Life of St Teresa of Jesus, Teresa of Avila [top ten books to read TXT] 📗

is very well explained, and

contains excellent doctrine.

Chapter XXVI.—She continues the same subject; explains and tells

things that have happened to her which caused her to lose fear

and convinced her that the spirit which spoke to her was a

good one.

Chapter XXVII.—Of another way in which God teaches a soul, and,

without speaking, makes His Will known in an admirable manner.

She goes on to explain a vision, though not an imaginary one, and

a great grace with which God favoured her. This chapter

is noteworthy.

Chapter XXVIII.—She treats of the great favours God showed her,

and how He appeared to her for the first time; she explains what

an imaginary vision is, and speaks of the powerful effects it

leaves and the signs whether it is from God. This chapter is

most profitable and noteworthy.

Chapter XXIX.—She continues and tells of some great mercies God

showed her, and what His Majesty said to her in order to assure

her (of the truth of these visions), and taught her how to

answer contradictors.

Chapter XXX.—She continues the history of her life, and how God

sent her a remedy for all her anxieties by calling the holy Friar

Fray Pedro de Alcantara of the Order of the glorious St. Francis

to the place where she lived. She mentions some great

temptations and interior trials through which she sometimes had

to pass.

Chapter XXXI.—She speaks of some exterior temptations and

apparitions of Satan, and how he ill-treated her. She mentions,

moreover, some very good things by way of advice to persons who

are walking on the way of perfection.

Chapter XXXII.—She narrates how it pleased God to put her in

spirit in that place of Hell she had deserved by her sins.

She tells a little [6] of what she saw there compared with what

there was besides. She begins to speak of the manner and way

of founding the convent of St. Joseph where she now lives.

Chapter XXXIII.—She continues the subject of the foundation of

the glorious St. Joseph. How she was commanded to have nothing

(further) to do with it, how she abandoned it, also the troubles

it brought her and how God consoled her in all this.

Chapter XXXIV.—She shows how at that time it happened that she

absented herself from this place and how her Superior commanded

her to go away at the request of a very noble lady who was in

great affliction. She begins to tell what happened to her there,

and the great grace God bestowed upon her in determining through

her instrumentality a person of distinction to serve Him truly;

and how that person found favour and help in her (Teresa).

This is noteworthy.

Chapter XXXV.—Continuation of the foundation of this house of

our glorious Father St. Joseph; in what manner our Lord ordained

that holy poverty should be observed there; the reason why she

left the lady with whom she had been staying, and some other

things that happened.

Chapter XXXVI.—She continues the same subject, and shows how the

foundation of this convent of the glorious St. Joseph was finally

accomplished, and the great contradictions and persecutions she

had to endure after the Religious had taken the habit, and the

great trials and temptations through which she passed, and how

God led her forth victorious to His own glory and praise.

Chapter XXXVII.—Of the effects which remained when God granted

her some favour; together with other very good doctrine.

She shows how one ought to strive after and prize every increase

in heavenly glory, and that for no trouble whatever one should

neglect a good that is to be perpetual.

Chapter XXXVIII.—She treats of some great mercies God showed

her, even making known to her heavenly secrets by means of

visions and revelations His Majesty vouchsafed to grant her; she

speaks of the effects they caused and the great improvement

resulting in her soul.

Chapter XXXIX.—She continues the same subject, mentioning great

graces granted her by God; how He promised to hear her requests

on behalf of persons for whom she should pray. Some remarkable

instances in which His Majesty thus favoured her.

Chapter XL.—Continuation of the same subject of great mercies

God has shown her. From some of these very good doctrine may be

gathered, and this, as she declares, was, besides compliance with

obedience, her principal motive (in writing this book), namely to

enumerate such of these mercies as would be instructive to souls.

This chapter brings the history of her Life, written by herself,

to an end. May it be for the glory of God. Amen.

1. St. Teresa wrote no title, either of the whole book or of the

Preface, but only the monogram J.H.S., which is repeated at the

beginning of the first chapter and at the end of the last,

previous to the letter with which the volume concludes.

2. “El Señor” is everywhere translated by “God” in distinction to

“Nuestro Señor,” “Our Lord.”

3. “In an excellent manner,” scored through by the Saint herself.

4. “To be read with great care, as it is explained in a most

delicate way, and contains many noteworthy points,” also scored

through by St. Teresa herself.

5. “This is most admirable,” scored through by the Saint.

6. “Una cifra,” a mere nothing.

Preface by David Lewis.

St. Teresa was born in Avila on Wednesday, March 28, 1515.

Her father was Don Alfonso Sanchez de Cepeda, and her mother Doña

Beatriz Davila y Ahumada. The name she received in her baptism

was common to both families, for her great-grandmother on the

father’s side was Teresa Sanchez, and her grandmother on her

mother’s side was Teresa de las Cuevas. While she remained in

the world, and even after she had become a nun in the monastery

of the Incarnation, which was under the mitigated rule, she was

known as Doña Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada; for in

those days children took the name either of the father or of the

mother, as it pleased them. The two families were noble, but

that of Ahumada was no longer in possession of its former wealth

and power. [1] Doña Beatriz was the second wife of Don Alfonso,

and was related in the fourth degree to the first wife, as

appears from the dispensation granted to make the marriage valid

on the 16th of October, 1509. Of this marriage Teresa was the

third child.

Doña Beatriz died young, and the eldest daughter, Maria de

Cepeda, took charge of her younger sisters—they were two—and

was as a second mother to them till her marriage, which took

place in 1531, when the Saint was in her sixteenth year. But as

she was too young to be left in charge of her father’s house, and

as her education was not finished, she was sent to the

Augustinian monastery, the nuns of which received young girls,

and brought them up in the fear of God. [2] The Saint’s own

account is that she was too giddy and careless to be trusted at

home, and that it was necessary to put her under the care of

those who would watch over her and correct her ways.

She remained a year and a half with the Augustinian nuns, and all

the while God was calling her to Himself. She was not willing to

listen to His voice; she would ask the nuns to pray for her that

she might have light to see her way; “but for all this,” she

writes, “I wished not to be a nun.” [3] By degrees her will

yielded, and she had some inclination to become a religious at

the end of the eighteen months of her stay, but that was all.

She became ill; her father removed her, and the struggle within

herself continued,—on the one hand, the voice of God calling

her; on the other, herself labouring to escape from her vocation.

At last, after a struggle which lasted three months, she made up

her mind, and against her inclination, to give up the world.

She asked her father’s leave, and was refused. She besieged him

through her friends, but to no purpose. “The utmost I could get

from him,” she says, “was that I might do as I pleased after his

death.” [4] How long this contest with her father lasted is not

known, but it is probable that it lasted many months, for the

Saint was always most careful of the feelings of others, and

would certainly have endured much rather than displease a father

whom she loved so much, and who also loved her more than his

other children. [5]

But she had to forsake her father, and so she left her father’s

house by stealth, taking with her one of her brothers, whom she

had persuaded to give himself to God in religion. The brother

and sister set out early in the morning, the former for the

monastery of the Dominicans, and the latter for the Carmelite

monastery of the Incarnation, in Avila. The nuns received her

into the house, but sent word to her father of his child’s

escape. Don Alfonso, however, yielded at once, and consented to

the sacrifice which he was compelled to make.

In the monastery of the Incarnation the Saint was led on, without

her own knowledge, to states of prayer so high, that she became

alarmed about herself. In the purity and simplicity of her soul,

she feared that the supernatural visitations of God might after

all be nothing else but delusions of Satan. [6] She was so

humble, that she could not believe graces so great could be given

to a sinner like herself. The first person she consulted in her

trouble seems to have been a layman, related to her family, Don

Francisco de Salcedo. He was a married man, given to prayer, and

a diligent frequenter of the theological lectures in the

monastery of the Dominicans. Through him she obtained the help

of a holy priest, Gaspar Daza, to whom she made known the state

of her soul. The priest, hindered by his other labours, declined

to be her director, and the Saint admits that she could have made

no progress under his guidance. [7] She now placed herself in

the hands of Don Francis, who encouraged her in every way, and,

for the purpose of helping her onwards in the way of perfection,

told her of the difficulties he himself had met with, and how by

the grace of God he had overcome them.

But when the Saint told him of the great graces which God

bestowed upon her, Don Francis became alarmed; he could not

reconcile them with the life the Saint was living, according to

her own account. He never thought of doubting the Saint’s

account, and did not suspect her of exaggerating her

imperfections in the depths of her humility: “he thought the evil

spirit might have something to do” with her, [8] and advised her

to consider carefully her way of prayer.

Don Francis now applied again to Gaspar Daza, and the two friends

consulted together; but, after much prayer on their part and on

that of the Saint, they came to the conclusion that she “was

deluded by an evil spirit,” and recommended her to have recourse

to the fathers of the Society of Jesus, lately settled in Avila.

The Saint, now in great fear, but still hoping and trusting that

God would not suffer her to be deceived, made preparations for a

general confession; and committed to writing the whole story of

her life, and made known the state of her soul to F. Juan de

Padranos, one of the fathers of the Society. F. Juan understood

it all, and comforted her by