A Vision

But Teresa was to have her moment of truth. One day when she was in her thirties, she looked upon the image of Christ on the cross as she had done hundreds of times before. This time, however, as she thought of his suffering, she became almost disgusted with her “religious” life. She determined to spend more time in prayer and other spiritual pursuits. Almost immediately after making that decision, Teresa said, she felt God's presence and love within her.

Teresa of Ávila, wrote these words on friendship, from her letters no. 170:1, 450, “What a wonderful thing it is for two souls to understand each other, for they neither lack something to say, nor grow tired.”

By now repelled by the ways of the Carmelites, she decided to found a new, reformed Carmelite order. After some difficult groundwork, she finally did, in 1562.

She named her new community the Discalced (shoeless) Carmelites. Actually, the nuns wore sandals, but the word referred to the vow of poverty the sisters would take, making them, figuratively speaking, shoeless. The nuns in the Discalced order lived by hard labor and by alms. They kept strict hours and slept on straw pallets. Food was simple, and there was not much of it. Prayer was the focal point of life. And these nuns did without jewelry, even without visits from friends.

Teresa was full of common sense and had no use for pomposity. Once a young nun came to her with stories of all kinds of temptation and of how she was such a sinner. “Now, Sister,” Teresa said, “None of us is perfect. Just make sure those sins of yours don't turn into bad habits.”

Teresa Meets Juan de Yepes y Álvarez

After the Ávila convent, Teresa founded another sixteen religious houses throughout Spain, traveling with little or no money and enduring the hardships of the Castilian countryside. While setting up the second convent, at age fifty-two, she met a twenty-five-year-old friar named Juan de Yepes y Álvarez.

Teresa and John were like-minded. They both sought to retain the Carmelites' original simplicity and dedication to prayer. John was in fact considering joining another order, because he was so dissatisfied with the Carmelites. The two joined forces. John began a parallel reform for men to Teresa's Discalced Carmelites movement for women.

Although John was much younger than Teresa, he became her closest friend. In her letters, she said that she “had gone here and there looking for the light and had found it in him” (642). The two of them enjoyed many hours of conversation together and it was said of the two of them that they sometimes even levitated together. What could be more intimate than that?

In the book, Falling into the Arms of God (New World Library, 2005), Megan Don said that Teresa believed that close friendships were deeply beneficial. She encouraged nuns and priests to let others know them deeply — to form lasting spiritual bonds. According to Don, some priests were wary of Teresa's open affection; they thought she was a bit reckless. Don wrote, “She would laugh to herself at their fear, since she knew they mistook the purity of her actions for something less elevated.”

Teresa loved to tease her friend John, calling him “half a friar” because he was so short. Just as Francis had helped Clare establish the “Poor Clares,” Teresa helped John establish the first reform monastery for men, and she placed him in charge of it.

Mystic and Writer

Teresa of Ávila has been called one of the most profound mystics of all time. Besides experiencing ecstasies, it is said that at other times in church she had to hold on to the altar rail to keep from ascending upward. Commenting on her own life, or perhaps the difficult life of the cloistered nun in general, she noted, “The sufferings God inflicts on contemplatives are of so unbearable a kind that, unless He sustained such souls with the manna of divine consolation, they would find their agony unbearable.”

This Carmelite was a prolific writer, too, leaving much behind for historians — and anyone who wants to know the Love of God — to ponder. Her autobiography offers insights into her visions and other mystical experiences. Two of her other writings, Way of Perfection and Interior Castles, guide the reader toward grace and perfection. Teresa also wrote numerous letters that offer insight into her mind and temperament.

Tough Times

Teresa ran afoul of the Spanish Inquisition, just as John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, and so many others did. She eventually endured a formal investigation, although charges against her were dismissed.

Her own order caused grief, too, as she experienced a bitter five-year struggle with the Calced Carmelites. John of the Cross was imprisoned for a time in the Calced Carmelite monastery in Toledo. Finally, Pope Gregory XIII recognized the Discalced Reform Carmelites as a separate order.

Teresa died at Alba de Tormes, Spain, in 1582. As her full life drew to a close, she said “My Saviour, it is time that I set out … Let us go.” It is said that a marvelous scent emanated from her body, and later, when one of her confessors had her grave opened, her body was still intact and emitted the aroma of lilies. As was the custom of those times with saintly people, the body was cut up and pieces given to various powerful admirers of the nun as relics. Her confessor kept the little finger of the left hand for himself.

Teresa of Ávila was canonized forty years after her death. In 1970 she became the first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church. Her feast day is October 15. She is a patron saint of Spain and of headache sufferers, and is invoked against heart disease.

In her writings, she left behind many insights into the nature of spiritual friendship. As Megan Don wrote, “She said that at times spiritual and sensual love become so intermingled that no one can understand such love. She maintained that this is a completely normal occurrence between souls, whether male or female, and that there should be no torment over this feeling of love.”

Holy Orders

John was born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez in Fontiveros, Old Castile, Spain. His father died soon after his birth, and Juan grew up in poverty. He became a Carmelite friar at the age of twenty-one, taking the name Juan de Santa María. Dedicated to prayer and solitude, the Carmelite order had become somewhat complacent, even lax, about its mission by the time John joined.

John became prior of the first community of Discalced Carmelite friars, taking the name Juan de la Cruz — John of the Cross. Later, when Teresa became prioress of a convent in Ávila, she asked John to be its spiritual director.

Conflict from Within

Differences between the reform movement and the traditionalists plagued the Carmelite order. When he was thirty-five, John was kidnapped and taken to a Carmelite monastery opposed to reform in Toledo, where he was held for nine months, surviving only on bread and water and subjected to regular beatings.

Figure 7-3: St. John of the Cross

After his release he made his way back to his community, where he was eventually elected to several offices as prior and provincial in different parts of Spain and established several houses for the order. In 1590 conflict among the Discalced broke out, and one year later the Madrid general chapter took away all of John's titles and offices because of his support for the moderates in the order.

Now a mere monk, John was sent to a monastery in Andalusia, where he contracted a fever and died on December 14. He died alone and almost forgotten in the very congregation he had helped to found.

Writings from the Soul

This powerful mystic was able to explain and analyze what he called “the dark night of the soul,” when God cannot be seen and the soul suffers the desolation of abandonment. In John's view, that suffering, if courageously borne, can lead a soul into union with God. John carefully discusses how stripping away our imperfections, especially our ego, can lead us closer to God and his love. Although The Dark Night of the Soul was his best-known work, he also wrote The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love.

He was canonized in 1726. John of the Cross is a Doctor of the Church; his feast day is December 14. He is the patron saint of poets.