2015
Novena to St. Teresa of Avila - #Litany and #Prayer for #Headaches - SHARE
Pray for 9 Days. This Novena was written by St. Alphonsus of Liguori.First Day: O most amiable Lord Jesus Christ! We thank Thee for the great gift of faith and of devotion to the Holy Sacrament, which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits and by those of Thy faithful spouse, to grant us the gift of a lively faith, and of a fervent devotion toward the most Holy Sacrament of the altar; where Thou, O infinite Majesty! hast obliged Thyself to abide with us even to the end of the world, and wherein Thou didst so lovingly give Thy whole Self to us.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Second Day:
O most merciful Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the great gift of hope which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy holy spouse, to give us a great confidence in Thy goodness, by reason of Thy Precious Blood, which Thou hast shed to its last drop for our salvation.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Third Day:
O most loving Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the great gift of love which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most loving spouse, to give us the great, the crowning gift of Thy perfect love.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Fourth Day:
O most sweet Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the gift of great desire and resolution which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa, that she might love Thee perfectly; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most generous spouse, to give us a true desire, and a true resolution of pleasing Thee the utmost of our power.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Fifth Day:
O most kind Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the great gift of humility which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most humble spouse, to grant us the grace of a true humility, which may make us ever find our joy in humiliation, and prefer contempt before every honour.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Sixth Day:
O most bountiful Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the gift of devotion towards Thy sweet mother, Mary and her holy spouse, Joseph, which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most dear spouse, to give us the grace of a special and tender devotion towards Thy most holy mother, Mary, and towards Thy beloved foster-father, Joseph.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Seventh Day:
O most loving Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the wonderful gift of the wound in the heart which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy seraphic spouse, to grant us also a like wound of love, that, henceforth, we may love Thee and give our mind to the love of nothing but Thee.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Eighth Day:
O most beloved Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the eminent gift of the desire for death which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most constant spouse, to grant us the grace of desiring death, in order to go and possess Thee eternally in the country of the blessed.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Ninth Day:
Lastly, O dearest Lord Jesus Christ! we thank Thee for the gift of the precious death which Thou didst grant to Thy beloved Teresa, making her sweetly to die of love; we pray Thee, by Thy merits, and by those of Thy most affectionate spouse, to grant us a good death; and if we do not die of love, yet, that we may at least die burning of love for Thee, that so dying, we may be able to go and love Thee for evermore with a more perfect love in heaven.
Say one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
V. St. Teresa, pray for us:
R. That we may become worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation! that as we rejoice in the commemoration of the blessed virgin Teresa, so we may be nourished by her heavenly doctrine, and draw from thence the fervour of a tender devotion; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Prayer for Headaches to St. Teresa of Avila
Dear wonderful Saint, model of fidelity to vows, you gladly carried a heavy cross following in the steps of Christ who chose to be crucified for us. You realized that God like a merciful Father chastises those whom he loves, which to worldlings seems silly indeed. Grant to (Name) relief from great pains if this is in line with God's plans. Amen.
Litany in Honor of St. Teresa of Avila
Dear wonderful Saint, model of fidelity to vows, you gladly carried a heavy cross following in the steps of Christ who chose to be crucified for us. You realized that God like a merciful Father chastises those whom he loves, which to worldlings seems silly indeed. Grant to (Name) relief from great pains if this is in line with God's plans. Amen.
Litany in Honor of St. Teresa of Avila
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of Heaven,
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier,
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God,
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on us.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us.
pray for us.
Holy Mary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
pray for us.
pray for us.
Saint Teresa of Avila,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, whose heart was transverberated by the love of God,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, most humble servant of God,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, most zealous for the glory of God,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, woman truly strong in mind,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, truly detached from all created objects,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, great light of the Catholic Church,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, reformer and glory of the Carmelite Order,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, queen of mystical theology,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, lustrous name of Avila and Spain,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, who didst forever glorify the name of Teresa,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, wishing to suffer or to die,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, exclaiming,
"O Lord, how sweet and pleasing are Thy ways!"
pray for us.
"O Lord, how sweet and pleasing are Thy ways!"
pray for us.
St. Teresa, desiring so much the salvation of souls,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, tasting and seeing how sweet is the Lord,
even in this vale of miseries,
pray for us.
even in this vale of miseries,
pray for us.
St. Teresa, exclaiming,
"O death, who can fear thee who art the way to true life!"
pray for us.
"O death, who can fear thee who art the way to true life!"
pray for us.
St. Teresa, true lover of the Cross of Christ,
pray for us.
pray for us.
St. Teresa, who didst live to love,
who died to love, and who wilt love eternally,
pray for us.
who died to love, and who wilt love eternally,
pray for us.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Spare us, O Lord.
Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Hear us, O Lord.
Hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.
Have mercy on us.
V. Pray for us, O holy Saint Teresa,
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Let Us Pray
O God, Who didst replenish the heart of
Thy blessed servant St. Teresa
with the treasures of Thy divine love,
grant that, like her,
we may love Thee
and suffer all things for Thee
and in union with Thee,
that we may gain souls for Thee,
and that we may secure the salvation of our own soul.
This we beg through the merits of our Saviour
and the intercession of Thy glorious virgin Teresa.
Thy blessed servant St. Teresa
with the treasures of Thy divine love,
grant that, like her,
we may love Thee
and suffer all things for Thee
and in union with Thee,
that we may gain souls for Thee,
and that we may secure the salvation of our own soul.
This we beg through the merits of our Saviour
and the intercession of Thy glorious virgin Teresa.
Amen.
Latest #News of #Vatican Information Service and #PopeFrancis at #HolySee #Synod15
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14-10-2015 - Year XXII - Num. 179
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Summary | |||
| - General audience: keep our promises to children | |||
| - The struggle against poverty | |||
| - The Pope praises local development | |||
| - The Circuli Minori discuss the second part of the Instrumentum Laboris: the importance of divine pedagogy | |||
- Other Pontifical Acts
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| General audience: keep our promises to children Vatican City, 14 October 2015 (VIS) – Before beginning this Wednesday's general audience, the Holy Father asked for forgiveness for the various scandals that have occurred in Rome and in the Vatican during recent days. Returning to the theme of aspects of the relationship between the Church and the family, the Pope dedicated today's catechesis to to promises we make to children. He explained that this did not mean the many promises we make during the day to make them happy or good, or to encourage them to work hard at school, but rather the most important ones, “decisive for their expectations in life, for their trust in relation to other human beings, for their capacity to conceive of God's name as a blessing”. “We adults refer to children as a promise of life”, he continued. “And we are easily moved by this, saying that the young are our future. But I wonder, at times, if we are equally serios about their future! A question that we should ask more often is this: how faithful are we to the promises we make to children when we bring them into our world? Welcome and care, closeness and attention, trust and hope, are all basic promises, that may be summarised in one word: love. This is the best way to welcome a human being into the world, and we all learn this before being aware of it. It is a promise that a man and a woman make to every child, from the moment he or she is conceived in their thoughts”. When instead this promise is not honoured, “children are wounded by an unbearable 'scandal', made even more serious by the fact that they are unable to understand it. God keeps watch over this promise from the very first moment. Do you remember what Jesus said? 'Their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven'. Woe to those who betray their trust, woe! Their trustful abandonment to our promise, that commits us from the very first moment, will be our judgement”. The Pope added that children's spontaneous trust in God “should never be harmed, especially when this occurs as a result of a certain presumption, more or less consciously, to substitute Him. God's tender and mysterious relationship with the soul of children must never be violated. A child is ready from birth to feel loved by God. As soon as he or she is able to feel loved, a child also feels that there is a God Who loves children”. “Only if we look at children with God's eyes are we truly able to understand how, by defending the family, we protect humanity! The viewpoint of children is the viewpoint of the Son of God”. Francis recalled that the Church herself, in Baptism, makes great promises to children, that require commitment on the part of parents and the Christian community, and concluded by asking that Our Lady and St. Joseph teach us to welcome Jesus in every child God sends us. | |||||||
| The struggle against poverty Vatican City, 14 October 2015 (VIS) – Following today's catechesis, the Holy Father mentioned that Saturday 17 October will be International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, instituted by Fr. Joseph Wresinski, France. The aim of this day is to promote greater efforts for the elimination of extreme poverty and discrimination, to ensure that every person is able to fully exercise his or her fundamental rights. “We are all invited to make this intention our own, so that Christ's charity may reach and relieve the poorest and most abandoned of our brothers and sisters”, said Pope Francis. | |||||||
| The Pope praises local development Vatican City, 14 October 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has written a letter to Piero Fassino, mayor of Turin, Italy, to the authorities and to all participants in the Third Global Forum on Local Development, held in Turin from 13 to 16 October. The Pope wished to contribute to this forum by recalling some of the ideas he expressed recently before the Assembly of the United Nations, regarding the Sustainable Development Goals, which are “a hope for humanity, provided they are implemented in the correct way”. In the text, the Pope stresses the importance of the decisions adopted by the international community that, however, “runs the risk of falling into the trap of a declamatory nominalism, creating a tranquillising effect on consciences”. He also remarks that the multiplicity and complexity of problems require the use of technical tools of measurement. “This, however, leads to a twofold danger: becoming limited to the bureaucratic exercise of drawing up a long list of good intentions, or creating a single a priori theoretical solution to respond to all challenges”. “Political and economic action are a prudential activity, guided by the perennial concept of justice, and it must always be taken into consideration that before any plan or programme, there are real men and women, equal to their governors, who live, struggle and suffer, who must be the masters of their own destiny. Integral human development and the full exercise of human dignity cannot be imposed”. From this perspective, he adds, “local economic development seems to be the most suitable response to the challenges presented to us by a globalised economy, the results of which are often cruel”. Francis mentions his address to the United Nations, in which he spoke about how “the simplest measure and indicator of the fulfilment of the new Agenda for development would be effective, practical and immediate access to indispensable material and spiritual goods. … The only way of truly reaching these goals in a permanent way is by working at a local level”. He remarks that the recurrent world crises have demonstrated how economic decisions that in general seek to promote the progress of all through the generation of new consumption and the continuing increase of profits are unsustainable for the progress of the global economy itself”. These decisions are also, he adds, “immoral, as they sideline any question about what is just and what truly serves the common good”. He concludes by praising Christian social thinking in Italy, through important figures such as Giuseppe Toniolo, Don Sturzo and others who, in the wake of Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical “Rerum novarum”, were able to offer an economic analysis that, starting from the local and territorial context, proposes options and directions for the world economy, and notes that much secular social thought, while based on different premises, makes similar proposals. | |||||||
| The Circuli Minori discuss the second part of the Instrumentum Laboris: the importance of divine pedagogy Vatican City, 14 October 2015 (VIS) – During this morning's General Congregation the various working groups presented to the Synod Fathers the result of their reflections on the second part of the Instrumentum Laboris. Almost all the groups agreed on the need for the final document of the Synod to use the language of biblical theology and, as affirmed by the French group B, to be clear and simple, avoiding ambiguity and misunderstandings that may impair understanding of the mission and the vocation of the family in the Church and in the world. It will be necessary to take into account the fragility and the suffering of the family, without overstating the current situation, as these problems have always existed. The emphasis on this dimension leads the group to stress that the Church accompanies all her children, and must proclaim the Gospel and its call to conversion. The English group B comments that the final document should illustrate how divine pedagogy for marriage and the family has accompanied the entire history of salvation and continues right until our day. “We propose … [beginning] with Genesis, which already provide a definition of marriage as a unique union between a man and a woman, so total and intimate that because of it a man must leave his father and mother in order to be united with his wife. This account of the creation of marriage presents also the three basic characteristics of marriage, as it was in the beginning – monogamy, permanence, and equality of the sexes. … But the divine pedagogy of salvation history concerning marriage and the family reached its climax with the Son of God’s entry in human history”. The group acknowledges that “It is only through reflection on the divine pedagogy that we will understand our ministry as mirroring God’s patience and mercy. The divine plan continues even in our time. It is the divine pedagogy which provides content and tone for the teaching of the Church”. With regard to the difficult situations to be examined in the third part, the group emphasises that “we should always remember that God never gives up on his mercy. It is mercy which reveals God’s true face. God’s mercy reaches out to all of us, especially to those who suffer, those who are weak, and those who fail”. The French group, whose rapporteur is Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Lille, France, also speaks about divine pedagogy, and proposes “emphasising the many encounters between Jesus and families” throughout the Gospels, reaffirming that “divine pedagogy acts in all biblical revelation and must continue to be experienced by the Church, following families in their joys and sorrows”. Another observation of this group, that resonates widely, is that the Relatio should express a broader conceptual unity and not speak about indissolubility as if it were its only concern. “Fidelity and indissolubility should be referred to as a gift and call, rather than in the legal terms of duty; they should not be perceived as superimposed on commitment, but rather as deeply integrated into the language of love and within its theological dimension. Marriage should be considered as a call to love and communion”. The Spanish group recommends that emphasis be placed on gradualness and processuality in understanding the process by which God communicates the grace of the Covenant, educating by taking into account each person, progressively, in their community, correcting, accompanying and forgiving. As part of divine pedagogy, processuality is also present in Tradition and in the Aparecida document, notes the rapporteur Cardinal Jose Luis Lacunza Maestrojuan. “There are expressions that render marriage and the family absolute, while Jesus relativises them in the Kingdom of God. There are encounters between Jesus and specific persons in specific contexts, but it emphasis should be given to those that occur in the context of the family: Lazarus and his family, Peter and his famiyl … Jesus always opens doors. God's faithfulness is expressed in the sacrament of marriage, but in a human way: 'quidquid recipitur, ad modum recipientis recipitur'. The indissoluble fidelity of marriage is a mystery that includes fragility. We have a theology of the family and the marriage, but more closely linked to morality. The Magisterium should present the Gospel of the family in an organic and integrated from. Following the thesis of the 'semina Verbi', the many positive values in other types of families cannot be overlooked”. Several groups attribute great importance to the preparation of young couples for marriage and the need to support them on their journey. While the French group B notes a significant reduction in marriages in European capitals, the Latin American Cardinal Lacunza, who clarifies that “when talking about young people and marriage, it is done from the perspective of fear, which is not enough, it is an anthropological question: they live in the moment, 'for ever' does not fit in with their way of thinking”. Perhaps we could speak about informality: perhaps we have surrounded marriage with so many formalities that do not fit into the minds of young people who often identify formality with hypocrisy. Moreover, to say that they are afraid or do not dare would contradict the experience of many young people who accept the risk of volunteer work or risk for political or other struggles”. The French group B also reports that the members have voted unanimously in favour of the proposal that “the proclamation of the Gospel of the family today demands a magisterial intervention to simplify and render more coherent the current canonical theological doctrine on marriage”, and that it must support the definition of the family “as a subject of pastoral action”. In this regard, the French group, whose rapporteur is Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Canada, notes that “shared pastoral experiences lead us to see that in the Church, speaking about families means speaking about a human reality that is inscribed in time and in space. ... Every famliy has its genealogy that entrenches it in a history and a culture. ... This complexity is the place and the occasion for the manifestation of the mystery and the mercy of God. We wish to express our hope that the Synod will open up a period of patient seeking by theologians and pastors with the intention of establishing the correct directions for family pastoral ministry, translating the horizon of the family to a horizon of communion. We are less in need of adaptations of universal discipline than a solid basis for reflection and pastoral commitment”. The concept of family as mission is also recurrent. The Italian group C speaks about the “evangelising value of marriage and the family” and calls for a “new style of closeness to families on the part of the Church, a contagious closeness, a strong and demanding tenderness”. The members insist that “the Christian community should be a family of families, measuring its pastoral action according to the style of the family and transmitting in this way a humanising force to the life of the world, to overcome the tendency towards individualism”. “The Synod Fathers have found it very useful to refer to Pope Francis' catechesis on the need to harmonise an appreciation of the sacramentality of marriage and attention to its creaturely dimension”, write the members of the Italian group A, who also call for the text of the Instrumentum Laboris to be completed with the addition of the spiritual and pneumatological dimension, open to the sensibility of the Eastern tradition. Translated into a more concrete proposal, this makes more explicit the primacy of grace, the recognition of sin and the need to inspire conversion. Grace does not act only at the time of the celebration of the sacrament but rather throughout life, as it is a permanent sacrament like the Eucharist”. Cardinal Coleridge, of the English group C, comments on “the need to explore further the possibility of couples who are civilly married or cohabiting beginning a journey towards sacramental marriage and being encouraged and accompanied on that journey”, and in the English group D, a number of bishops emphasised that the document should explore further the role of women, recalling that many suffer abuse by their husbands. “We need to be realistic about marital problems rather than simply encouraging people to stay together”, the text affirms. In the same group, another prelate remarks that “exemplary families are sometimes difficult for people in painful circumstances to see as positive”. Some bishops suggest that the text present the canonical reasons for separation of spouses and reasons for seeking an annulment. Another common concept is the vocation to family life and family spirituality, and therefore the English group A, whose rapporteur is Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, suggests a consideration of best practices, “which would show families how to more fully and faithfully live out their vocation”. These would include receiving the Word of God in the family, family catechesis and the explicit encouragement of the use of para-liturgical prayers and rituals within the family setting. Cardinal Coleridge's group also suggests that the final document present a series of clear initiatives or strategies to help families and to support those in difficulty, in harmony with the essentially practical nature of this second Synod on the family. The English group A notes that “in the past, the Holy Father often used the final approved texts as a basis for an Apostolic Exhortation and we spoke of the fruitfulness of this approach. However, we recognise the limitations of a document that will be approved at the conclusion of this Synod. Though every effort should be made to provide for streamlined, attractive language, a primary concern was the clarity of well-grounded explanations of Church teaching on marriage and the family”. Again considering the final document, the Spanish group B considers the approach of the Synod. “The doctrine is known”, its members write, “but the needs of reality and the new emphases of theological reflection must be taken into account in order to truly make a meaningful contribution. More explicit reference is suggested to texts from both the Old and New Testaments (God's nuptial love for His people), as well as the rich post-conciliar Magisterium on the family”. The Italian group B comments on the need for a magisterial document: “given that the Synod is not able to respond to the need to reorder in a complete and exhaustive document the complex and diversified doctrine on marriage and the family, it is necessary, on the one hand, to require a magisterial document that responds to this need, and on the other, to consider the pastoral aspects relevant to the issue. In this respect, the Fathers express the need to consider the mission specific to pastoral mediation in the transmission of doctrine”. | |||||||
| Other Pontifical Acts Vatican City, 14 October 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed: - Fr. Jonny Eduardo Reyes Sequera, S.D.B., as apostolic vicar of Puerto Ayacucho (area 184,000, population 231,000, Catholics 177,000, priests 30, religious 68), Venezuela. The bishop-elect was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1952, gave his religious vows in 1976, and was ordained a priest in 1979. He holds a bachelor's degree in theology from the Pontifical Salesian University, Rome, and a licentiate in moral theology from the Alphonsianum Academy, Rome. He has served in a number of roles, including local superior of the San Lucas Seminary in Caracas, local superior and provincial counsellor in the Don Bosco College of Valencia, provincial vicar, and provincial superior. He is currently master of novices. He succeeds Bishop Jose Angel Divasson Cilvetti, S.D.B., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same apostolic vicariate upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father. - Bishop Roque Paloschi of Roraima, Brazil as archbishop of Porto Velho (area 84,696, population 680,000, Catholics 464,000, priests 44, religious 165), Brazil. - Bishop Pablo Virgilio Siongco David, auxiliary of San Fernando, Philippines, as bishop of Kalookan (area 40, population 1,269,243, Catholics 1,173,422, priests 42, religious 70), Philippines.
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Today's Mass Readings and Video : Thurs. October 15 , 2015
Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
Lectionary: 470
Reading 1ROM 3:21-30
Brothers and sisters:
Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
though testified to by the law and the prophets,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
For there is no distinction;
all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.
They are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption in Christ Jesus,
whom God set forth as an expiation,
through faith, by his Blood, to prove his righteousness
because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed,
through the forbearance of God–
to prove his righteousness in the present time,
that he might be righteous
and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
What occasion is there then for boasting? It is ruled out.
On what principle, that of works?
No, rather on the principle of faith.
For we consider that a person is justified by faith
apart from works of the law.
Does God belong to Jews alone?
Does he not belong to Gentiles, too?
Yes, also to Gentiles, for God is one
and will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith
and the uncircumcised through faith.
Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
though testified to by the law and the prophets,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
For there is no distinction;
all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.
They are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption in Christ Jesus,
whom God set forth as an expiation,
through faith, by his Blood, to prove his righteousness
because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed,
through the forbearance of God–
to prove his righteousness in the present time,
that he might be righteous
and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
What occasion is there then for boasting? It is ruled out.
On what principle, that of works?
No, rather on the principle of faith.
For we consider that a person is justified by faith
apart from works of the law.
Does God belong to Jews alone?
Does he not belong to Gentiles, too?
Yes, also to Gentiles, for God is one
and will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith
and the uncircumcised through faith.
Responsorial PsalmPS 130:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6AB
R. (7) With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
AlleluiaJN 14:6
R. Alleluia, alleluia.I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GospelLK 11:47-54
The Lord said:
“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute’
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah
who died between the altar and the temple building.
Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood!
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.”
When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees
began to act with hostility toward him
and to interrogate him about many things,
for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.
“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute’
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah
who died between the altar and the temple building.
Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood!
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.”
When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees
began to act with hostility toward him
and to interrogate him about many things,
for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.
#PopeFrancis “only in this way will we be faithful to this merciful love..." #Homily
(Vatican Radio) Beware of those who limit God’s horizons and reduce the love of God down to our size. That was at the heart of Pope Francis’ homily at the Mass Thursday morning (Oct.15) at the Casa Santa Marta.
Listen to Devin Watkins' report:
“Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.” Those were Jesus’ words in the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Luke from which Pope Francis took his cue at Thursday’s Mass at the Casa Santa Marta.
“The key,” he continued, is “of the gratuity of salvation, of that knowledge”. The scholars of the Law took away the key of God’s free gift of salvation, because, as the Holy Father said, “they thought that by respecting all the commandments one could be saved, and anyone who didn’t do just that was condemned”. In this way, “they limited God’s horizons and made the love of God into something very, very small”, the Pope said.
Instead of a love based on retribution, Pope Francis said “If I say ‘I love you’, but I have a personal interest behind it, that is not love, that is self-interest.”
“This is why”, Pope Francis continued, “Jesus said ‘The greatest love is this: to love God with your whole life, with your whole heart, with your whole strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Because this is the only commandment which is up to the heights of the gratuity of God’s salvation." "The source is love; the horizon is love. If you have closed the door and taken away the key of love, you will not rise to the heights of the gratuity of salvation which you have received,” the Pope said.
Concluding, the Holy Father posed two questions: “Do I believe that the Lord saved me gratuitously, freely? Do I believe that I have done nothing to merit salvation?”
“Let us ask ourselves these questions,” the Pope said, “only in this way will we be faithful to this merciful love: the love of a father and a mother, because God also says He is like a mother with us; love, expanded horizons, without limits. And let us not be fooled by scholars [of the Law] who limit this love.”
#BreakingNews 7000 People flee after Church attacks in #Indonesia - Please PRAY
Aceh: thousands of people flee religious violence following church attacksby Mathias Hariyadi
Some 7,000 people have fled Aceh Singkil Regency. Two days ago a group of Muslims set fire to two churches. At least 2,000 refugees have reached the diocese of Sibolga, to the south. Singkil had not experienced sectarian violence before. In 1979, local Muslims and Christians had worked out a deal.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Thousands of people have fled their homes, streaming out of Aceh Singkil Regency, Aceh Province, following sectarian violence two days ago.
Hundreds of Muslims from the Islamic Youth Movement set fire to two Christian churches and launched guerrilla-like attacks against Christians. Two attackers are said to have died with more wounded.
As a result of the violence, hundreds of families picked up and left, some 7,000 people who fled the conflict zone.
Islamic law (Sharia) is applied in Aceh. Aceh Singkil Regency is the province’s southernmost district, on the border with North Sumatra, where refugees have sought to escape.
In a letter to the Love Humanity Devotional Group (Kelompok Bakti Kasih Kemanusiaan or KBKK), a Jakarta-based Catholic humanitarian association, Crosier priest Ipung Purwosuranto said that hundreds of people are seeking refuge in North Sumatra.
"Dozens have arrived asking for asylum in St Michael’s Parish in Tumajae, in the diocese of Sibolga. They are housed temporarily in the rectory and the house of the sisters," the clergyman said.
According to Fr Dominikus Sibagariang OFM, some 2,000 people have become refugees. "Several Capuchin priests and local nuns helped them by bringing them food. This is a humanitarian mission. The priests’ presence gives people a sense of hope and security."
The incidents in Singkil stem from Muslim anger over the construction of too many "illegal" churches, i.e. places of worship built without a proper building permit. Before this, the area had not known sectarian incidents.
According to Regency chief Safriadi, Muslim and Christian communities struck a peace deal in 1979, which was renewed in 2001, whereby both sides agreed to coexist peacefully.
The agreement included the right for Christians to build churches, but only one in four could be permanent; the others could only be movable.
"Today the number of movables is greater than agreed,” Safriadi said. “Christians have at least 24, and this sparked the protest of Muslim leaders."
On 6 October, Muslims protested peacefully for the dismantling of illegal temporary churches. The local Regency chief agreed to their demands. Four days later, it was agreed that ten Christian places of worship would be torn down.
Demolition was set 19 October and would take two weeks. However, tired of waiting, local Muslims took the law into their own hands and set fire to two churches.
Since the government and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM) signed a peace agreement, the province of Aceh enforces Islamic law.
However, more radical and extreme versions of Islam are growing in many parts of the country, like Bekasi and Bogor in West Java.
Shared from AsiaNews IT
2015
Saint October 15 : St. Teresa of Avila : Patron of loss of parents, Religious, Sickness and Spain
St. Teresa of Avila
DISCALCED CARMELITE MYSTIC, FOUNDRESS, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
Feast: October 15
Information:
Feast Day:
October 15
Born:
28 March 1515, Ávila, Old Castile, Spain
Died:
October 15, 1582, Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain
Canonized:
12 March 1622 by Pope Gregory XV
Major Shrine:
Shrine of St. Teresa of Ávila, Ávila, Spain
Patron of:
bodily ills; headaches; lacemakers; laceworkers; loss of parents; people in need of grace; people in religious orders; people ridiculed for their piety; sick people; sickness; Spain
In the Autobiography which she completed towards the end of her life, Saint Teresa of Avila gives us a description of her parents, along with a disparaging estimate of her own character. "The possession of virtuous parents who lived in the fear of God, together with those favors which I received from his Divine Majesty, might have made me good, if I had not been so very wicked." A heavy consciousness of sin was prevalent in sixteenth-century Spain, and we can readily discount this avowal of guilt. What we are told of Teresa's early life does not sound in the least wicked, but it is plain that she was an unusually active, imaginative, and sensitive child. Her parents, Don Alfonso Sanchez de Capeda and Dona Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, his second wife, were people of position in Avila, a city of Old Castile, where Teresa was born on March 28, 1515. There were nine children of this marriage, of whom Teresa was the third, and three children of her father's first marriage.
Piously reared as she was, Teresa became completely fascinated by stories of the saints and martyrs, as was her brother Roderigo, who was near her own age and her partner in youthful adventures. Once, when Teresa was seven, they made a plan to run away to Africa, where they might be beheaded by the infidel Moors and so achieve martyrdom. They set out secretly, expecting to beg their way like the poor friars, but had gone only a short distance from home when they were met by an uncle and brought back to their anxious mother, who had sent servants into the streets to search for them. She and her brother now thought they would like to become hermits, and tried to build themselves little cells from stones they found in the garden. Thus we see that religious thoughts and influences dominated the mind of the future saint in childhood.
Teresa was only fourteen when her mother died, and she later wrote of her sorrow in these words: "As soon as I began to understand how great a loss I had sustained by losing her, I was very much afflicted; and so I went before an image of our Blessed Lady and besought her with many tears that she would vouchsafe to be my mother." Visits from a girl cousin were most welcome at this time, but they had the effect of stimulating her interest in superficial things. Reading tales of chivalry was one of their diversions, and Teresa even tried to write romantic stories. "These tales," she says in her Autobiography, "did not fail to cool my good desires, and were the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects. I was so enchanted that I could not be happy without some new tale in my hands. I began to imitate the fashions, to enjoy being well dressed, to take great care of my hands, to use perfumes, and wear all the vain ornaments which my position in the world allowed." Noting this sudden change in his daughter's personality, Teresa's father decided to place her in a convent of Augustinian nuns in Avila, where other young women of her class were being educated. This action made Teresa aware that her danger had been greater than she knew. After a year and a half in the convent she fell ill with what seems to have been a malignant type of malaria, and Don Alfonso brought her home. After recovering, she went to stay with her eldest sister, who had married and gone to live in the country. Then she visited an uncle, Peter Sanchez de Capeda, a very sober and pious man. At home once more, and fearing that an uncongenial marriage would be forced upon her, she began to deliberate whether or not she should undertake the religious life. Reading the , helped her to reach a decision. St. Jerome's realism and ardor were akin to her own Castilian spirit, with its mixture of the practical and the idealistic. She now announced to her father her desire to become a nun, but he withheld consent, saying that after his death she might do as she pleased
This reaction caused a new conflict, for Teresa loved her father devotedly. Feeling that delay might weaken her resolve, she went secretly to the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation outside the town of Avila, where her dear friend Sister Jane Suarez was living, and applied for admission. Of this painful step, she wrote: "I remember . . . while I was going out of my father's house—the sharpness of sense will not be greater, I believe, in the very instant of agony of my death, than it was then. It seemed as if all the bones in my body were wrenched asunder.... There was no such love of God in me then as was able to quench the love I felt for my father and my friends." A year later Teresa made her profession, but when there was a recurrence of her illness, Don Alfonso had her removed from the convent, as the rule of enclosure was not then in effect. After a period of intense suffering, during which, on one occasion, at least, her life was despaired of, she gradually began to improve. She was helped by certain prayers she had begun to use. Her devout Uncle Peter had given her a little book called the , by Father Francis de Osuna, which dealt with "prayers of recollection and quiet." Taking this book as her guide, she began to concentrate on mental prayer, and progressed towards the "prayer of quiet," with the soul resting in divine contemplation, all earthly things forgotten. Occasionally, for brief moments, she attained the "prayer of union," in which all the powers of the soul are absorbed in God. She persuaded her father to apply himself to this form of prayer.
After three years Teresa went back to the convent. Her intelligence, warmth, and charm made her a favorite, and she found pleasure in being with people. It was the custom in Spain in those days for the young nuns to receive their acquaintances in the convent parlor, and Teresa spent much time there, chatting with friends. She was attracted to one of the visitors whose company was disturbing to her, although she told herself that there could be no question of sin, since she was only doing what so many others, better than she, were doing. During this relaxed period, she gave up her habit of mental prayer, using as a pretext the poor state of her health. "This excuse of bodily weakness," she wrote afterwards, "was not a sufficient reason why I should abandon so good a thing, which required no physical strength, but only love and habit. In the midst of sickness the best prayer may be offered, and it is a mistake to think it can only be offered in solitude." She returned to the practice of mental prayer and never again abandoned it, although she had not yet the courage to follow God completely, or to stop wasting her time and talents. But during these years of apparent wavering, her spirit was being forged. When depressed by her own unworthiness, she turned to those two great penitents, St. Mary Magdalen and St. Augustine, and through them came experiences that helped to steady her will. One was the reading of St. Augustine's ; another was an overpowering impulse to penitence before a picture of the suffering Lord, in which, she writes, "I felt Mary Magdalen come to my assistance.... From that day I have gone on improving in my spiritual life."
When finally Teresa withdrew from the pleasures of social intercourse, she found herself able once more to pray the "prayer of quiet," and also the "prayer of union." She began to have intellectual visions of divine things and to hear inner voices. Though she was persuaded these manifestations came from God, she was at times fearful and troubled. She consulted many persons, binding all to secrecy, but her perplexities nevertheless were spread abroad, to her great mortification. Among those she talked to was Father Gaspar Daza, a learned priest, who, after listening, reported that she was deluded, for such divine favors were not consistent with a life as full of imperfections as hers was, as she herself admitted. A friend, Don Francis de Salsedo, suggested that she talk to a priest of the newly formed Society of Jesus. To one of them, accordingly, she made a general Confession, recounting her manner of prayer and extraordinary visions. He assured her that she experienced divine graces, but warned her that she had failed to lay the foundations of a true spiritual life by practices of mortification. He advised her to try to resist the visions and voices for two months; resistance proved useless. Francis Borgia, commissary-general of the Society in Spain, then advised her not to resist further, but also not to seek such experiences.
Another Jesuit, Father Balthasar Alvarez, who now became her director, pointed out certain traits that were incompatible with perfect grace. He told her that she would do well to beg God to direct her to what was most pleasing to Him, and to recite daily the hymn of St. Gregory the Great, "!" One day, as she repeated the stanzas, she was seized with a rapture in which she heard the words, "I will not have you hold conversation with men, but with angels." For three years, while Father Balthasar was her director, she suffered from the disapproval of those around her; and for two years, from extreme desolation of soul. She was censured for her austerities and ridiculed as a victim of delusion or a hypocrite. A confessor to whom she went during Father Balthasar's absence said that her very prayer was an illusion, and commanded her, when she saw any vision, to make the sign of the cross and repel it as if it were an evil spirit. But Teresa tells us that the visions now brought with them their own evidence of ,authenticity, so that it was impossible to doubt they were from God. Nevertheless, she obeyed this order of her confessor. Pope Gregory XV, in his bull of canonization, commends her obedience in these words: "She was wont to say that she might be deceived in discerning visions and revelations, but could not be in obeying superiors."
In 1557 Peter of Alcantara, a Franciscan of the Observance, came to Avila. Few saints have been more experienced in the inner life, and he found in Teresa unmistakable evidence of the Holy Spirit. He openly expressed compassion for what she endured from slander and predicted that she was not at the end of her tribulations. However, as her mystical experiences continued, the greatness and goodness of God, the sweetness of His service, became more and more manifest to her. She was sometimes lifted from the ground, an experience other saints have known. "God," she says, "seems not content with drawing the soul to Himself, but he must needs draw up the very body too, even while it is mortal and compounded of so unclean a clay as we have made it by our sins."
It was at this time, she tells us, that her most singular experience took place, her mystical marriage to Christ, and the piercing of her heart. Of the latter she writes: "I saw an angel very near me, towards my left side, in bodily form, which is not usual with me; for though angels are often represented to me, it is only in my mental vision. This angel appeared rather small than large, and very beautiful. His face was so shining that he seemed to be one of those highest angels called seraphs, who look as if all on fire with divine love. He had in his hands a long golden dart; at the end of the point methought there was a little fire. And I felt him thrust it several times through my heart in such a way that it passed through my very bowels. And when he drew it out, methought it pulled them out with it and left me wholly on fire with a great love of God." The pain in her soul spread to her body, but it was accompanied by great delight too; she was like one transported, caring neither to see nor to speak but only to be consumed with the mingled pain and happiness.
Teresa's longing to die that she might be united with God was tempered by her desire to suffer for Him on earth. The account which the gives of her revelations is marked by sincerity, genuine simplicity of style, and scrupulous precision. An unlettered woman, she wrote in the Castilian vernacular, setting down her experiences reluctantly, out of obedience to her confessor, and submitting everything to his judgment and that of the Church, merely complaining that the task kept her from spinning. Teresa wrote of herself without self-love or pride. Towards her persecutors she was respectful, representing them as honest servants of God.
Teresa's other literary works came later, during the fifteen years when she was actively engaged in founding new convents of reformed Carmelite nuns. They are proof of her industry and her power of memory, as well as of a real talent for expression. she composed for the special guidance of her nuns, and the for their further edification. was perhaps meant for all Catholics; in it she writes with authority on the spiritual life. One admiring critic says: "She lays bare in her writings the most impenetrable secrets of true wisdom in what we call mystical theology, of which God has given the key to a small number of his favored servants. This thought may somewhat lessen our surprise that an unlearned woman should have expounded what the greatest doctors never attained, for God employs in His works what instruments He wills."
We have seen how undisciplined the Carmelite nuns had become, how the convent parlor at Avila was a social gathering place, and how easily nuns might leave their enclosure. Any woman, in fact, who wanted a sheltered life without much responsibility could find it in a convent in sixteenth-century Spain. The religious themselves, for the most part, were not even aware of how far they fell short of what their profession demanded. So when one of the nuns at the House of the Incarnation began talking of the possibility of founding a new and stricter community, the idea struck Teresa as an inspiration from Heaven. She determined to undertake its establishment herself and received a promise of help from a wealthy widow, Dona Guiomar de Ulloa. The project was approved by Peter of Alcantara and Father Angelo de Salazar, provincial of the Carmelite Order. The latter was soon compelled to withdraw his permission, for Teresa's fellow nuns, the local nobility, the magistrates, and others united to thwart the project. Father Ibanez, a Dominican, secretly encouraged Teresa and urged Dona Guiomar to continue to lend her support. One of Teresa's married sisters began with her husband to erect a small convent at Avila in 1561 to shelter the new establishment; outsiders took it for a house intended for the use of her family.
An episode famous in Teresa's life occurred at this time. Her little nephew was crushed by a wall of the new structure which fell on him as he was playing, and he was carried, apparently lifeless, to Teresa. She held the child in her arms and prayed. After some minutes she restored him alive and sound to his mother. The miracle was presented at the process for Teresa's canonization. Another seemingly solid wall of the convent collapsed during the night. Teresa's brother-in-law was going to refuse to pay the masons, but Teresa assured him that it was all the work of evil spirits and insisted that the men be paid.
A wealthy woman of Toledo, Countess Louise de la Cerda, happened at the time to be mourning the recent death of her husband, and asked the Carmelite provincial to order Teresa, whose goodness she had heard praised, to come to her. Teresa was accordingly sent to the woman, and stayed with her for six months, using a part of the time, at the request of Father Ibanez, to write, and to develop further her ideas for the convent. While at Toledo she met Maria of Jesus, of the Carmelite convent at Granada, who had had revelations concerning a reform of the order, and this meeting strengthened Teresa's own desires. Back in Avila, on the very evening of her arrival, the Pope's letter authorizing the new reformed convent was brought to her. Teresa's adherents now persuaded the bishop of Avila to concur, and the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, was quietly opened. On St. Bartholomew's day, 1562 the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the little chapel, and four novices took the habit.
The news soon spread in the town and opposition flared into the open. The prioress of the Incarnation convent sent for Teresa, who was required to explain her conduct. Detained almost as a prisoner, Teresa did not lose her poise. The prioress was joined in her disapproval by the mayor and magistrates, always fearful that an unendowed convent would be a burden on the townspeople. Some were for demolishing the building forthwith. Meanwhile Don Francis sent a priest to Madrid, to plead for the new establishment before the King's Council. Teresa was allowed to go back to her convent and shortly afterward the bishop officially appointed her prioress. The hubbub now quickly subsided. Teresa was hence. forth known simply as Teresa of Jesus, mother of the reform of Carmel. The nuns were strictly cloistered, under a rule of poverty and almost complete silence; the constant chatter of women's voices was one of the things that Teresa had most deplored at the Incarnation. They were poor, without regular revenues; they wore habits of coarse serge and sandals instead of shoes, and for this reason were called the "discalced" or shoeless Carmelites. Although the prioress was now in her late forties, and frail, her great achievement still lay in the future.
Convinced that too many women under one roof made for relaxation of discipline, Teresa limited the number of nuns to thirteen; later, when houses were being founded with endowments and hence were not wholly dependent on alms, the number was increased to twenty-one. The prior general of the Carmelites, John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, visiting Avila in 1567, carried away a fine impression of Teresa's sincerity and prudent rule. He gave her full authority to found other convents on the same plan, in spite of the fact that St. Joseph's had been established without his knowledge.
Five peaceful years were spent with the thirteen nuns in the little convent of St. Joseph. Teresa trained the sisters in every kind of useful work and in all religious observances, but whether at spinning or at prayer, she herself was always first and most diligent. In August, 1567, she founded a second convent at Medina del Campo. The Countess de la Cerda was anxious to found a similar house in her native town of Malagon, and Teresa went to advise her about it. When this third community had been launched, the intrepid nun moved on to Valladolid, and there founded a fourth; then a fifth at Toledo. On beginning this work, she had no more than four or five ducats (approximately ten dollars), but she said, "Teresa and this money are nothing; but God, Teresa, and these ducats suffice." At Medina del Campo she encountered two friars who had heard of her reform and wished to adopt it: Antony de Heredia, prior of the Carmelite monastery there, and John of the Cross. With their aid, in 1568, and the authority given her by the prior general, she established a reformed house for men at Durelo, and in 1569 a second one at Pastrana, both on a pattern of extreme poverty and austerity. She left to John of the Cross, who at this time was in his late twenties, the direction of these and other reformed communities that might be started for men. Refusing to obey the order of his provincial to return to Medina, he was imprisoned at Toledo for nine months. After his escape he became vicar-general of Andalusia, and strove for papal recognition of the order. John, later to attain fame as a poet, mystic confessor, and finally saint, became Teresa's friend; a close spiritual bond developed between the young friar and the aging prioress, and he was made director and confessor in the mother house at Avila.
The hardships and dangers involved in Teresa's labors are indicated by a little episode of the founding of a new convent at Salamanca. She and another nun took over a house which had been occupied by students. It was a large, dirty, desolate place, without furnishings, and when night came the two nuns lay down on their piles of straw, for, Teresa tells us, "the first furniture I provided wherever I founded convents was straw, for, having that, I reckoned I had beds." On this occasion, the other nun seemed very nervous, and Teresa asked her the reason. "I was wondering," was the reply, "what you would do alone with a corpse if I were to die here now." Teresa was startled, but only said, "I shall think of that when it happens, Sister. For the present, let us go to sleep."
At about this time Pope Pius V appointed a number of apostolic visitors to inquire into the relaxations of discipline in religious orders everywhere. The visitor to the Carmelites of Castile found great fault with the Incarnation convent and sent for Teresa, bidding her to assume its direction and remedy the abuses there. It was hard to be separated from her own daughters, and even more distasteful to be brought in as head of the old house which had long opposed her with bitterness and jealousy. The nuns at first refused to obey her; some of them fell into hysterics at the very idea. She told them that she came not to coerce or instruct but to serve and to learn from the least among them. By gentleness and tact she won the affection of the community, and was able to reestablish discipline. Frequent callers were forbidden, the finances of the house were set in order, and a more truly religious spirit reigned. At the end of three years, although the nuns wished to keep her longer, she was directed to return to her own convent.
Teresa organized a nunnery at Veas and while there met Father Jerome Gratian, a reformed Carmelite, and was persuaded by him to extend her work to Seville. With the exception of her first convent, none proved so hard to establish as this. Among her problems there was a disgruntled novice, who reported the nuns to the Inquisition, charging them with being Illuminati.
The Italian Carmelite friars had meanwhile been growing alarmed at the progress of the reform in Spain, lest, as one of their number said, they might one day be compelled to set about reforming themselves, a fear shared by their still unreformed Spanish brothers. At a general chapter at Piacenza several decrees were passed restricting the reform. The new apostolic nuncio dismissed Father Gratian from his office as visitor to the reformed Carmelites. Teresa was told to choose one of her convents and retire to it, and abstain from founding others. At this point she turned to her friends in the world, who were able to interest King Philip II in her behalf, and he personally espoused her cause. He summoned the nuncio to rebuke him for his severity towards the discalced friars and nuns. In 1580 came an order from Rome exempting the reformed from the jurisdiction of the unreformed Carmelites, and giving each party its own provincial. Father Gratian was elected provincial of the reformed branch. The separation, although painful to many, brought an end to dissension.
Teresa was a person of great natural gifts. Her ardor and lively wit was balanced by her sound judgment and psychological insight. It was no mere flight of fancy when the English Catholic poet, Richard Crashaw, called her "the eagle" and "the dove." She could stand up boldly and bravely for what she thought was right; she could also be severe with a prioress who by excessive austerity had made herself unfit for her duties. Yet she could be gentle as a dove, as when she writes to an erring, irresponsible nephew, "God's mercy is great in that you have been enabled to make so good a choice and marry so soon, for you began to be dissipated when you were so young that we might have had much sorrow on your account." Love, with Teresa, meant constructive action, and she had the young man's daughter, born out of wedlock, brought to the convent, and took charge of her upbringing and that of his young sister.
One of Teresa's charms was a sense of humor. In the early years, when an indiscreet male visitor to the convent once praised the beauty of her bare feet, she laughed and told him to take a good look at them for he would never see them again-implying that in the future he would not be admitted. Her method of selecting novices was characteristic. The first requirement, even before piety, was intelligence. A woman could attain to piety, but scarcely to intelligence, by which she meant common sense as well as brains. "An intelligent mind," she wrote, "is simple and teachable; it sees its faults and allows itself to be guided. A mind that is dull and narrow never sees its faults even when shown them. It is always pleased with itself and never learns to do right." Pretentiousness and pride annoyed her. Once a young woman of high reputation for virtue asked to be admitted to a convent in Teresa's charge, and added, as if to emphasize her intellect, "I shall bring my Bible with me." "What," exclaimed Teresa, "your Bible? Do not come to us. We are only poor women who know nothing but how to spin and do as we are told."
In spite of a naturally sturdy constitution, Teresa continued throughout her life to suffer from ailments which physicians found baffling. It would seem that sheer will power kept her alive. At the time of the definitive division of the Carmelite Order she had reached the age of sixty-five and was broken in health. Yet during the last two years of her life she somehow found strength to establish three more convents. They were at Granada, in the far south, at Burgos, in the north, and at Soria, in Portugal. The total was now sixteen. What an astounding achievement this was for one small, enfeebled woman may be better appreciated if we recall the hardships of travel. Most of this extensive journeying was done in a curtained carriage or cart drawn by mules over the extremely poor roads; her trips took her from the northern provinces down to the Mediterranean, and west into Portugal, across mountains, rivers, and arid plateaus. She and the nun who accompanied her endured all the rigors of a harsh climate as well as the steady discomfort of rude lodgings and scanty food.
In the autumn of 1582, Teresa, although ill, set out for Alva de Tormez, where an old friend was expecting a visit from her. Her companion of later years, Anne-of-St. Bartholomew, describes the journey. Teresa grew worse on the road, along which there were few habitations. They could get no food save figs, and when they arrived at the convent, Teresa went to bed in a state of exhaustion. She never recovered, and three days later, she remarked to Anne, "At last, my daughter, I have reached the house of death," a reference to her book, . Extreme Unction was administered by Father Antony de Heredia, a friar of the Reform, and when he asked her where she wished to be buried. she plaintively replied, "Will they deny me a little ground for my body here?" She sat up as she received the Sacrament, exclaiming, "O my Lord, now is the time that we shall see each other! " and died in Anne's arms. It was the evening of October 4. The next day, as it happened, the Gregorian calendar came into use. The readjustment made it necessary to drop ten days, so that October 5 was counted as October 15, and this latter date became Teresa's feast day. She was buried at Alva; three years later, following the decree of a. provincial chapter of Reformed Carmelites, the body was secretly removed to Avila. The next year the Duke of Alva procured an order from Rome to return it to Alva de Tormez, and there it has remained.
Teresa was canonized in 1662. Shortly after her death, Philip II, keenly aware of the Carmelite nun's contribution to Catholicism, had her manuscripts collected and brought to his great palace of the Escorial, and there placed in a rich case, the key of which he carried on his person. These writings were edited for publication by two Dominican scholars and brought out in 1587. Subsequently her works have appeared in uncounted Spanish editions, and have been translated into many languages. An ever-spreading circle of readers through the centuries have found understanding and courage in the life and works of this nun of Castile, who is one of the glories of Spain and of the Church. Teresa's emblems are a heart, an arrow, and a book.
DISCALCED CARMELITE MYSTIC, FOUNDRESS, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
Feast: October 15
Information:
Feast Day:
October 15
Born:
28 March 1515, Ávila, Old Castile, Spain
Died:
October 15, 1582, Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain
Canonized:
12 March 1622 by Pope Gregory XV
Major Shrine:
Shrine of St. Teresa of Ávila, Ávila, Spain
Patron of:
bodily ills; headaches; lacemakers; laceworkers; loss of parents; people in need of grace; people in religious orders; people ridiculed for their piety; sick people; sickness; Spain
In the Autobiography which she completed towards the end of her life, Saint Teresa of Avila gives us a description of her parents, along with a disparaging estimate of her own character. "The possession of virtuous parents who lived in the fear of God, together with those favors which I received from his Divine Majesty, might have made me good, if I had not been so very wicked." A heavy consciousness of sin was prevalent in sixteenth-century Spain, and we can readily discount this avowal of guilt. What we are told of Teresa's early life does not sound in the least wicked, but it is plain that she was an unusually active, imaginative, and sensitive child. Her parents, Don Alfonso Sanchez de Capeda and Dona Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, his second wife, were people of position in Avila, a city of Old Castile, where Teresa was born on March 28, 1515. There were nine children of this marriage, of whom Teresa was the third, and three children of her father's first marriage.
Piously reared as she was, Teresa became completely fascinated by stories of the saints and martyrs, as was her brother Roderigo, who was near her own age and her partner in youthful adventures. Once, when Teresa was seven, they made a plan to run away to Africa, where they might be beheaded by the infidel Moors and so achieve martyrdom. They set out secretly, expecting to beg their way like the poor friars, but had gone only a short distance from home when they were met by an uncle and brought back to their anxious mother, who had sent servants into the streets to search for them. She and her brother now thought they would like to become hermits, and tried to build themselves little cells from stones they found in the garden. Thus we see that religious thoughts and influences dominated the mind of the future saint in childhood.
Teresa was only fourteen when her mother died, and she later wrote of her sorrow in these words: "As soon as I began to understand how great a loss I had sustained by losing her, I was very much afflicted; and so I went before an image of our Blessed Lady and besought her with many tears that she would vouchsafe to be my mother." Visits from a girl cousin were most welcome at this time, but they had the effect of stimulating her interest in superficial things. Reading tales of chivalry was one of their diversions, and Teresa even tried to write romantic stories. "These tales," she says in her Autobiography, "did not fail to cool my good desires, and were the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects. I was so enchanted that I could not be happy without some new tale in my hands. I began to imitate the fashions, to enjoy being well dressed, to take great care of my hands, to use perfumes, and wear all the vain ornaments which my position in the world allowed." Noting this sudden change in his daughter's personality, Teresa's father decided to place her in a convent of Augustinian nuns in Avila, where other young women of her class were being educated. This action made Teresa aware that her danger had been greater than she knew. After a year and a half in the convent she fell ill with what seems to have been a malignant type of malaria, and Don Alfonso brought her home. After recovering, she went to stay with her eldest sister, who had married and gone to live in the country. Then she visited an uncle, Peter Sanchez de Capeda, a very sober and pious man. At home once more, and fearing that an uncongenial marriage would be forced upon her, she began to deliberate whether or not she should undertake the religious life. Reading the, helped her to reach a decision. St. Jerome's realism and ardor were akin to her own Castilian spirit, with its mixture of the practical and the idealistic. She now announced to her father her desire to become a nun, but he withheld consent, saying that after his death she might do as she pleased
This reaction caused a new conflict, for Teresa loved her father devotedly. Feeling that delay might weaken her resolve, she went secretly to the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation outside the town of Avila, where her dear friend Sister Jane Suarez was living, and applied for admission. Of this painful step, she wrote: "I remember . . . while I was going out of my father's house—the sharpness of sense will not be greater, I believe, in the very instant of agony of my death, than it was then. It seemed as if all the bones in my body were wrenched asunder.... There was no such love of God in me then as was able to quench the love I felt for my father and my friends." A year later Teresa made her profession, but when there was a recurrence of her illness, Don Alfonso had her removed from the convent, as the rule of enclosure was not then in effect. After a period of intense suffering, during which, on one occasion, at least, her life was despaired of, she gradually began to improve. She was helped by certain prayers she had begun to use. Her devout Uncle Peter had given her a little book called the, by Father Francis de Osuna, which dealt with "prayers of recollection and quiet." Taking this book as her guide, she began to concentrate on mental prayer, and progressed towards the "prayer of quiet," with the soul resting in divine contemplation, all earthly things forgotten. Occasionally, for brief moments, she attained the "prayer of union," in which all the powers of the soul are absorbed in God. She persuaded her father to apply himself to this form of prayer.
After three years Teresa went back to the convent. Her intelligence, warmth, and charm made her a favorite, and she found pleasure in being with people. It was the custom in Spain in those days for the young nuns to receive their acquaintances in the convent parlor, and Teresa spent much time there, chatting with friends. She was attracted to one of the visitors whose company was disturbing to her, although she told herself that there could be no question of sin, since she was only doing what so many others, better than she, were doing. During this relaxed period, she gave up her habit of mental prayer, using as a pretext the poor state of her health. "This excuse of bodily weakness," she wrote afterwards, "was not a sufficient reason why I should abandon so good a thing, which required no physical strength, but only love and habit. In the midst of sickness the best prayer may be offered, and it is a mistake to think it can only be offered in solitude." She returned to the practice of mental prayer and never again abandoned it, although she had not yet the courage to follow God completely, or to stop wasting her time and talents. But during these years of apparent wavering, her spirit was being forged. When depressed by her own unworthiness, she turned to those two great penitents, St. Mary Magdalen and St. Augustine, and through them came experiences that helped to steady her will. One was the reading of St. Augustine's; another was an overpowering impulse to penitence before a picture of the suffering Lord, in which, she writes, "I felt Mary Magdalen come to my assistance.... From that day I have gone on improving in my spiritual life."
When finally Teresa withdrew from the pleasures of social intercourse, she found herself able once more to pray the "prayer of quiet," and also the "prayer of union." She began to have intellectual visions of divine things and to hear inner voices. Though she was persuaded these manifestations came from God, she was at times fearful and troubled. She consulted many persons, binding all to secrecy, but her perplexities nevertheless were spread abroad, to her great mortification. Among those she talked to was Father Gaspar Daza, a learned priest, who, after listening, reported that she was deluded, for such divine favors were not consistent with a life as full of imperfections as hers was, as she herself admitted. A friend, Don Francis de Salsedo, suggested that she talk to a priest of the newly formed Society of Jesus. To one of them, accordingly, she made a general Confession, recounting her manner of prayer and extraordinary visions. He assured her that she experienced divine graces, but warned her that she had failed to lay the foundations of a true spiritual life by practices of mortification. He advised her to try to resist the visions and voices for two months; resistance proved useless. Francis Borgia, commissary-general of the Society in Spain, then advised her not to resist further, but also not to seek such experiences.
Another Jesuit, Father Balthasar Alvarez, who now became her director, pointed out certain traits that were incompatible with perfect grace. He told her that she would do well to beg God to direct her to what was most pleasing to Him, and to recite daily the hymn of St. Gregory the Great, "!" One day, as she repeated the stanzas, she was seized with a rapture in which she heard the words, "I will not have you hold conversation with men, but with angels." For three years, while Father Balthasar was her director, she suffered from the disapproval of those around her; and for two years, from extreme desolation of soul. She was censured for her austerities and ridiculed as a victim of delusion or a hypocrite. A confessor to whom she went during Father Balthasar's absence said that her very prayer was an illusion, and commanded her, when she saw any vision, to make the sign of the cross and repel it as if it were an evil spirit. But Teresa tells us that the visions now brought with them their own evidence of ,authenticity, so that it was impossible to doubt they were from God. Nevertheless, she obeyed this order of her confessor. Pope Gregory XV, in his bull of canonization, commends her obedience in these words: "She was wont to say that she might be deceived in discerning visions and revelations, but could not be in obeying superiors."
In 1557 Peter of Alcantara, a Franciscan of the Observance, came to Avila. Few saints have been more experienced in the inner life, and he found in Teresa unmistakable evidence of the Holy Spirit. He openly expressed compassion for what she endured from slander and predicted that she was not at the end of her tribulations. However, as her mystical experiences continued, the greatness and goodness of God, the sweetness of His service, became more and more manifest to her. She was sometimes lifted from the ground, an experience other saints have known. "God," she says, "seems not content with drawing the soul to Himself, but he must needs draw up the very body too, even while it is mortal and compounded of so unclean a clay as we have made it by our sins."
It was at this time, she tells us, that her most singular experience took place, her mystical marriage to Christ, and the piercing of her heart. Of the latter she writes: "I saw an angel very near me, towards my left side, in bodily form, which is not usual with me; for though angels are often represented to me, it is only in my mental vision. This angel appeared rather small than large, and very beautiful. His face was so shining that he seemed to be one of those highest angels called seraphs, who look as if all on fire with divine love. He had in his hands a long golden dart; at the end of the point methought there was a little fire. And I felt him thrust it several times through my heart in such a way that it passed through my very bowels. And when he drew it out, methought it pulled them out with it and left me wholly on fire with a great love of God." The pain in her soul spread to her body, but it was accompanied by great delight too; she was like one transported, caring neither to see nor to speak but only to be consumed with the mingled pain and happiness.
Teresa's longing to die that she might be united with God was tempered by her desire to suffer for Him on earth. The account which thegives of her revelations is marked by sincerity, genuine simplicity of style, and scrupulous precision. An unlettered woman, she wrote in the Castilian vernacular, setting down her experiences reluctantly, out of obedience to her confessor, and submitting everything to his judgment and that of the Church, merely complaining that the task kept her from spinning. Teresa wrote of herself without self-love or pride. Towards her persecutors she was respectful, representing them as honest servants of God.
Teresa's other literary works came later, during the fifteen years when she was actively engaged in founding new convents of reformed Carmelite nuns. They are proof of her industry and her power of memory, as well as of a real talent for expression.she composed for the special guidance of her nuns, and the for their further edification. was perhaps meant for all Catholics; in it she writes with authority on the spiritual life. One admiring critic says: "She lays bare in her writings the most impenetrable secrets of true wisdom in what we call mystical theology, of which God has given the key to a small number of his favored servants. This thought may somewhat lessen our surprise that an unlearned woman should have expounded what the greatest doctors never attained, for God employs in His works what instruments He wills."
We have seen how undisciplined the Carmelite nuns had become, how the convent parlor at Avila was a social gathering place, and how easily nuns might leave their enclosure. Any woman, in fact, who wanted a sheltered life without much responsibility could find it in a convent in sixteenth-century Spain. The religious themselves, for the most part, were not even aware of how far they fell short of what their profession demanded. So when one of the nuns at the House of the Incarnation began talking of the possibility of founding a new and stricter community, the idea struck Teresa as an inspiration from Heaven. She determined to undertake its establishment herself and received a promise of help from a wealthy widow, Dona Guiomar de Ulloa. The project was approved by Peter of Alcantara and Father Angelo de Salazar, provincial of the Carmelite Order. The latter was soon compelled to withdraw his permission, for Teresa's fellow nuns, the local nobility, the magistrates, and others united to thwart the project. Father Ibanez, a Dominican, secretly encouraged Teresa and urged Dona Guiomar to continue to lend her support. One of Teresa's married sisters began with her husband to erect a small convent at Avila in 1561 to shelter the new establishment; outsiders took it for a house intended for the use of her family.
An episode famous in Teresa's life occurred at this time. Her little nephew was crushed by a wall of the new structure which fell on him as he was playing, and he was carried, apparently lifeless, to Teresa. She held the child in her arms and prayed. After some minutes she restored him alive and sound to his mother. The miracle was presented at the process for Teresa's canonization. Another seemingly solid wall of the convent collapsed during the night. Teresa's brother-in-law was going to refuse to pay the masons, but Teresa assured him that it was all the work of evil spirits and insisted that the men be paid.
A wealthy woman of Toledo, Countess Louise de la Cerda, happened at the time to be mourning the recent death of her husband, and asked the Carmelite provincial to order Teresa, whose goodness she had heard praised, to come to her. Teresa was accordingly sent to the woman, and stayed with her for six months, using a part of the time, at the request of Father Ibanez, to write, and to develop further her ideas for the convent. While at Toledo she met Maria of Jesus, of the Carmelite convent at Granada, who had had revelations concerning a reform of the order, and this meeting strengthened Teresa's own desires. Back in Avila, on the very evening of her arrival, the Pope's letter authorizing the new reformed convent was brought to her. Teresa's adherents now persuaded the bishop of Avila to concur, and the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, was quietly opened. On St. Bartholomew's day, 1562 the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the little chapel, and four novices took the habit.
The news soon spread in the town and opposition flared into the open. The prioress of the Incarnation convent sent for Teresa, who was required to explain her conduct. Detained almost as a prisoner, Teresa did not lose her poise. The prioress was joined in her disapproval by the mayor and magistrates, always fearful that an unendowed convent would be a burden on the townspeople. Some were for demolishing the building forthwith. Meanwhile Don Francis sent a priest to Madrid, to plead for the new establishment before the King's Council. Teresa was allowed to go back to her convent and shortly afterward the bishop officially appointed her prioress. The hubbub now quickly subsided. Teresa was hence. forth known simply as Teresa of Jesus, mother of the reform of Carmel. The nuns were strictly cloistered, under a rule of poverty and almost complete silence; the constant chatter of women's voices was one of the things that Teresa had most deplored at the Incarnation. They were poor, without regular revenues; they wore habits of coarse serge and sandals instead of shoes, and for this reason were called the "discalced" or shoeless Carmelites. Although the prioress was now in her late forties, and frail, her great achievement still lay in the future.
Convinced that too many women under one roof made for relaxation of discipline, Teresa limited the number of nuns to thirteen; later, when houses were being founded with endowments and hence were not wholly dependent on alms, the number was increased to twenty-one. The prior general of the Carmelites, John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, visiting Avila in 1567, carried away a fine impression of Teresa's sincerity and prudent rule. He gave her full authority to found other convents on the same plan, in spite of the fact that St. Joseph's had been established without his knowledge.
Five peaceful years were spent with the thirteen nuns in the little convent of St. Joseph. Teresa trained the sisters in every kind of useful work and in all religious observances, but whether at spinning or at prayer, she herself was always first and most diligent. In August, 1567, she founded a second convent at Medina del Campo. The Countess de la Cerda was anxious to found a similar house in her native town of Malagon, and Teresa went to advise her about it. When this third community had been launched, the intrepid nun moved on to Valladolid, and there founded a fourth; then a fifth at Toledo. On beginning this work, she had no more than four or five ducats (approximately ten dollars), but she said, "Teresa and this money are nothing; but God, Teresa, and these ducats suffice." At Medina del Campo she encountered two friars who had heard of her reform and wished to adopt it: Antony de Heredia, prior of the Carmelite monastery there, and John of the Cross. With their aid, in 1568, and the authority given her by the prior general, she established a reformed house for men at Durelo, and in 1569 a second one at Pastrana, both on a pattern of extreme poverty and austerity. She left to John of the Cross, who at this time was in his late twenties, the direction of these and other reformed communities that might be started for men. Refusing to obey the order of his provincial to return to Medina, he was imprisoned at Toledo for nine months. After his escape he became vicar-general of Andalusia, and strove for papal recognition of the order. John, later to attain fame as a poet, mystic confessor, and finally saint, became Teresa's friend; a close spiritual bond developed between the young friar and the aging prioress, and he was made director and confessor in the mother house at Avila.
The hardships and dangers involved in Teresa's labors are indicated by a little episode of the founding of a new convent at Salamanca. She and another nun took over a house which had been occupied by students. It was a large, dirty, desolate place, without furnishings, and when night came the two nuns lay down on their piles of straw, for, Teresa tells us, "the first furniture I provided wherever I founded convents was straw, for, having that, I reckoned I had beds." On this occasion, the other nun seemed very nervous, and Teresa asked her the reason. "I was wondering," was the reply, "what you would do alone with a corpse if I were to die here now." Teresa was startled, but only said, "I shall think of that when it happens, Sister. For the present, let us go to sleep."
At about this time Pope Pius V appointed a number of apostolic visitors to inquire into the relaxations of discipline in religious orders everywhere. The visitor to the Carmelites of Castile found great fault with the Incarnation convent and sent for Teresa, bidding her to assume its direction and remedy the abuses there. It was hard to be separated from her own daughters, and even more distasteful to be brought in as head of the old house which had long opposed her with bitterness and jealousy. The nuns at first refused to obey her; some of them fell into hysterics at the very idea. She told them that she came not to coerce or instruct but to serve and to learn from the least among them. By gentleness and tact she won the affection of the community, and was able to reestablish discipline. Frequent callers were forbidden, the finances of the house were set in order, and a more truly religious spirit reigned. At the end of three years, although the nuns wished to keep her longer, she was directed to return to her own convent.
Teresa organized a nunnery at Veas and while there met Father Jerome Gratian, a reformed Carmelite, and was persuaded by him to extend her work to Seville. With the exception of her first convent, none proved so hard to establish as this. Among her problems there was a disgruntled novice, who reported the nuns to the Inquisition, charging them with being Illuminati.
The Italian Carmelite friars had meanwhile been growing alarmed at the progress of the reform in Spain, lest, as one of their number said, they might one day be compelled to set about reforming themselves, a fear shared by their still unreformed Spanish brothers. At a general chapter at Piacenza several decrees were passed restricting the reform. The new apostolic nuncio dismissed Father Gratian from his office as visitor to the reformed Carmelites. Teresa was told to choose one of her convents and retire to it, and abstain from founding others. At this point she turned to her friends in the world, who were able to interest King Philip II in her behalf, and he personally espoused her cause. He summoned the nuncio to rebuke him for his severity towards the discalced friars and nuns. In 1580 came an order from Rome exempting the reformed from the jurisdiction of the unreformed Carmelites, and giving each party its own provincial. Father Gratian was elected provincial of the reformed branch. The separation, although painful to many, brought an end to dissension.
Teresa was a person of great natural gifts. Her ardor and lively wit was balanced by her sound judgment and psychological insight. It was no mere flight of fancy when the English Catholic poet, Richard Crashaw, called her "the eagle" and "the dove." She could stand up boldly and bravely for what she thought was right; she could also be severe with a prioress who by excessive austerity had made herself unfit for her duties. Yet she could be gentle as a dove, as when she writes to an erring, irresponsible nephew, "God's mercy is great in that you have been enabled to make so good a choice and marry so soon, for you began to be dissipated when you were so young that we might have had much sorrow on your account." Love, with Teresa, meant constructive action, and she had the young man's daughter, born out of wedlock, brought to the convent, and took charge of her upbringing and that of his young sister.
One of Teresa's charms was a sense of humor. In the early years, when an indiscreet male visitor to the convent once praised the beauty of her bare feet, she laughed and told him to take a good look at them for he would never see them again-implying that in the future he would not be admitted. Her method of selecting novices was characteristic. The first requirement, even before piety, was intelligence. A woman could attain to piety, but scarcely to intelligence, by which she meant common sense as well as brains. "An intelligent mind," she wrote, "is simple and teachable; it sees its faults and allows itself to be guided. A mind that is dull and narrow never sees its faults even when shown them. It is always pleased with itself and never learns to do right." Pretentiousness and pride annoyed her. Once a young woman of high reputation for virtue asked to be admitted to a convent in Teresa's charge, and added, as if to emphasize her intellect, "I shall bring my Bible with me." "What," exclaimed Teresa, "your Bible? Do not come to us. We are only poor women who know nothing but how to spin and do as we are told."
In spite of a naturally sturdy constitution, Teresa continued throughout her life to suffer from ailments which physicians found baffling. It would seem that sheer will power kept her alive. At the time of the definitive division of the Carmelite Order she had reached the age of sixty-five and was broken in health. Yet during the last two years of her life she somehow found strength to establish three more convents. They were at Granada, in the far south, at Burgos, in the north, and at Soria, in Portugal. The total was now sixteen. What an astounding achievement this was for one small, enfeebled woman may be better appreciated if we recall the hardships of travel. Most of this extensive journeying was done in a curtained carriage or cart drawn by mules over the extremely poor roads; her trips took her from the northern provinces down to the Mediterranean, and west into Portugal, across mountains, rivers, and arid plateaus. She and the nun who accompanied her endured all the rigors of a harsh climate as well as the steady discomfort of rude lodgings and scanty food.
In the autumn of 1582, Teresa, although ill, set out for Alva de Tormez, where an old friend was expecting a visit from her. Her companion of later years, Anne-of-St. Bartholomew, describes the journey. Teresa grew worse on the road, along which there were few habitations. They could get no food save figs, and when they arrived at the convent, Teresa went to bed in a state of exhaustion. She never recovered, and three days later, she remarked to Anne, "At last, my daughter, I have reached the house of death," a reference to her book,. Extreme Unction was administered by Father Antony de Heredia, a friar of the Reform, and when he asked her where she wished to be buried. she plaintively replied, "Will they deny me a little ground for my body here?" She sat up as she received the Sacrament, exclaiming, "O my Lord, now is the time that we shall see each other! " and died in Anne's arms. It was the evening of October 4. The next day, as it happened, the Gregorian calendar came into use. The readjustment made it necessary to drop ten days, so that October 5 was counted as October 15, and this latter date became Teresa's feast day. She was buried at Alva; three years later, following the decree of a. provincial chapter of Reformed Carmelites, the body was secretly removed to Avila. The next year the Duke of Alva procured an order from Rome to return it to Alva de Tormez, and there it has remained.
Teresa was canonized in 1662. Shortly after her death, Philip II, keenly aware of the Carmelite nun's contribution to Catholicism, had her manuscripts collected and brought to his great palace of the Escorial, and there placed in a rich case, the key of which he carried on his person. These writings were edited for publication by two Dominican scholars and brought out in 1587. Subsequently her works have appeared in uncounted Spanish editions, and have been translated into many languages. An ever-spreading circle of readers through the centuries have found understanding and courage in the life and works of this nun of Castile, who is one of the glories of Spain and of the Church. Teresa's emblems are a heart, an arrow, and a book.
Feast: October 15
Information:
Feast Day:
October 15
Born:
28 March 1515, Ávila, Old Castile, Spain
Died:
October 15, 1582, Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain
Canonized:
12 March 1622 by Pope Gregory XV
Major Shrine:
Shrine of St. Teresa of Ávila, Ávila, Spain
Patron of:
bodily ills; headaches; lacemakers; laceworkers; loss of parents; people in need of grace; people in religious orders; people ridiculed for their piety; sick people; sickness; Spain
In the Autobiography which she completed towards the end of her life, Saint Teresa of Avila gives us a description of her parents, along with a disparaging estimate of her own character. "The possession of virtuous parents who lived in the fear of God, together with those favors which I received from his Divine Majesty, might have made me good, if I had not been so very wicked." A heavy consciousness of sin was prevalent in sixteenth-century Spain, and we can readily discount this avowal of guilt. What we are told of Teresa's early life does not sound in the least wicked, but it is plain that she was an unusually active, imaginative, and sensitive child. Her parents, Don Alfonso Sanchez de Capeda and Dona Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, his second wife, were people of position in Avila, a city of Old Castile, where Teresa was born on March 28, 1515. There were nine children of this marriage, of whom Teresa was the third, and three children of her father's first marriage.
Piously reared as she was, Teresa became completely fascinated by stories of the saints and martyrs, as was her brother Roderigo, who was near her own age and her partner in youthful adventures. Once, when Teresa was seven, they made a plan to run away to Africa, where they might be beheaded by the infidel Moors and so achieve martyrdom. They set out secretly, expecting to beg their way like the poor friars, but had gone only a short distance from home when they were met by an uncle and brought back to their anxious mother, who had sent servants into the streets to search for them. She and her brother now thought they would like to become hermits, and tried to build themselves little cells from stones they found in the garden. Thus we see that religious thoughts and influences dominated the mind of the future saint in childhood.
Teresa was only fourteen when her mother died, and she later wrote of her sorrow in these words: "As soon as I began to understand how great a loss I had sustained by losing her, I was very much afflicted; and so I went before an image of our Blessed Lady and besought her with many tears that she would vouchsafe to be my mother." Visits from a girl cousin were most welcome at this time, but they had the effect of stimulating her interest in superficial things. Reading tales of chivalry was one of their diversions, and Teresa even tried to write romantic stories. "These tales," she says in her Autobiography, "did not fail to cool my good desires, and were the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects. I was so enchanted that I could not be happy without some new tale in my hands. I began to imitate the fashions, to enjoy being well dressed, to take great care of my hands, to use perfumes, and wear all the vain ornaments which my position in the world allowed." Noting this sudden change in his daughter's personality, Teresa's father decided to place her in a convent of Augustinian nuns in Avila, where other young women of her class were being educated. This action made Teresa aware that her danger had been greater than she knew. After a year and a half in the convent she fell ill with what seems to have been a malignant type of malaria, and Don Alfonso brought her home. After recovering, she went to stay with her eldest sister, who had married and gone to live in the country. Then she visited an uncle, Peter Sanchez de Capeda, a very sober and pious man. At home once more, and fearing that an uncongenial marriage would be forced upon her, she began to deliberate whether or not she should undertake the religious life. Reading the
This reaction caused a new conflict, for Teresa loved her father devotedly. Feeling that delay might weaken her resolve, she went secretly to the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation outside the town of Avila, where her dear friend Sister Jane Suarez was living, and applied for admission. Of this painful step, she wrote: "I remember . . . while I was going out of my father's house—the sharpness of sense will not be greater, I believe, in the very instant of agony of my death, than it was then. It seemed as if all the bones in my body were wrenched asunder.... There was no such love of God in me then as was able to quench the love I felt for my father and my friends." A year later Teresa made her profession, but when there was a recurrence of her illness, Don Alfonso had her removed from the convent, as the rule of enclosure was not then in effect. After a period of intense suffering, during which, on one occasion, at least, her life was despaired of, she gradually began to improve. She was helped by certain prayers she had begun to use. Her devout Uncle Peter had given her a little book called the
After three years Teresa went back to the convent. Her intelligence, warmth, and charm made her a favorite, and she found pleasure in being with people. It was the custom in Spain in those days for the young nuns to receive their acquaintances in the convent parlor, and Teresa spent much time there, chatting with friends. She was attracted to one of the visitors whose company was disturbing to her, although she told herself that there could be no question of sin, since she was only doing what so many others, better than she, were doing. During this relaxed period, she gave up her habit of mental prayer, using as a pretext the poor state of her health. "This excuse of bodily weakness," she wrote afterwards, "was not a sufficient reason why I should abandon so good a thing, which required no physical strength, but only love and habit. In the midst of sickness the best prayer may be offered, and it is a mistake to think it can only be offered in solitude." She returned to the practice of mental prayer and never again abandoned it, although she had not yet the courage to follow God completely, or to stop wasting her time and talents. But during these years of apparent wavering, her spirit was being forged. When depressed by her own unworthiness, she turned to those two great penitents, St. Mary Magdalen and St. Augustine, and through them came experiences that helped to steady her will. One was the reading of St. Augustine's
When finally Teresa withdrew from the pleasures of social intercourse, she found herself able once more to pray the "prayer of quiet," and also the "prayer of union." She began to have intellectual visions of divine things and to hear inner voices. Though she was persuaded these manifestations came from God, she was at times fearful and troubled. She consulted many persons, binding all to secrecy, but her perplexities nevertheless were spread abroad, to her great mortification. Among those she talked to was Father Gaspar Daza, a learned priest, who, after listening, reported that she was deluded, for such divine favors were not consistent with a life as full of imperfections as hers was, as she herself admitted. A friend, Don Francis de Salsedo, suggested that she talk to a priest of the newly formed Society of Jesus. To one of them, accordingly, she made a general Confession, recounting her manner of prayer and extraordinary visions. He assured her that she experienced divine graces, but warned her that she had failed to lay the foundations of a true spiritual life by practices of mortification. He advised her to try to resist the visions and voices for two months; resistance proved useless. Francis Borgia, commissary-general of the Society in Spain, then advised her not to resist further, but also not to seek such experiences.
Another Jesuit, Father Balthasar Alvarez, who now became her director, pointed out certain traits that were incompatible with perfect grace. He told her that she would do well to beg God to direct her to what was most pleasing to Him, and to recite daily the hymn of St. Gregory the Great, "
In 1557 Peter of Alcantara, a Franciscan of the Observance, came to Avila. Few saints have been more experienced in the inner life, and he found in Teresa unmistakable evidence of the Holy Spirit. He openly expressed compassion for what she endured from slander and predicted that she was not at the end of her tribulations. However, as her mystical experiences continued, the greatness and goodness of God, the sweetness of His service, became more and more manifest to her. She was sometimes lifted from the ground, an experience other saints have known. "God," she says, "seems not content with drawing the soul to Himself, but he must needs draw up the very body too, even while it is mortal and compounded of so unclean a clay as we have made it by our sins."
It was at this time, she tells us, that her most singular experience took place, her mystical marriage to Christ, and the piercing of her heart. Of the latter she writes: "I saw an angel very near me, towards my left side, in bodily form, which is not usual with me; for though angels are often represented to me, it is only in my mental vision. This angel appeared rather small than large, and very beautiful. His face was so shining that he seemed to be one of those highest angels called seraphs, who look as if all on fire with divine love. He had in his hands a long golden dart; at the end of the point methought there was a little fire. And I felt him thrust it several times through my heart in such a way that it passed through my very bowels. And when he drew it out, methought it pulled them out with it and left me wholly on fire with a great love of God." The pain in her soul spread to her body, but it was accompanied by great delight too; she was like one transported, caring neither to see nor to speak but only to be consumed with the mingled pain and happiness.
Teresa's longing to die that she might be united with God was tempered by her desire to suffer for Him on earth. The account which the
Teresa's other literary works came later, during the fifteen years when she was actively engaged in founding new convents of reformed Carmelite nuns. They are proof of her industry and her power of memory, as well as of a real talent for expression.
We have seen how undisciplined the Carmelite nuns had become, how the convent parlor at Avila was a social gathering place, and how easily nuns might leave their enclosure. Any woman, in fact, who wanted a sheltered life without much responsibility could find it in a convent in sixteenth-century Spain. The religious themselves, for the most part, were not even aware of how far they fell short of what their profession demanded. So when one of the nuns at the House of the Incarnation began talking of the possibility of founding a new and stricter community, the idea struck Teresa as an inspiration from Heaven. She determined to undertake its establishment herself and received a promise of help from a wealthy widow, Dona Guiomar de Ulloa. The project was approved by Peter of Alcantara and Father Angelo de Salazar, provincial of the Carmelite Order. The latter was soon compelled to withdraw his permission, for Teresa's fellow nuns, the local nobility, the magistrates, and others united to thwart the project. Father Ibanez, a Dominican, secretly encouraged Teresa and urged Dona Guiomar to continue to lend her support. One of Teresa's married sisters began with her husband to erect a small convent at Avila in 1561 to shelter the new establishment; outsiders took it for a house intended for the use of her family.
An episode famous in Teresa's life occurred at this time. Her little nephew was crushed by a wall of the new structure which fell on him as he was playing, and he was carried, apparently lifeless, to Teresa. She held the child in her arms and prayed. After some minutes she restored him alive and sound to his mother. The miracle was presented at the process for Teresa's canonization. Another seemingly solid wall of the convent collapsed during the night. Teresa's brother-in-law was going to refuse to pay the masons, but Teresa assured him that it was all the work of evil spirits and insisted that the men be paid.
A wealthy woman of Toledo, Countess Louise de la Cerda, happened at the time to be mourning the recent death of her husband, and asked the Carmelite provincial to order Teresa, whose goodness she had heard praised, to come to her. Teresa was accordingly sent to the woman, and stayed with her for six months, using a part of the time, at the request of Father Ibanez, to write, and to develop further her ideas for the convent. While at Toledo she met Maria of Jesus, of the Carmelite convent at Granada, who had had revelations concerning a reform of the order, and this meeting strengthened Teresa's own desires. Back in Avila, on the very evening of her arrival, the Pope's letter authorizing the new reformed convent was brought to her. Teresa's adherents now persuaded the bishop of Avila to concur, and the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, was quietly opened. On St. Bartholomew's day, 1562 the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the little chapel, and four novices took the habit.
The news soon spread in the town and opposition flared into the open. The prioress of the Incarnation convent sent for Teresa, who was required to explain her conduct. Detained almost as a prisoner, Teresa did not lose her poise. The prioress was joined in her disapproval by the mayor and magistrates, always fearful that an unendowed convent would be a burden on the townspeople. Some were for demolishing the building forthwith. Meanwhile Don Francis sent a priest to Madrid, to plead for the new establishment before the King's Council. Teresa was allowed to go back to her convent and shortly afterward the bishop officially appointed her prioress. The hubbub now quickly subsided. Teresa was hence. forth known simply as Teresa of Jesus, mother of the reform of Carmel. The nuns were strictly cloistered, under a rule of poverty and almost complete silence; the constant chatter of women's voices was one of the things that Teresa had most deplored at the Incarnation. They were poor, without regular revenues; they wore habits of coarse serge and sandals instead of shoes, and for this reason were called the "discalced" or shoeless Carmelites. Although the prioress was now in her late forties, and frail, her great achievement still lay in the future.
Convinced that too many women under one roof made for relaxation of discipline, Teresa limited the number of nuns to thirteen; later, when houses were being founded with endowments and hence were not wholly dependent on alms, the number was increased to twenty-one. The prior general of the Carmelites, John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, visiting Avila in 1567, carried away a fine impression of Teresa's sincerity and prudent rule. He gave her full authority to found other convents on the same plan, in spite of the fact that St. Joseph's had been established without his knowledge.
Five peaceful years were spent with the thirteen nuns in the little convent of St. Joseph. Teresa trained the sisters in every kind of useful work and in all religious observances, but whether at spinning or at prayer, she herself was always first and most diligent. In August, 1567, she founded a second convent at Medina del Campo. The Countess de la Cerda was anxious to found a similar house in her native town of Malagon, and Teresa went to advise her about it. When this third community had been launched, the intrepid nun moved on to Valladolid, and there founded a fourth; then a fifth at Toledo. On beginning this work, she had no more than four or five ducats (approximately ten dollars), but she said, "Teresa and this money are nothing; but God, Teresa, and these ducats suffice." At Medina del Campo she encountered two friars who had heard of her reform and wished to adopt it: Antony de Heredia, prior of the Carmelite monastery there, and John of the Cross. With their aid, in 1568, and the authority given her by the prior general, she established a reformed house for men at Durelo, and in 1569 a second one at Pastrana, both on a pattern of extreme poverty and austerity. She left to John of the Cross, who at this time was in his late twenties, the direction of these and other reformed communities that might be started for men. Refusing to obey the order of his provincial to return to Medina, he was imprisoned at Toledo for nine months. After his escape he became vicar-general of Andalusia, and strove for papal recognition of the order. John, later to attain fame as a poet, mystic confessor, and finally saint, became Teresa's friend; a close spiritual bond developed between the young friar and the aging prioress, and he was made director and confessor in the mother house at Avila.
The hardships and dangers involved in Teresa's labors are indicated by a little episode of the founding of a new convent at Salamanca. She and another nun took over a house which had been occupied by students. It was a large, dirty, desolate place, without furnishings, and when night came the two nuns lay down on their piles of straw, for, Teresa tells us, "the first furniture I provided wherever I founded convents was straw, for, having that, I reckoned I had beds." On this occasion, the other nun seemed very nervous, and Teresa asked her the reason. "I was wondering," was the reply, "what you would do alone with a corpse if I were to die here now." Teresa was startled, but only said, "I shall think of that when it happens, Sister. For the present, let us go to sleep."
At about this time Pope Pius V appointed a number of apostolic visitors to inquire into the relaxations of discipline in religious orders everywhere. The visitor to the Carmelites of Castile found great fault with the Incarnation convent and sent for Teresa, bidding her to assume its direction and remedy the abuses there. It was hard to be separated from her own daughters, and even more distasteful to be brought in as head of the old house which had long opposed her with bitterness and jealousy. The nuns at first refused to obey her; some of them fell into hysterics at the very idea. She told them that she came not to coerce or instruct but to serve and to learn from the least among them. By gentleness and tact she won the affection of the community, and was able to reestablish discipline. Frequent callers were forbidden, the finances of the house were set in order, and a more truly religious spirit reigned. At the end of three years, although the nuns wished to keep her longer, she was directed to return to her own convent.
Teresa organized a nunnery at Veas and while there met Father Jerome Gratian, a reformed Carmelite, and was persuaded by him to extend her work to Seville. With the exception of her first convent, none proved so hard to establish as this. Among her problems there was a disgruntled novice, who reported the nuns to the Inquisition, charging them with being Illuminati.
The Italian Carmelite friars had meanwhile been growing alarmed at the progress of the reform in Spain, lest, as one of their number said, they might one day be compelled to set about reforming themselves, a fear shared by their still unreformed Spanish brothers. At a general chapter at Piacenza several decrees were passed restricting the reform. The new apostolic nuncio dismissed Father Gratian from his office as visitor to the reformed Carmelites. Teresa was told to choose one of her convents and retire to it, and abstain from founding others. At this point she turned to her friends in the world, who were able to interest King Philip II in her behalf, and he personally espoused her cause. He summoned the nuncio to rebuke him for his severity towards the discalced friars and nuns. In 1580 came an order from Rome exempting the reformed from the jurisdiction of the unreformed Carmelites, and giving each party its own provincial. Father Gratian was elected provincial of the reformed branch. The separation, although painful to many, brought an end to dissension.
Teresa was a person of great natural gifts. Her ardor and lively wit was balanced by her sound judgment and psychological insight. It was no mere flight of fancy when the English Catholic poet, Richard Crashaw, called her "the eagle" and "the dove." She could stand up boldly and bravely for what she thought was right; she could also be severe with a prioress who by excessive austerity had made herself unfit for her duties. Yet she could be gentle as a dove, as when she writes to an erring, irresponsible nephew, "God's mercy is great in that you have been enabled to make so good a choice and marry so soon, for you began to be dissipated when you were so young that we might have had much sorrow on your account." Love, with Teresa, meant constructive action, and she had the young man's daughter, born out of wedlock, brought to the convent, and took charge of her upbringing and that of his young sister.
One of Teresa's charms was a sense of humor. In the early years, when an indiscreet male visitor to the convent once praised the beauty of her bare feet, she laughed and told him to take a good look at them for he would never see them again-implying that in the future he would not be admitted. Her method of selecting novices was characteristic. The first requirement, even before piety, was intelligence. A woman could attain to piety, but scarcely to intelligence, by which she meant common sense as well as brains. "An intelligent mind," she wrote, "is simple and teachable; it sees its faults and allows itself to be guided. A mind that is dull and narrow never sees its faults even when shown them. It is always pleased with itself and never learns to do right." Pretentiousness and pride annoyed her. Once a young woman of high reputation for virtue asked to be admitted to a convent in Teresa's charge, and added, as if to emphasize her intellect, "I shall bring my Bible with me." "What," exclaimed Teresa, "your Bible? Do not come to us. We are only poor women who know nothing but how to spin and do as we are told."
In spite of a naturally sturdy constitution, Teresa continued throughout her life to suffer from ailments which physicians found baffling. It would seem that sheer will power kept her alive. At the time of the definitive division of the Carmelite Order she had reached the age of sixty-five and was broken in health. Yet during the last two years of her life she somehow found strength to establish three more convents. They were at Granada, in the far south, at Burgos, in the north, and at Soria, in Portugal. The total was now sixteen. What an astounding achievement this was for one small, enfeebled woman may be better appreciated if we recall the hardships of travel. Most of this extensive journeying was done in a curtained carriage or cart drawn by mules over the extremely poor roads; her trips took her from the northern provinces down to the Mediterranean, and west into Portugal, across mountains, rivers, and arid plateaus. She and the nun who accompanied her endured all the rigors of a harsh climate as well as the steady discomfort of rude lodgings and scanty food.
In the autumn of 1582, Teresa, although ill, set out for Alva de Tormez, where an old friend was expecting a visit from her. Her companion of later years, Anne-of-St. Bartholomew, describes the journey. Teresa grew worse on the road, along which there were few habitations. They could get no food save figs, and when they arrived at the convent, Teresa went to bed in a state of exhaustion. She never recovered, and three days later, she remarked to Anne, "At last, my daughter, I have reached the house of death," a reference to her book,
Teresa was canonized in 1662. Shortly after her death, Philip II, keenly aware of the Carmelite nun's contribution to Catholicism, had her manuscripts collected and brought to his great palace of the Escorial, and there placed in a rich case, the key of which he carried on his person. These writings were edited for publication by two Dominican scholars and brought out in 1587. Subsequently her works have appeared in uncounted Spanish editions, and have been translated into many languages. An ever-spreading circle of readers through the centuries have found understanding and courage in the life and works of this nun of Castile, who is one of the glories of Spain and of the Church. Teresa's emblems are a heart, an arrow, and a book.
Novena to Saint Pope John Paul II - #Litany and #Prayers - #SHARE - Begins - #JP2 We Love You!
NOVENA TO SAINT JOHN PAUL II.
SHARED from Fr. Jim Chern at Montclair State University in New Jersey
Born in Poland - May 18, 1920
Ordained a Priest - November 1, 1946
Ordained a Bishop - Sept 28, 1958
Elected Pope - October 16, 1978
Entered Eternal Life - April 2, 2005
Beatified - May 1, 2011
Novena - October 13 - October 21
Feast Day: October 22
FOR NOVENA PRAYERS AND MORE LIKE US ON FACEBOOK NOW
NOVENA TO SAINT JOHN PAUL II
Priest: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
People: Amen
Priest: O Lord, open my lips.
People: And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.Priest: O God come to my assistance.
People: O Lord, make haste to help me.
Priest: Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
People: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end, AMEN
DAILY READING: Optional
Pray: 1 Our Father; 1 Hail Mary; 1 Glory Be
Litany to Saint John Paul II
(Leader in plain font; Responses in BOLD)
Kyrie eleison; Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison; Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison; Kyrie eleison
Christ hear us, Christ graciously hear us
God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
Servant of God, John Paul II, pray for us
Perfect disciple of Christ, pray for us
Generously gifted with the gifts of the Holy Spirit; pray for us
Great apostle of Divine Mercy; pray for us
Faithful Son of Mary; pray for us
Totally dedicated to the Mother of God; pray for us
Persevering preacher of the Gospel; pray for us
Pilgrim Pope; pray for us
Pope of the Millennium; pray for us
Model of industry; pray for us
Model of priests; pray for us
Drawing strength from the Eucharist; pray for us
Untiring man of prayer; pray for us
Lover of the rosary; pray for us
Strength of those doubting their faith; pray for us
Desiring to unite all those who believe in Christ; pray for us
Converter of sinners; pray for us
Defender of the dignity of every person; pray for us
Defender of life from conception to natural death; pray for us
Praying for the gift of parenthood for the infertile; pray for us
Friend of children; pray for us
Leader of youth; pray for us
Intercessor of families, pray for us
Comforter of the suffering; pray for us
Manly bearing his pain; pray for us
Sower of divine joy; pray for us
Great intercessor for peace; pray for us
Pride of the Polish nation; pray for us
Brilliance of the Holy Church; pray for us
That we may be faithful imitators of Christ; pray for us
That we may be strong with the power of the Holy Spirit; pray for us
That we may have trust in the Mother of God; pray for us
That we may grow in our faith, hope, and charity; pray for us
That we may live in peace in our families; pray for us
That we may know how to forgive; pray for us
That we may know how to bear suffering; pray for us
That we may not succumb to the culture of death; pray for us
That we may not be afraid and courageously fight off various temptations; pray for us
That he would intercede for us the grace of a happy death; pray for us
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us
Pray for us, Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, That we may become worthy of the promises of Christ
PRAYER
O Blessed Trinity, we thank you for having graced the Church with Pope John Paul II and for allowing the tenderness of your Fatherly care, the glory of the cross of Christ, and the splendor of the Holy Spirit to shine through him. Trusting fully in your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and the way of achieving eternal communion with you. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to your will the graces we implore, especially for [PAUSE TO ADD YOUR INTENTION] . . . we ask this, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN
Conclusion
Make the Sign of the Cross as you say
MAY THE LORD BLESS US, PROTECT US FROM ALL EVIL AND BRING US TO EVERLASTING LIFE - AMEN
Saint John Paul II - PRAY FOR US!
NOVENA TO SAINT JOHN PAUL II.SHARED from Fr. Jim Chern at Montclair State University in New Jersey
Born in Poland - May 18, 1920
Ordained a Priest - November 1, 1946
Ordained a Bishop - Sept 28, 1958
Elected Pope - October 16, 1978
Entered Eternal Life - April 2, 2005
Beatified - May 1, 2011
Novena - October 13 - October 21
Feast Day: October 22
FOR NOVENA PRAYERS AND MORE LIKE US ON FACEBOOK NOW
NOVENA TO SAINT JOHN PAUL II
Priest: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
People: Amen
Priest: O Lord, open my lips.
People: And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.Priest: O God come to my assistance.
People: O Lord, make haste to help me.
Priest: Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
People: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end, AMEN
DAILY READING: Optional
Pray: 1 Our Father; 1 Hail Mary; 1 Glory Be
Litany to Saint John Paul II
(Leader in plain font; Responses in BOLD)
Kyrie eleison; Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison; Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison; Kyrie eleison
Christ hear us, Christ graciously hear us
God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
Servant of God, John Paul II, pray for us
Perfect disciple of Christ, pray for us
Generously gifted with the gifts of the Holy Spirit; pray for us
Great apostle of Divine Mercy; pray for us
Faithful Son of Mary; pray for us
Totally dedicated to the Mother of God; pray for us
Persevering preacher of the Gospel; pray for us
Pilgrim Pope; pray for us
Pope of the Millennium; pray for us
Model of industry; pray for us
Model of priests; pray for us
Drawing strength from the Eucharist; pray for us
Untiring man of prayer; pray for us
Lover of the rosary; pray for us
Strength of those doubting their faith; pray for us
Desiring to unite all those who believe in Christ; pray for us
Converter of sinners; pray for us
Defender of the dignity of every person; pray for us
Defender of life from conception to natural death; pray for us
Praying for the gift of parenthood for the infertile; pray for us
Friend of children; pray for us
Leader of youth; pray for us
Intercessor of families, pray for us
Comforter of the suffering; pray for us
Manly bearing his pain; pray for us
Sower of divine joy; pray for us
Great intercessor for peace; pray for us
Pride of the Polish nation; pray for us
Brilliance of the Holy Church; pray for us
That we may be faithful imitators of Christ; pray for us
That we may be strong with the power of the Holy Spirit; pray for us
That we may have trust in the Mother of God; pray for us
That we may grow in our faith, hope, and charity; pray for us
That we may live in peace in our families; pray for us
That we may know how to forgive; pray for us
That we may know how to bear suffering; pray for us
That we may not succumb to the culture of death; pray for us
That we may not be afraid and courageously fight off various temptations; pray for us
That he would intercede for us the grace of a happy death; pray for us
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us
Pray for us, Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, That we may become worthy of the promises of Christ
PRAYER
O Blessed Trinity, we thank you for having graced the Church with Pope John Paul II and for allowing the tenderness of your Fatherly care, the glory of the cross of Christ, and the splendor of the Holy Spirit to shine through him. Trusting fully in your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and the way of achieving eternal communion with you. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to your will the graces we implore, especially for [PAUSE TO ADD YOUR INTENTION] . . . we ask this, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN
Conclusion
Make the Sign of the Cross as you say
MAY THE LORD BLESS US, PROTECT US FROM ALL EVIL AND BRING US TO EVERLASTING LIFE - AMEN
Saint John Paul II - PRAY FOR US!
#Press Conference on the #Synod15 from #Vatican - Text- #Video -
(Vatican Radio) 14 Oct. At the daily press briefing for the Synod on the Family an African Cardinal said that polygamy was much more of a problem in Africa than divorce and remarriage. Spokesman for Holy See, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, was joined by Cardinals Vincent Nichols of Britain, Phillippe Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso and Rubén Salazar Gomez from Colombia.
Click below to listen to the report by Fr. Russell Pollitt SJ
Cardinal Ouedraogo told the media that in Europe divorce and remarriage was a real concern for Synod delegates but, in Africa, polygamy was a much more pressing problem. He said that the authors of the Instrumentum Laboris tended towards highlighting Western problems but that the African delegates have spoken about their problems assertively in the small working groups.
The delegates assembled for a plenary session at the Synod on Wednesday morning. They listened to reports of the small group work that has taken place over the last two days. Interventions then began on the third part of the working document, Instrumentum Laboris.
Many groups reported that they thought more Scripture should be used to help families understand their mission and vocation. A number of reports stated that the "indissolubility of marriage” needs to be framed in more positive language - it is not a burden but something that is hopeful and joyful. Some groups advocated for the development of catechetical and prayer resources for families.
Other topics reported on were the importance and role of women in family and the Church as well as the scourge of violence against women, the question of why young people today delay or are afraid to commit to each other in matrimony, and the tension between God's mercy and justice. One of the delegates said that it was God's mercy that opened up the way for salvation and this should not be forgotten. In the German-speaking group, Cardinal Nichols reported, there was unanimous agreement on the need to explore more deeply, holding both equally, the pastoral concepts of justice and mercy.
One of the groups stated that the Church had a theology of marriage, which focussed heavily on morality, but that there was no integrated theology of the family.
There were numerous requests from the working groups for a magisterial document after the Synod. It is not clear if there will be one. Pope Francis has not indicated his intention in this regard. Cardinal Nichols said that a document would be "an expression of collegiality and primacy." There will be a report presented to the Holy Father by the delegates at the Synod but whether the Pope will publish it immediately or amend it first is not clear.
Cardinal Salazar said that the Synod was an extremely important moment for the Catholic Church because we are “trying to listen to the voices of families, in all their forms, especially broken families.” He went on to say that all the delegates wanted to “show forth the beauty of family” to the Church and the world. He added that many divergent opinions have been expressed freely in the small group work.
Cardinal Nichols said that listening to the Church's experience in other parts of the world was very enriching and gave the Synod Fathers a much broader perspective. He said that a good example of this was how they learnt that marriage in Africa was not between two individuals but two families; this made it a a social event in which the local community is involved. “In the UK marriages tend to be private, personal affairs,” he remarked.
Asked about the “ideological colonisation” by the West of places like Africa, Cardinal Nichols said that this theme was not as strong as it was in the Extraordinary Synod in 2014. He said that it made him reflect on how, even in the United Kingdom, ideological colonisation takes place. He gave the example of UK citizens who tried to bring a non-EU member spouse into the UK and could not do so. “There are policies that are militant and against marriage in Britain too,” he said.
The three Cardinals were asked if there was a “stale-mate” in the Synod because of the divergent views that emerged. They all replied “definitely not.” The said that there were divergent views but that there was also lots of debate. The agreed that it was moving along very well despite the fact that delegates were feeling tired because the daily order is very full.
Nichols added that the letter, which was widely reported on, written to the Pope by some prelates expressing concern over the process of the Synod, did “not have any effect on the Synod.”
Fr. Lombardi told the briefing that the Synod delegates would continue to present interventions on the third part of Instrumentum Laboris on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday.
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