Teresa de Ahumada was born in Ávila on March 28, 1515. After the death of his wife and with two children, Alonso de Cepeda, her father, married Beatriz de Ahumada. Teresa was the third of the couple’s ten children. She grew up in a very religious environment, in which she developed a remarkable sensitivity for the transcendent from a very early age. She lost her mother at thirteen years of age. This blow and the crises typical of adolescence aggravated an affective problem that would pull her painfully toward her definitive conversion. Physically graced and with great social skills, she soon triumphed in “the vanity of the world.” After a fierce interior battle, she made the decision to be a religious while in Our Lady of Grace boarding school.
When her father tried to stop her entrance into the Carmel of the Incarnation, Teresa ran away, but with much sorrow. She was 20 years old and wanted to be free to conquer her own destiny. She lived in The Incarnation for 27 years. She made her profession in 1537 and, scarcely a year later, was overcome by a strange sickness. Its severity alarmed her family, who put her under the care of a famous healer. The treatment worsened her condition until she was given up for dead. During the course of her sickness, she came into contact with Franciscan mysticism by reading Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet: it introduced her to the prayer of recollection. Once again in the monastery, her interior summons to solitude and prayer was impeded for years.
In 1554, before an image of Jesus “so wounded,” her conversion began. From this moment, she would no longer be moved by fear, but by a profound love of Him who had loved her first. Teresa of Jesus experienced the way in which the mercy of God transformed her life. Nonetheless, she did not hide herself in an egocentric, sterile intimism. The fruit of her conversion was prolific activity as foundress and writer that lasted until her death. Teresa dreamt of a small community that lived the Gospel authentically, a place of prayer and work, silence and fraternity. In 1562, amidst many difficulties, that dream became a reality with the first Discalced foundation: the convent of Saint Joseph in Ávila.
Teresa’s days flowed by joyfully until the witness of a missionary returning from the recently discovered Americas shook her heart. In view of the affliction of so many creatures, mistreated because of colonial ambition and the failings of those who evangelized, she felt the compelling need to broaden her work. She was 52 years old. From then on, her life was so intensely involved in travel and new convents that the image remaining of her in history is of “the gadabout saint.” Foundress of nuns and friars, she journeyed over more than six thousand kilometers along 16th century Spanish roads that were in terrible condition, and established 16 monasteries of Nuns at a prodigious pace (1567-1582). Teresa used up her health and life in service of God and the Church. She was convinced of the important ecclesial mission that was carried out in her houses of prayer. She understood that prayer, beginning from the transformation of the person herself, reached all corners of the earth like an expansive wave.
Saint Teresa of Jesus died on October 4, 1582, in Alba de Tormes. She was beatified by Paul V in 1614, canonized by Gregory XV in 1622, and proclaimed doctor of the Church by Paul VI in 1970. She was the first woman upon whom that title was conferred.
Video per la festa della nascita di Santa Teresa
Video per la festa della nascita di Santa Teresa
Video per la festa della nascita di Santa Teresa
Video per la festa della nascita di Santa Teresa
