Saint Teresa of Jesus. Beautiful words on the Saint: Rorate Caeli blog with link go here rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/…/on-5th-centenar… On the 5th Centenary of the Birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus, …More
Saint Teresa of Jesus.
Beautiful words on the Saint:
Rorate Caeli blog with link go here rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/…/on-5th-centenar…
On the 5th Centenary of the Birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Catholic Reformer - Guest-post by Don Pietro Leone
I - The Life
St. Teresa was born in Gotarrendura, Avila, Castile, of Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Beatrice (Beatriz) de Ahumada on 28th March, 1515, 500 years ago. As a child she ran away from home in search of martyrdom at the hands of the Moslems Her desire was 'to see God', which was later to be realized in her exercise of mental prayer, which particularly in the form of contemplation, is of course nothing else than the knowledge and love of the Most Blessed Trinity as a foretaste of the Beatific Vision.
After a period of a certain levity and frivolity, although in innocence, she was entrusted by her father to the educative care of the Augustinian nuns of Avila, whence she later entered in the order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
She was animated with a desire for perfection even if until her forties remained a religious of merely average virtue. One morning as she entered the convent oratory, she was profoundly moved at the sight of the Ecce Homo - the wounds, the blood, the lacerated flesh. In this period she read the Confessions of St. Augustine and felt she had encountered a great spirit, a great heart on fire with the flame with which she also was consumed: love, love to the point of sacrifice, to the point of death.
Exceptional Graces are granted her: the prayer of quiet, of union, and frequent visions. She feels the need to embrace a life of greater austerity and mortification, and receives permission to found a monastery where, in contrast to the laxness and the dissipated spirit of the religious life of her day, the primitive Rule is to be observed in all its severity, where absolute poverty and a prayer-life of great intensity are cultivated.
Another important motive for this foundation is the Lutheran heresy.
'About this time I heard of the miseries of France' she writes in the Way of Perfection (1.2), 'and of the disorders and havoc those Lutherans had committed there, and how rapidly this miserable sect went on increasing. This afflicted me exceedingly; and as if I could have done something, or had been something, I cried to our Lord, and implored Him to remedy so great an evil. It seemed as if I could have laid down a thousand lives, to recover only one of those innumerable souls who are lost in that heresy. But seeing myself only a woman, and so wicked too, and prevented from promoting as I desired the glory of God (and all my care was, and is still, that as He has so many enemies and so few friends – these last at least might continue good), I resolved to do the little which lay in my power, viz. to follow the evangelical counsels with all the perfection I could, and to induce the few nuns who are here to do the same, confiding in the great goodness of God, who never fails to assist those that are determined to leave all things for Him; and hoping (these nuns being such as I had represented them in my desires) that, in the midst of their virtues, my faults and imperfections might have no force, and that thus I might be able in something to please our Lord...'
Beautiful words on the Saint:
Rorate Caeli blog with link go here rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/…/on-5th-centenar…
On the 5th Centenary of the Birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Catholic Reformer - Guest-post by Don Pietro Leone
I - The Life
St. Teresa was born in Gotarrendura, Avila, Castile, of Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Beatrice (Beatriz) de Ahumada on 28th March, 1515, 500 years ago. As a child she ran away from home in search of martyrdom at the hands of the Moslems Her desire was 'to see God', which was later to be realized in her exercise of mental prayer, which particularly in the form of contemplation, is of course nothing else than the knowledge and love of the Most Blessed Trinity as a foretaste of the Beatific Vision.
After a period of a certain levity and frivolity, although in innocence, she was entrusted by her father to the educative care of the Augustinian nuns of Avila, whence she later entered in the order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
She was animated with a desire for perfection even if until her forties remained a religious of merely average virtue. One morning as she entered the convent oratory, she was profoundly moved at the sight of the Ecce Homo - the wounds, the blood, the lacerated flesh. In this period she read the Confessions of St. Augustine and felt she had encountered a great spirit, a great heart on fire with the flame with which she also was consumed: love, love to the point of sacrifice, to the point of death.
Exceptional Graces are granted her: the prayer of quiet, of union, and frequent visions. She feels the need to embrace a life of greater austerity and mortification, and receives permission to found a monastery where, in contrast to the laxness and the dissipated spirit of the religious life of her day, the primitive Rule is to be observed in all its severity, where absolute poverty and a prayer-life of great intensity are cultivated.
Another important motive for this foundation is the Lutheran heresy.
'About this time I heard of the miseries of France' she writes in the Way of Perfection (1.2), 'and of the disorders and havoc those Lutherans had committed there, and how rapidly this miserable sect went on increasing. This afflicted me exceedingly; and as if I could have done something, or had been something, I cried to our Lord, and implored Him to remedy so great an evil. It seemed as if I could have laid down a thousand lives, to recover only one of those innumerable souls who are lost in that heresy. But seeing myself only a woman, and so wicked too, and prevented from promoting as I desired the glory of God (and all my care was, and is still, that as He has so many enemies and so few friends – these last at least might continue good), I resolved to do the little which lay in my power, viz. to follow the evangelical counsels with all the perfection I could, and to induce the few nuns who are here to do the same, confiding in the great goodness of God, who never fails to assist those that are determined to leave all things for Him; and hoping (these nuns being such as I had represented them in my desires) that, in the midst of their virtues, my faults and imperfections might have no force, and that thus I might be able in something to please our Lord...'