by St. Teresa of Avila

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-82) was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Avila, about 50 miles northwest of Madrid. In 1535, at age twenty, she entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation at Avila, taking the monastic name Teresa of Jesus (only after her canonization in 1622 would she be known as “Teresa of Avila”). Like other Carmelites in the sixteenth century, the nuns at the Incarnation observed a “mitigated” or softened version of the order’s original rule, and for two decades Teresa lived an accordingly relaxed and materially comfortable existence. In 1555, however, she experienced a religious awakening that called her towards a more ascetic and meditative life. By 1562 she had secured Pope Pius IV’s approval to open the first convent of the Carmelite Reform, in which she hoped principles of humility and poverty would be...