St. Teresa of Jesus.

St. Teresa of Jesus
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ST. TERESA OF AVILA (1515-1582)

St. Teresa of Jesus entered the Carmelite Order when she was twenty and lived a very ordinary life for her first eighteen years as a religious. Then she felt two calls: to greater holiness and to reform the Carmelite Order. She met opposition in her own convent and received permission to found a new one. Thus began the Discalced Carmelites, a reform that spread to the priests and brothers as well through the work of her friend St. John of the Cross. In 1970 Pope Paul VI named her, along with St. Catherine of Siena, the first female Doctors of the Church. Let us ask her to pray with us now for Pope Benedict and his intentions, especially for the terminally ill. Our reflection is from his address to sick people in Cameroon, Africa in 2009.
The saints have given us a fine example by living lives entirely dedicated to God, our Father. Saint Teresa of Avila, who placed her monastery under the protection of Saint Joseph, was healed from a particular ailment on the very day of his feast. She said she had never prayed to him in vain, and she recommended him to all who claimed not to know how to pray: “I do not understand”, she wrote, “how anyone can think of the Queen of angels and of all the trials she suffered during the early years of the divine child Jesus, without thanking Saint Joseph for the perfect devotion with which he came to assist them both. May anyone who lacks a teacher of prayer choose this admirable Saint as a master, for under his guidance no one need be afraid of going astray” (Life, 6). Saint Teresa saw in Saint Joseph not only an intercessor for bodily health, but also an intercessor for the health of the soul, a teacher of prayer.

Dear friends who are sick, we too can choose him as a teacher of prayer, whatever our state of health, and all families can do the same. I am thinking especially of hospital staff, and all those who work in the field of health care. By accompanying those who suffer, through the care and attention you offer them, you accomplish an act of charity and love that God recognizes: “I was sick, and you visited me” (Mt 25:36). All of you, doctors and researchers, have the task of putting into practice every legitimate form of pain relief; you are called, in the first place, to protect human life, you are the defenders of life from conception to natural death. For every person, respect for life is a right and at the same time a duty, since all life is a gift from God.
www.apostleshipofprayer.org