1 October 2014
Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series
V CENTENARY OF SAINT TERESA: ART, HERITAGE AND SPIRITUALITY AROUND SAINT TERESA
Saint Teresa and the female religious life
P. Ildefonso Moriones Zubillaga. O.C.D
Teresa de Ahumada entered the Encarnación in Avila as a postulant at the age of 20 in 1535, took the habit at 21 and was professed at 22. After 27 years on the road, at the age of 47, looking back, she realised that she could have reached cima earlier if she had been taught other paths, which she had to discover by dint of a bit of hard knocks, so to speak (and thanks above all to the Holy Spirit who was her teacher), and she decided to put her experience at the service of others. goalThis is the safest and most historically accurate starting point for understanding the life of St. Teresa of Jesus as Foundress.
As soon as Teresa began her foundations she was accused of introducing "novelties": "They say it is a new Order and inventions. Read our first rule, which is only that which we keep without mitigation..." Father Gracián replied in defence of the Saint that "it was not novelties but forgotten truths" that she was introducing.
Among these "forgotten truths" which the Saint recalled in her time, and which she continues to recall even today, we can highlight the following: 1. She obtained a dispensation from Rome to be able to admit candidates without a dowry: "If you are content with the person", the Saint said, "do not fail to receive, even if you have no alms to give to the house". 2. She organises the workshopcentred on prayer: "In having a prayer she wants nothing else but these houses by way of saying" and creates an atmosphere of holy freedom and of "great contentment and joy" which attracts new vocations, as Mary of St. Joseph says: "At this time the Lord called me to religion, seeing and treating our Mother and her companions, who moved the stones with their admirable life and conversation. And what made me follow them was the gentleness and great discretion of our good Mother". 3. She vindicates the freedom of her nuns in the Admissions Officeof new candidates and in the self-government of their convents, both in the material aspect (no vicars) and in the spiritual aspect (freedom of confessors). 4. Simplifies community life: "These houses have no need of any more ceremonial burdens. 5. She behaves like a true foundress, personally erecting new convents and visiting those already erected: "For as I am going through the monasteries which the Lord has been good enough to found these years [...] I will have to stop some day in them. It will be the least that I can [...] although in something so well ordered and already done, I will only have to look at it and praise our Lord".
For the preservation and faithful transmission of the style of religious life introduced by her, she left some Constitutions (which did not need to be changed to keep up with Vatican II) and some books full of wisdom that made her worthy of the title of Doctor of the Church, degree scroll.