(Vatican Radio) To mark the day the Church remembers Saint Teresa of Avila we bring
you Pope Benedict XVI's words focusing on this well known Spanish Saint during his
Wednesday General Audience on the February 2nd 2011. Dear Brothers and Sisters, In
the course of the Catecheses that I have chosen to dedicate to the Fathers of the
Church and to great theologians and women of the Middle Ages I have also had the opportunity
to reflect on certain Saints proclaimed Doctors of the Church on account of the eminence
of their teaching. Today I would like to begin a brief series of meetings to complete
the presentation on the Doctors of the Church and I am beginning with a Saint who
is one of the peaks of Christian spirituality of all time — St Teresa of Avila [also
known as St Teresa of Jesus]. St Teresa, whose name was Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada,
was born in Avila, Spain, in 1515. In her autobiography she mentions some details
of her childhood: she was born into a large family, her “father and mother, who were
devout and feared God”, into a large family. She had three sisters and nine brothers.
While she was still a child and not yet nine years old she had the opportunity
to read the lives of several Martyrs which inspired in her such a longing for martyrdom
that she briefly ran away from home in order to die a Martyr’s death and to go to
Heaven (cf. Vida, [Life], 1, 4); “I want to see God”, the little girl told her parents.
A few years later Teresa was to speak of her childhood reading and to state that
she had discovered in it the way of truth which she sums up in two fundamental principles. On
the one hand was the fact that “all things of this world will pass away” while on
the other God alone is “for ever, ever, ever”, a topic that recurs in her best known
poem: “Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away:
God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God
alone suffices”. She was about 12 years old when her mother died and she implored
the Virgin Most Holy to be her mother (cf. Vida, I, 7). If in her adolescence the
reading of profane books had led to the distractions of a worldly life, her experience
as a pupil of the Augustinian nuns of Santa María de las Gracias de Avila and her
reading of spiritual books, especially the classics of Franciscan spirituality, introduced
her to recollection and prayer. When she was 20 she entered the Carmelite Monastery
of the Incarnation, also in Avila. In her religious life she took the name “Teresa
of Jesus”. Three years later she fell seriously ill, so ill that she remained in a
coma for four days, looking as if she were dead (cf. Vida, 5, 9). In the fight
against her own illnesses too the Saint saw the combat against weaknesses and the
resistance to God’s call: “I wished to live”, she wrote, “but I saw clearly that I
was not living, but rather wrestling with the shadow of death; there was no one to
give me life, and I was not able to take it. He who could have given it to me had
good reasons for not coming to my aid, seeing that he had brought me back to himself
so many times, and I as often had left him” (Vida, 7, 8). In 1543 she lost the
closeness of her relatives; her father died and all her siblings, one after another,
emigrated to America. In Lent 1554, when she was 39 years old, Teresa reached the
climax of her struggle against her own weaknesses. The fortuitous discovery of the
statue of “a Christ most grievously wounded”, left a deep mark on her life (cf. Vida,
9). The Saint, who in that period felt deeply in tune with the St Augustine of
the Confessions, thus describes the decisive day of her mystical experience: “and...
a feeling of the presence of God would come over me unexpectedly, so that I could
in no wise doubt either that he was within me, or that I was wholly absorbed in him”
(Vida, 10, 1). Parallel to her inner development, the Saint began in practice to
realize her ideal of the reform of the Carmelite Order: in 1562 she founded the first
reformed Carmel in Avila, with the support of the city’s Bishop, Don Alvaro de Mendoza,
and shortly afterwards also received the approval of John Baptist Rossi, the Order’s
Superior General. In the years that followed, she continued her foundations of
new Carmelite convents, 17 in all. Her meeting with St John of the Cross was fundamental.
With him, in 1568, she set up the first convent of Discalced Carmelites in Duruelo,
not far from Avila. In 1580 she obtained from Rome the authorization for her reformed
Carmels as a separate, autonomous Province. This was the starting point for the Discalced
Carmelite Order. Indeed, Teresa’s earthly life ended while she was in the middle
of her founding activities. She died on the night of 15 October 1582 in Alba de Tormes,
after setting up the Carmelite Convent in Burgos, while on her way back to Avila.
Her last humble words were: “After all I die as a child of the Church”, and “O my
Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one
another”. Teresa spent her entire life for the whole Church although she spent
it in Spain. She was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1614 and canonized by Gregory XV
in 1622. The Servant of God Paul VI proclaimed her a “Doctor of the Church” in 1970.
Teresa of Jesus had no academic education but always set great store by the teachings
of theologians, men of letters and spiritual teachers. As a writer, she always adhered
to what she had lived personally through or had seen in the experience of others (cf.
Prologue to The Way of Perfection), in other words basing herself on her own first-hand
knowledge. Teresa had the opportunity to build up relations of spiritual friendship
with many Saints and with St John of the Cross in particular. At the same time she
nourished herself by reading the Fathers of the Church, St Jerome, St Gregory the
Great and St Augustine. Among her most important works we should mention first
of all her autobiography, El libro de la vida (the book of life), which she called
Libro de las misericordias del Señor [book of the Lord’s mercies]. Written in the
Carmelite Convent at Avila in 1565, she describes the biographical and spiritual journey,
as she herself says, to submit her soul to the discernment of the “Master of things
spiritual”, St John of Avila. Her purpose was to highlight the presence and action
of the merciful God in her life. For this reason the work often cites her dialogue
in prayer with the Lord. It makes fascinating reading because not only does the Saint
recount that she is reliving the profound experience of her relationship with God
but also demonstrates it. In 1566, Teresa wrote El Camino de Perfección [The Way
of Perfection]. She called it Advertencias y consejos que da Teresa de Jesús a sus
hermanas [recommendations and advice that Teresa of Jesus offers to her sisters].
It was composed for the 12 novices of the Carmel of St Joseph in Avila. Teresa proposes
to them an intense programme of contemplative life at the service of the Church, at
the root of which are the evangelical virtues and prayer. Among the most precious
passages is her commentary on the Our Father, as a model for prayer. St Teresa’s most
famous mystical work is El Castillo interior [The Interior Castle]. She wrote it in
1577 when she was in her prime. It is a reinterpretation of her own spiritual journey
and, at the same time, a codification of the possible development of Christian life
towards its fullness, holiness, under the action of the Holy Spirit. Teresa refers
to the structure of a castle with seven rooms as an image of human interiority. She
simultaneously introduces the symbol of the silk worm reborn as a butterfly, in order
to express the passage from the natural to the supernatural. The Saint draws inspiration
from Sacred Scripture, particularly the Song of Songs, for the final symbol of the
“Bride and Bridegroom” which enables her to describe, in the seventh room, the four
crowning aspects of Christian life: the Trinitarian, the Christological, the anthropological
and the ecclesial. St Teresa devoted the Libro de la fundaciones [book of the
foundations], which she wrote between 1573 and 1582, to her activity as Foundress
of the reformed Carmels. In this book she speaks of the life of the nascent religious
group. This account, like her autobiography, was written above all in order to give
prominence to God’s action in the work of founding new monasteries. It is far
from easy to sum up in a few words Teresa’s profound and articulate spirituality.
I would like to mention a few essential points. In the first place St Teresa proposes
the evangelical virtues as the basis of all Christian and human life and in particular,
detachment from possessions, that is, evangelical poverty, and this concerns all of
us; love for one another as an essential element of community and social life; humility
as love for the truth; determination as a fruit of Christian daring; theological hope,
which she describes as the thirst for living water. Then we should not forget the
human virtues: affability, truthfulness, modesty, courtesy, cheerfulness, culture.
Secondly, St Teresa proposes a profound harmony with the great biblical figures
and eager listening to the word of God. She feels above all closely in tune with the
Bride in the Song of Songs and with the Apostle Paul, as well as with Christ in the
Passion and with Jesus in the Eucharist. The Saint then stresses how essential prayer
is. Praying, she says, “means being on terms of friendship with God frequently conversing
in secret with him who, we know, loves us” (Vida 8, 5). St Teresa’s idea coincides
with Thomas Aquinas’ definition of theological charity as “amicitia quaedam hominis
ad Deum”, a type of human friendship with God, who offered humanity his friendship
first; it is from God that the initiative comes (cf. Summa Theologiae II-II, 23, 1). Prayer
is life and develops gradually, in pace with the growth of Christian life: it begins
with vocal prayer, passes through interiorization by means of meditation and recollection,
until it attains the union of love with Christ and with the Holy Trinity. Obviously,
in the development of prayer climbing to the highest steps does not mean abandoning
the previous type of prayer. Rather, it is a gradual deepening of the relationship
with God that envelops the whole of life. Rather than a pedagogy Teresa’s is a
true “mystagogy” of prayer: she teaches those who read her works how to pray by praying
with them. Indeed, she often interrupts her account or exposition with a prayerful
outburst. Another subject dear to the Saint is the centrality of Christ’s humanity.
For Teresa, in fact, Christian life is the personal relationship with Jesus that culminates
in union with him through grace, love and imitation. Hence the importance she attaches
to meditation on the Passion and on the Eucharist as the presence of Christ in the
Church for the life of every believer, and as the heart of the Liturgy. St Teresa
lives out unconditional love for the Church: she shows a lively “sensus Ecclesiae”,
in the face of the episodes of division and conflict in the Church of her time. She
reformed the Carmelite Order with the intention of serving and defending the “Holy
Roman Catholic Church”, and was willing to give her life for the Church (cf. Vida,
33,5). A final essential aspect of Teresian doctrine which I would like to emphasize
is perfection, as the aspiration of the whole of Christian life and as its ultimate
goal. The Saint has a very clear idea of the “fullness” of Christ, relived by the
Christian. At the end of the route through The Interior Castle, in the last “room”,
Teresa describes this fullness, achieved in the indwelling of the Trinity, in union
with Christ through the mystery of his humanity. 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, to seek God, 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. Many thanks.