St. Teresa of Avila: Transcendence and Ecstasy

by Kelty Rolfson

Saint Teresa of Avila, born Teresa Ali Fatim Corella Sanchez de Capeda y Ahumada, lived from 1515 to 1582. Her grandfather was a Jewish convert to the Catholic Church, and his faith was practiced by her parents. 1 As a child, she felt drawn to caring for the poor and, at times, even withdrew into silence to pray. 2 When she was about fourteen, her mother passed away. The two having had a close relationship, Teresa was deeply wounded by this loss. She describes how she turned to the Virgin Mary for comfort: 

I threw myself down in despair before an image of the Mother of God. With many tears, I implored the Holy Virgin to become my mother now. Uttered with the simplicity of a child, this prayer was heard. From that hour on, I never prayed to the Virgin in vain. 3

As she progressed through her teenage years, Teresa became very charismatic and found it easy to make friends. In her own eyes, this was a period of her life where she was preoccupied with worldly things, like flirting with boys or having beautiful clothes. Her father, who was “exact” in his religious standards, grew concerned and sent her to a convent school at age 16. 4 (It should be noted that some historians think Teresa herself chose to enter the convent school). 5

Teresa’s experience at the convent was mixed. While she spent time engaging in mental prayer, the institution itself had its own problems: students were sometimes admitted based on wealth, rather than because they felt genuine devotion to God. 6 Whatever the complexities of her experience at the convent school, she committed to a life of religious devotion and joined the Carmelite Order after finishing school. 

The Carmelite Order, like other Catholic orders, is a subset of believers who want to establish themselves as followers of God. They take vows and dedicate their lives wholly to God, often living in physical separation from the rest of society. 7 The Carmelites took their name from Mount Carmel, where the Old Testament prophet Elijah challenged the priests of the god Baal. The original Carmelites were a group of hermits that lived out their Christianity in that very location. Over time, they received formal rules for living from the Catholic clergy and became a fully sanctioned order of the Church. 8 It was in this tradition that Teresa took her vows. Shortly after, she became seriously ill, so ill, in fact, that a grave was prepared for her. Her illness left her disabled for many years afterward. 9 As she dealt with the intense pain of her illness, she found a new and more beautiful connection to God: 

I bore these sufferings with great composure, in fact with joy, except at first when the pain was too severe. What followed seemed to hurt less. I was completely surrendered to the will of God even if he intended to burden me like this forever….. The other sisters wondered at my God-given patience. Without him I truly could not have borne so much with so much joy. 10

Her sickness became a catalyst for experiencing oneness with God, but that did not mean her connection to God through prayer was simple and straightforward. In fact, her love of contemplative prayer that has rendered her so famous wasn’t ignited until she was nearly 41 years old. 11 Her early days as a nun were indeed punctuated by such moments of bliss and love, and even visions of Jesus. However, there were those who feared and distrusted her mystical experiences. One confessor was so convinced these visions were from the devil that he encouraged Teresa to make the obscene gesture of the fig tree when she saw Jesus, which she did, uneasily. 12 This and other experiences dissuaded her from engaging with those visions., and she abandoned her serious attempts to pray. For years she wrestled with prayer until she met a priest who encouraged her to return to the meditative practice. But it was tough going: she often longed for the clock to announce the end of prayer in the chapel. In fact, she claimed she didn’t know “what heavy penance [she] would not have gladly undertaken rather than practice prayer.” 13 She felt her mind was too prone to wandering and too difficult to reign in, “a frantic madman no one can tie down.” 14 But with time, Teresa’s prayers ended not with frustration, but transcendence. 

Teresa believed firmly that prayer should only be undertaken when one’s mind was entirely focused on God, a skill she herself had to work to refine. As she did so, she wrote of the stages of prayer as a purgative progression, where the soul is purified and emptied of self and, in the final stages, united completely with God. She compared this journey to moving through a series of mansions in her work The Interior Castle. 15 In the first mansions, one experiences the purification of the soul, where one must develop “true self-knowledge.” 16 Here, one might engage in discursive prayer, or prayer made up of language and images. As the soul passes through another series of mansions, there is often tension between what one wants and what God wants. This is also when one might progress to the “prayer of quiet,” which is less focused on the spoken words and in fact is closer to meditation. Around this time in the process, love begins to dominate the intellect. 17 Passing through the next series of mansions might include shock at the “ways of the world,” or even frustration with potentially unanswered prayers. 18 But in the final stages of the soul’s growth, the will of God begins to replace that of the ego, prayer becomes almost entirely silent, and transcendence ensues. Teresa reported many different kinds of mystical experiences, from halted breathing to hearing the voice of God to feeling her body rise from the floor. These moments of divine rapture were at times “accompanied by intense pain … experienced at the purely spiritual or physical level.” 19 One such vision became the subject of Bernini’s statue The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. Teresa wrote: 

...Beside me, on the left hand, appeared an angel in bodily form, such as I am not in the habit of seeing except very rarely. Though I often have visions of angels, I do not see them....But it was our Lord's will that I should see this angel in the following way. He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame …. In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul then content with anything but God. This is not a physical, but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it--even a considerable share. So gentle is this wooing which takes place between God and the soul that if anyone thinks I am lying, I pray God in his goodness, to grant him some experience of it. 20

As Teresa passed through these stages of purification, she began to feel that prayer was nothing more than “being on terms of friendship with God.” 21 She went on to write poems, giving language to that loving friendship, at times even speaking of God as she would a lover: 

God

dissolved

my mind – my separation.

I cannot describe my intimacy with Him.

How dependent is your body’s life on water and food and air?

I said to God, ‘ I will always be unless you cease to Be,’

And my Beloved replied, ‘And I

would cease to Be

if you

died.’ 22

In another poem, she wrote of the lightness and joy of her relationship with God: 

Just these two words He spoke

changed my life,

“Enjoy Me.”

What a burden I thought I was to carry –

a crucifix, as did He.

Love once said to me, “I know a song,

would you like to hear it?”

And laughter came from every brick in the street

and from every pore

in the sky.

After a night of prayer, He

changed my life when

He sang,

“Enjoy Me.” 23

Clearly, Teresa’s relationship with God dissolved the boundaries between humanity and divinity, until she and God were one. 

Sadly, Teresa’s religious ecstasies were not always received kindly: she felt so mistreated by so many that she complained to God, who told her, “That is how I always treat my friends.” 24 She wryly replied, “That must be why you have so few friends.” Persecution seemed to be on par for the course as a friend of God. As her oneness with God deepened, Teresa grew dissatisfied with the life the convent provided her. She wanted to reform the Carmelite Order by getting in touch with its older traditions of poverty, austerity, and contemplation. 25 With the permission of Pope Pius IV, Teresa founded the first order of the Carmelite Reform in 1562. There was a storm of hostility from local religious persons, but Teresa insisted on vows of poverty and austerity. Eventually, however, she found support and kinship in John Baptist Rossi and Juan de Yepes, the former a prior general who authorized the creation of more convents, and the latter a Carmelite priest who wanted to initiate these same reforms for Carmelite priests. 

Teresa spent the remainder of her life traveling across Spain establishing and nurturing convents, sixteen in total. Disputes fractured the reform in ways she had hoped to prevent, but with the intervention of King Phillip II of Spain, jurisdiction was divided and a solution reached, allowing Teresa to continue her work. She traveled hundreds of miles from one convent to the other, and it was during these travels that she was fatally stricken on her way to Avila. 26 In 1970, she was officially declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church, one of only two women so honored. 27 Her legacy is undeniable, a woman who transcended illness, doubt, her own humanity, and the doubts of others to find oneness with God. 

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Footnotes

1  Dominic Cogan, “St Teresa of Avila – Saint, Mystic and Doctor of the Church,” accessed November 6, 2024, https://dominiccogan.com/st-teresa-of-avila-saint-mystic-and-doctor-of-the-church/. 

2  Richard Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila,” Poet Seers, published January 7, 2007, https://www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/teresa-of-avila/.

3 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

4 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

5 René Ostberg, “St. Teresa of Avila,” Britannica, updated September 30, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Teresa-of-Avila.  

6 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

7  John Christman, “What Are Religious Orders?”, U.S. Catholic, published June 6, 2022, https://uscatholic.org/articles/202206/what-are-religious-orders/.

8  The Carmelites, “History of the Carmelite Order,” accessed November 6, 2024, https://www.carmelites.org.au/about-the-carmelites/history-of-the-carmelite-order.

9  “St. Teresa of Avila,” Catholic Online, Your Catholic Voice Foundation, published 2014, https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=208.

10  Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

11  Ostberg, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

12  “St. Teresa of Avila,” Catholic Online. 

13  “St. Teresa of Avila,” Catholic Online. 

14  “St. Teresa of Avila,” Catholic Online. 

15  Cogan, “St Teresa of Avila.”

16  Cogan, “St Teresa of Avila.”

17  Michael Snellen, “St. Teresa of Ávila on the Nine Levels of Prayer,” Medium, published April 19, 2022, https://medium.com/catholicism-for-the-modern-world/st-teresa-of-%C3%A1vila-on-the-nine-levels-of-prayer-edd53d66031a.

18  Cogan, “St Teresa of Avila.” 

19  Cogan, “St Teresa of Avila.” 

20  Gerald W. Schlabach, “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” Bluffton University, updated March 24, 1998, https://www.bluffton.edu/courses/humanities/art/brq/sculptur/teresa.htm.

21  Snellen, “St. Teresa of Ávila on the Nine Levels of Prayer.”

22 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.” 

23 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

24 Pettinger, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

25  Melissa Petruzzello, “Carmelite,” Britannica, accessed November 6, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carmelites. 

26  Ostberg, “St. Teresa of Avila.”

27  “St. Teresa of Avila,” Catholic Online.