TERESA OF AVILA
Teresa of Avila, though she was born in 1515, is an inspiring role model for our times. The most famous and most relevant of her teachings is that serenity and peace of mind come through acceptance of change, and belief and trust in God.
Her sixteenth century world, like ours now, was one of continuing enormous change.
In 1492, 17 years before she was born, Spanish exploration had begun to open up the excitement, richness and strangeness of the New World. In 1517, Martin Luther publicly challenged the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church and so began the Protestant Reformation. Its bitter struggles and outright wars convulsed and changed the whole of Europe.
Saint Teresa was a woman who achieved greatness at a time when women had few opportunities. Her outstanding contribution to the theological understandings of the Church was recognised in 1970 when she was named a Doctor of the Church. She was one of only three women at the time to have achieved such a distinction.
Saint Teresa was an energetic, sometimes naughty child, then a teenager who was bright, attractive, fun to be with, who enjoyed pretty clothes and flirting with boys. When Saint Teresa was 15 her mother died, leaving her devastated. Her strict father sent her to a convent which she hated initially. She thought long and hard to decide between religious life or marriage before choosing to become a Carmelite.
In her adult life she suffered serious illness but this did not stop her from carrying out her life’s ambition. This was to reform the Carmelite Order back to the basics it had been founded on – a simple life of poverty devoted to prayer. She carried this out brilliantly, but it involved suffering and physical hardships of many kinds for the rest of her life.
Yet, out of this turbulent background, Teresa was a keen writer and, drawing from her turbulent and hard life, she spoke with confidence to her own time and to our 21st century world:
Let nothing trouble you.
Let nothing scare you.
All is fleeting.
God alone is unchanging.
Patience obtains everything.
Those who have God
Want for nothing.
God alone is enough.
Saint Teresa believed that her greatest joy was to remain a faithful daughter of the Church. It is from this belief that we take our motto Ecclesiae Filia which is Latin for ‘Daughter of the Church’.
