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Saint Teresa of Jesus

October 15, 2021 by Fr Joseph

Childhood fantasies and dreams of spiritual heroism often give way—in later life—to reality, disappointment, disillusionment, and spiritual stagnation. The life of Teresa, who as a child ran away from home in her quest for martyrdom among the Moors, followed this trajectory. After entering the Monastery of the Incarnation, she found herself gradually settling into a life of spiritual mediocrity—all that childhood fervor only a distant memory. However, after her second conversion around the age of thirty-nine, grace rekindled that earlier fire of love and desire for God and she spent the rest of her life undergoing, martyrdom, not at the hands of the Moors, but that slow martyrdom that inevitably accompanies those who fully embrace God’s will. Her childhood eagerness to die at the hands of the Moors (in witness to Christ) may have been childish and even foolish, but perhaps not when you consider that in later life she took to heart Christ’s words: do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. In the course of establishing her Reformed Carmelite Monasteries, she endured harassment by the Inquisition and vicious opposition from fellow Carmelites—at times her very life was in danger! As we honor this great woman, we might review our own lives and examine what has become of earlier times of zeal and fervor? Teresa bears witness that even when earlier times of fervor and zeal seem to evaporate under reality’s harsh light, these were genuine graces of God that can and will be rekindled if we but truly desire it and are prepared to pay the price that she did.

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