efforts at reform became the foundation for the Discalced (shoeless) Carmelites.  This referred to their desire to take the vow of poverty very seriously.  Teresa’s activities involved considerable personal risk because she was a woman and was basing her reform on private visions.  She was subject to investigation and interrogation by the Inquisition.  Teresa overcame all obstacles—including illness, hunger, and poverty—sustained by a very intense communion with God.
 
Two episodes in her life give a glimpse of her unique personality.  One time she was traveling to one of the reformed Carmelite convents she had established.  She and her companion were crossing a stream on horseback when a storm suddenly broke out. The horse on which Teresa was riding became frightened by the thunder and lightning.  Teresa was thrown off the horse and landed in the middle of the stream.  “My sweet Lord,” she exclaimed, “If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that they are so few in number.” As I mentioned previously all of Teresa’s siblings emigrated to the New World.  She was particularly close to one of her brothers who was hoping to strike it rich while prospecting for gold in this land of opportunity.  Teresa also knew that many of the settlements in the New World presented many moral dangers to single men who traveled there.  When she would write to him she would regularly ask if he was attending Mass and praying.  She started to receive fewer and fewer letters from him.  Finally, nothing.  She took her disappointment in this turn of events to prayer reminiscent of Martha’s reproach to Jesus (cf. John 11:21):  “My Lord, if this were your brother, I would be doing all that I could to make sure he was spiritually all right.”
 
Apart from the communities Teresa founded, she produced several classic volumes of mystical theology. She died in 1582 and was canonized forty years later.  In 1970 she was the first woman named a Doctor of the Church.
 
At the close of his catechesis on St. Teresa of Ávila (Teresa of Jesus), Pope Benedict offered the following reflection on her life and significance:
 
Dear brothers and sisters, St. Teresa of Jesus is a true teacher of Christian life for the faithful of every time.  In our society, which all too often lacks spiritual values, St. Teresa teaches us to be unflagging witnesses of God, of his presence and of his action.  She teaches us truly to feel this thirst for God that exists in the depths of our hearts, this desire to see God, and to be in conversation with him and to be his friends.
 
This is the friendship we all need that we must seek anew, day after day.  May the example of this saint, profoundly contemplative and effectively active, spur us, too, every day to dedicate the right time to prayer, to this openness to God, to this journey, in order to seek God, to see him, to discover his friendship, and so to find true life; indeed many of us should truly say: “I am not alive, I am not truly alive because I do not live the essence of my life.”
 
Therefore time devoted to prayer is not time wasted.  It is time in which the path of life unfolds, the path unfolds to learning from God an ardent love for him, for his Church, and practical charity for our brothers and sisters.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John