The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, -Mother because I don't die- November 2009, dc
Saint Teresa of Jesus born in Ávila, a Wednesday of passion of the year 1515, through her life and her books has helped countless souls to find the true path and run for it towards the most encumbrated perfection.
GLOSS
Saint Teresa of Jesus
I live without living in my,
and so high life I hope,
I'm dying because I don't die
That divine union,
of the love with which I live,
makes God my captive,
and free my heart;
more cause in me such passion
God will see my prisoner
I'm dying because I don't die
Oh! How long is this life,
how hard these banishes,
this jail and these irons
that the soul is in!
Just wait for departure
it causes me such a fierce pain,
I'm dying because I don't die
Oh! What a bitter life
Do not enjoy the Lord!
And if love is sweet,
Long hope is not;
Take away God this burden,
heavier than steel,
I'm dying because I don't die
Only with confidence
I live that I must die;
because dying to live
assures me of my hope;
dead of living is reached,
Don't delay, I'm waiting for you
I'm dying because I don't die
Look that love is strong;
life, don't be annoying;
look that you only have left,
to win you, lose you;
come the sweet death,
Come die very light,
I'm dying because I don't die
That life from above
It is the true life:
until this life dies,
You don't enjoy being alive:
death don't be elusive;
I live dying first,
I'm dying because I don't die
Life, what can I give it
to my God, who lives in me,
if it’s not losing you,
to better enjoy Him?
I want to die reaching him,
for he alone is the one I want,
I'm dying because I don't die
Being absent from you,
What life can i have
but death suffer
The biggest I ever saw ?:
Too bad I have of me,
for being my evil so whole,
I'm dying because I don't die
Biography:
Family:
Saint Teresa of Jesus: Her name was Teresa Sanchez Cepeda D vila and Ahumada, although she usually used the name of Teresa de Ahumada until the reform that was discussed above began. Down below, then changing his name to Teresa de Jesus. Teresa's father was Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, a descendant of a Jewish family conversing. Alonso had two women. With the first, Catalina del Peso and Henao, she had three children: Mar a de Cepeda, Juan Jer nimo and Pedro. With his second wife, Beatriz D vila and Ahumada, who died when Teresa was about 12 years old, she had nine others: Fernando, Rodrigo, Teresa, Lorenzo, Antonio, Pedro Alonso, Jer nnimo, Agust n and Juana.
Alonso Sánchez and his wife Beatriz were from a noble family. It is clear that the second woman was related to many illustrious families of Castile.
Childhood:
As he relates in the writings intended for his confessor, gathered in the book Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus, from his first years Teresa showed a passionate and passionate imagination. His father, fond of reading, had some romance; this reading and the pious practices began to awaken the heart and intelligence of little Teresa with six or seven years of age.
At that time I thought about suffering martyrdom, for which, she and one of her brothers, Rodrigo, a year older, tried to go to the ier lands of infidels, that is, occupied lands for Muslims, asking for alms, so that they would be headed there. His uncle brought them back home. Convinced that their project was unworkable, the two brothers agreed to be hermits. Teresa writes:
In an orchard that was at home, we tried as we could, to make hermitages, putting some pebbles, which then we fell, and even then we found no remedy at all for our wish ... I was making alms as I could, and could little. I tried loneliness to pray my devotions, which were fed up, especially the rosary I liked (me) a lot when I played with other girls, to make monasteries like we were nuns.
It seems that he lost his mother around 1527, that is, at 12 years of age. Already at that time his religious vocation had been continuously demonstrated. Fond of reading books of chivalry, I forgot her childhood games. Here are his words:
He began to bring finery, and to wish to content himself in looking good, a lot of care of hands and hair and smells, and all the vanities that he could have in this, who were fed up, for being very curious Some of my cousins were almost my age, little older than me; We were always together, they had great love for me and in all the things that made them happy, I was sustaining them with talks and events of their hobbies and children, not good at all ... I took all the damage from a relative (it is believed that a cousin), who tried a lot at home ... With her was my conversation and talks, because she helped me with all the hobby things, which I wanted, and even put myself in them, and gave part of their conversations and vanities. Until I dealt with her, who was fourteen years old ... I don't think I had left God because of mortal guilt.
Physical and spiritual moving:
Served by serious illness, she had to return to her father's house, and already cured, they took her to the side of her sister María de Cepeda, who with her husband, Don Martín de Guzmán y Barrientos, lived in Castellanos de la Cañada. Fighting with herself, she even told her father that she wanted to be a nun, because she believed, given her character, that having said it would be enough not to turn back. His father replied that he would not consent while he lived. However, Teresa left the paternal house, entered (November 2, 1533) in the convent of La Encarnación, in Ávila, and there she professed on November 3, 1534.
After entering the convent his state of health worsened. He suffered fainting, an undefined heart disease and other discomforts. This was the first year. To cure her, her father (1535) took her to Castellanos de la Cañada, with her sister. In that village Teresa remained until the spring of 1536. In Castellanos de la Cañada he would have achieved (1535) the conversion of a concubinary cleric. Then it happened to Becedas (Ávila). Back in Avila (Palm Sunday 1537), he suffered (July) a four-day parasism at his father's house. He was paralyzed for more than two years. Before and after parasism, his physical ailments were extraordinary.
Spiritual favors:
In mid-1539 Teresa was healed according to her by San José. With health, worldly hobbies returned, easy to satisfy, since the closure of all nuns was not imposed as obligatory until 1563. Teresa lived again in the convent, where she received frequent visits.
Languideció according to her then his spirit, and left the prayer (1541). He affirms that later Jesus Christ (1542) appeared in the parlor with angry countenance, rebuking his family treatment with lay people. Nevertheless, Teresa remained in him for many years, until she moved to leave the secular treatment (1555) in view of an image of Jesus crucified.
He had already lost his father (1541), whose last words made a deep impression on him. The priest who had assisted him in his last moments (the Dominican Vicente Barón), was in charge of directing Teresa's conscience, which, to date cited, knowing her faults, did not want to correct them. In the end Teresa was comforted with the reading of the Confessions, of San Agustín. The Jesuits Juan de Prádanos and Baltasar Álvarez founded in Ávila a school of the Company (1555).
Teresa confessed with Prádanos; the following year (1556) she began to feel great spiritual favors, and shortly afterwards she was encouraged (1557) by San Francisco de Borja. He had in 1558 his first abduction and the vision of hell; he took as confessor (1559) Baltasar Álvarez, who directed his conscience for about six years, and enjoyed, he says, great heavenly favors, among which the vision of the risen Jesus was told. He voted (1560) to always aspire to the most perfect; San Pedro de Alcántara approved her spirit, and San Luis Beltrán encouraged her to carry out her project to reform the Order of Carmen, conceived towards that year.
Teresa wanted to found a monastery in Ávila for the strict observance of the rule of her order, which included the obligation of poverty, loneliness and silence. By mandate of his confessor, the Dominican Pedro Ibáñez, wrote his life (1561), work that ended towards June 1562; he added, by order of Fray García de Toledo, the foundation of San José; and on Soto's advice he rewrote his life in 1566.
Here it is appropriate to copy the French biographer Pierre Boudot:
In all the pages (of the book of his life) you can see the traces of a living passion, a touching frankness, and an illuminism consecrated by the faith of the faithful. All her revelations testify that she firmly believed in a spiritual union between her and Jesus Christ; he saw God, the Virgin, the saints and the angels in all their splendor, and from above he received inspirations that he took advantage of for the discipline of his inner life. In his youth the aspirations he had were rare and seem confusing; only in full mature age they became more distinct, more numerous and also more extraordinary.
He was over forty-three years old when he was ecstatic for the first time. His intellectual visions followed each other without interruption for two and a half years (1559–1561). Whether due to mistrust, or to prove it, her superiors forbade her to abandon these fervor of mystical devotion, which was for her a second life, and ordered her to resist these raptures, in which her health was consumed. She obeyed, but despite her efforts, her prayer was so continuous that not even sleep could interrupt its course. At the same time, burned with a violent desire to see God, she felt she was dying. In this unique state he had several times the vision that gave rise to the establishment of a particular party in the Order of Carmel.
The French biographer alludes to the event (1559) that the saint refers to in these lines: I saw an angel fit me to the left side in bodily form ... It was not large, but small, beautiful much, the face so lit that it looked like the angels very high, it seems everyone burns ... I saw in his hands a long gold dart, and at the end of the iron I seemed to have a little fire. This seemed to me to get through my heart sometimes and that it reached my guts: when I took it out it seemed like I took them with me, and it left me all burned in God's great love. The pain that made me give those moans was so great, and the softness that this great pain gives me so much that there is no desire to be taken away, nor is the soul content with less than God. It is not bodily pain, but spiritual pain, although the body does not stop participating something, and even fed up. It is such a soft delicacy that passes between the soul and God, that I beg your kindness to give it to those who will think that I lie ... The days that lasted this I was as stupid, I would not want to see or speak, but to burn myself with my grief, that for me it was greater glory, that all who have taken up the raised.
Life of Saint Teresa, chap. XXIX
To perpetuate the memory of this mysterious wound, Pope Benedict XIII, at the request of the Carmelites of Spain and Italy, established (1726) the feast of the transverberation of the heart of Saint Teresa. The French biographer adds:
Until the last breath was exhaled Teresa enjoyed the joy of conversing with the divine people, who comforted her or revealed certain secrets of heaven; that of being transported to hell or purgatory, and even that of sensing the coming .
Beginning of foundations throughout Spain:
At the end of 1561 Teresa received a certain amount of money that one of her brothers sent from Peru, and with it she helped to continue the planned foundation of the convent of San José. For the same work he had the contest of his sister Juana, whose son Gonzalo is said to have resurrected the saint. This, at the beginning of 1562, marched to Toledo at the house of Mrs. Luisa de la Cerda, where she stayed until June. In the same year he met Father Báñez, who was later his principal director, and Fray García de Toledo, both Dominicans.
Dissatisfied with the " relaxation " of the rules that in 1432 had been mitigated by Eugene IV, Teresa decided to reform the order to return to austerity, poverty and the closure that considered the true Carmelite spirit. He asked Francisco de Borja and Pedro de Alcántara for advice that approved his spirit and his doctrine.
After two years of struggles, the bull of Pius IV arrived at his hands for the erection of the convent of San José, in Ávila, a city to which Teresa had returned. The monastery of San José was opened (August 24, 1562); Four novices took the habit in the new Order of the Barefoot Carmelites of San José ; there were riots in Ávila; the saint was forced to return to the convent of the Incarnation, and, calmed down, Teresa lived four years in the convent of San José with great austerity. The religious addicted to the reform of Teresa, slept on a straw jar; they wore leather or wood sandals; they devoted eight months of the year to the rigors of fasting and completely abstained from eating meat. Teresa did not want any distinction for her, but rather remained confused with the other religious not a few years.
The reform advocated by Teresa along with San Juan de la Cruz, which, as will be seen, also included men, was called Barefoot Carmelites, and progressed rapidly, despite the scarce resources available to the saint. Father Rossi, General del Carmen, visited (1567) the convent of San José, approved it, and gave Teresa permission to found others of women and two of men. As anecdote and curious fact it is possible to say that in the cell of the monastery that occupied Santa Teresa there is an image of him sitting writing in a small table and that is only exposed once every 100 years in that church. Currently, in the monastery live Carmelites of closing.
From Malagón Teresa moved to Toledo, where she arrived ill (1568), and after a short residence in Escalona, she returned to the city of Ávila. In Duruelo the first convent of men had been founded (1568). It is claimed that Teresa miraculously saw the martyrdom of Father Acevedo and 40 other Jesuits killed (1570) by the Protestant pirate Jacobo Soria. After a visit to Pastrana, from where he returned to Toledo, he entered Ávila (August). Shortly after, the third barefoot convent was founded in Alcalá, and in Salamanca, the city where the saint was, the seventh barefoot, followed by another woman in Alba de Tormes (January 25, 1571).
Several more barefoot convents were founded; some in Andalusia embraced the reform, and discord began between footwear and barefoot, all in 1572, the year in which Teresa received many spiritual favors in the convent of the Incarnation: such were her mystical betrothal with Jesus Christ and an ecstasy in the booth when I was talking with San Juan de la Cruz. Teresa, who in the course of her life wrote many letters, was in Salamanca in 1573. There, obeying her director, Jesuit Ripalda, she wrote the book of her foundations.
Results of the Carmelite reform and tribulations of Teresa:
He later lived in Alba (1574), which, despite being sick and very troubled, passed through Medina del Campo and Ávila to Segovia. In this city he founded another convent, which was passed by the religious of the monastery of Pastrana that was abandoned due to the attempt of Mrs. Ana de Mendoza de la Cerda, the Princess of Eboli, to become a religious under the name of Sr. Ana de la Madre de God, following a lifestyle detached from the norm of the order.
Discord broke out between Carmelite shoes and barefoot in the general chapter celebrated in those days in Plasencia; by virtue of the pontifical bulls, it was agreed to treat the barefoot, who had exceeded their foundations rigorously, and as Father Gracián (November 21), by commission of the nuncio, to visit the Carmelite Shoes of Seville, they resisted The visit with great uproar. Father Salazar, provincial of Castile, intimidated Teresa not to make any more foundations and to retire to a convent without leaving it. The saint tried to retire to Valladolid, but Gracian objected. In Toleda, he concluded the book of The Foundations, which were suspended in the four years that the persecutions and conflicts between shoes and barefoot lasted. He chose in Toledo as a confessor to Velázquez.
Slandered many times against Teresa, it was tried to send her to an American convent. The saint made a trip from Toledo to Avila (July 1577), to submit the convent of San José to the Order of Carmen, previously subject to the ordinary. Miguel de la Columna and Baltasar de Jesús, deserters of the reform, extended the slander against the barefoot, to which the nuncio Felipe Sega pursued. Teresa went to the king, who took the matter into her hands. The saint wrote (July to November) the book of The abodes . He then held (1578) a controversy with Father Suarez, provincial of the Jesuits, and the nuncio redoubled his persecutions to the point of pretending to destroy the reform, banishing the main barefoot and confining Toledo to Teresa, he described as " female restless and walking ». In Seville, a confessor gave the Inquisition the alleged faults of the prioress of the barefoot and Teresa herself, on which a noisy file was formed that made clear the innocence of both.
That year of (1578) the saint spent it in Avila, and it was the saddest for Teresa, because in one of her letters she said that all the demons made her war. At that time another complaint was made of the Book of his Life. In Villanueva de la Jara he attended the foundation (February 25, 1580) of the thirteenth barefoot convent. He returned to Toledo, despite the poor state of his health and the pains of an arm that had been broken (1577) as a result of a fall. In Toledo she had a paralysis and heart failures, which put her at the doors of death. From there he went to Segovia and returned to the city of Ávila. In those days Gregory XIII issued the bulls (June 22) for the formation of a separate province for the barefoot. Teresa visited Medina and Valladolid, where she fell seriously ill. In Palencia he founded another convent, followed by two barefoot, one in Valladolid and another in Salamanca, both founded in 1581. The fifteenth barefoot was founded by the saint in Soria (June 3, 1581).
Last foundations and death:
He knew that in Granada the sixteenth Carmelite convent had been founded, and one of barefoot in Lisbon. The seventeenth of barefoot she founded in Burgos, where she wrote her latest foundations, including that of that city. Leaving Burgos, she went through Palencia, Valladolid, whose prioress threw her out of the convent, Medina del Campo, whose prioress also despised her, and Peñaranda. Upon reaching Alba de Tormes (September 20) his condition worsened. Received the per diem and confessed, he died in the arms of Ana de San Bartolomé the night of October 4, 1582 (day in which the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in Spain, so that day became, Friday, 15 October). His body was buried in the convent of the Annunciation of this town, with great precautions to prevent theft. Exhumed on November 25, 1585, an arm was left there and the rest of the body was taken to Avila, where it was placed in the chapter room; but the body, by mandate of the Pope, was returned to the town of Alba, having been found uncorrupted (1586).
His tomb was raised in 1598; his body was placed in the New chapel in 1616, and in 1670, still uncorrupted, in a silver box. Beatified Teresa in 1614 by Paulo V, and included among the saints by Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, she was appointed (1627) to patron of Spain by Urban VIII. In 1626 the Spanish Courts named her copatrona of the Kingdoms of Spain, but supporters of Santiago Apostle managed to revoke the agreement. She was named honorary doctorate by the University of Salamanca and was later appointed patron of the writers.
In 1970 she became (together with Saint Catherine of Siena) the first woman raised by the Catholic Church to the status of Doctor of the Church, under the pontificate of Paul VI. The Catholic Church celebrates its feast on October 15.
Literary work:
She also cultivated Teresa the religious-religious poetry. Taken from his enthusiasm, he subjected himself less than how many cultivated this genre to the imitation of the sacred books, thus appearing more original. His verses are easy, hot and passionate, as born of the ideal love in which Teresa burned, love that was in her an inexhaustible source of mystical poetry.
The most important didactic works of which the saint wrote were titled: Path of perfection (1562 1564); Concepts of the love of God and inner Castle or The abodes . In addition to these three, the titled ones belong to this genre: Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus (1562) 1565 written by herself and whose originals are found in the library of the Monastery of St. Lorenzo of El Escorial; Book of relationships ; Book of foundations (1573 1582); Book of the constitutions (1563); Santa Teresa Notices ; Way to visit the convents of religious ; Exclamations of the soul to his God ; Meditations on the songs ; Barefoot visit ; Notices ; Ordinances of a brotherhood ; Notes ; Spiritual challenge and Vejamen .
Teresa also wrote poetry, brief writings and loose writings without considering a series of works attributed to her. Teresa also wrote 409 Letters, published in different epistolaries. The writings of the Holy Catholic have been translated into almost all languages. The name of Saint Teresa of Jesus appears in the Catalog of language authorities published by the Royal Spanish Academy.
