Tête à Tête - Mary Manning

‘Deliver me from sullen saints!’

St Teresa of Avila

In this edition of Madonna, our reporter talks to St Teresa of Avila whose feast day is 15 October.

MM: Can you tell us about something about your parents and your early life? In what ways did these contribute to you becoming a mystic, writer and founder of a religious order?

My parents were Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Doña Beatriz. I have been described as a ‘Spanish noble’ but even as a child I found religion more interesting than nobility. I enjoyed reading the lives of the saints, and playing at being a hermit in the garden. When my mother died when I was 12. I prayed for Our Lady to be my mother’s replacement.

MM: We call you Saint Teresa of Avila but you are referred to by other names. Can you tell us about these?

Apart from my family name, I am also called Teresa of Jesus and The Roving Nun.

MM: Why ‘roving’? Did you rove before or after you became a nun?

I imagine this came about when at the age of seven I left home with my brother Rodrigo with the intention of going to Moorish territory to be beheaded for Christ. It’s as well that my uncle met us as we were leaving the city and brought us home

MM: Ten years later you left home again to enter religious life. Did your family approve of this?

I left home and entered a Carmelite house without telling anyone as my father was opposed to the idea, perhaps because I was only 17. However, the family realised I was committed to the religious life and gave their consent.

MM: You are known as a mystic. Is this because you had visions?

Soon after taking my vows, I became gravely ill, and I never fully regained my health. I fell into a coma and when I recovered from this my legs were paralysed for three years.
My visions commenced after that. This was a hard time for me. Some of my friends and confessors tried to persuade me that my visions were the work of the devil. Dominicans and Jesuits including Francis Borgia—a friend and advisor of Saint Ignatius of Loyola—examined me to make sure my visions were holy and true, not just part of my ill health.

I am pleased to say that God did not fail to comfort me, neither did one of my counsellors, St Peter of Alcantara, who encouraged me: ‘Keep on as you are doing, daughter; we all suffer such trials.’
It wasn’t until I was 39 that I began to enjoy a vivid experience of God's presence within me.

MM: What can you tell us about your writings?

I wrote a great deal and at different stages of my spiritual life, so you will understand that my ideas developed and changed. My best known writings are my Autobiography, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle.

In all my writings I emphasised the life of prayer and I used metaphors to help readers understand and remember what I said. In The Way of Perfection I compared different stages of the life of prayer to various ways of sourcing water to irrigate a garden.

MM: You were proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

A Doctor of the Church is a saint from whose writings the whole Christian Church is held to have derived great advantage and to whom ‘eminent learning’ and ‘great sanctity’ have been attributed. I am privileged to be one of only three female Doctors of the Church, along with Catherine of Siena and Thérèse of Lisieux.

MM: You died in October 1582 and I understand your relics are preserved at Alba. Is there anything unusual about these relics?

Among the relics is my heart which shows signs of being pierced. This is seen as a sign of the powerful love I had for my Lord God. Bernini’s famous statue in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, ‘The Ecstasy of St Teresa’, shows it very well.

MM: What are you patron of?

Like many saints I am the patron of several things that I was connected with during my life. Among them are lacemakers which must relate to something I’ve forgotten about. Others match events in my life story: sickness and headaches—and I hope my patronage of these comforts other sufferers—loss of parents, people in need of grace, in religious orders, or ridiculed for their piety. I am also the parton saint of my home country, Spain, and the city of Pozega in Croatia whose cathedral bears my name.

MM: Could you leave us with some words of your own to inspire us?

These words that I wrote seem as relevant to the times you are living through as they did to my lifetime:

God, deliver me from sullen saints.

Oh my Lord! How true it is that whoever works for you is paid in troubles! And what a precious price to those who love you if we understand its value.

There is no such thing as bad weather. All weather is good because it is God's.

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.

And one last thought—here is a little prayer I wrote that might help you through hard times also.

Prayer to Redeem Lost Time

O my God! Source of all mercy! I acknowledge your sovereign power. While recalling the wasted years that are past, I believe that you, Lord, can in an instant turn this loss to gain. Miserable as I am, yet I firmly believe that you can do all things. Please restore to me the time lost, giving me your grace, both now and in the future, that I may appear before you in ‘wedding garments’.
Amen.