Saint Teresa of Avila, the conquistador of Jesus in Carmel

Saint Teresa of Avila, the conquistador of Jesus in Carmel

In Spain, everyone knows who the “Madre” is, as if there were only one… In France, even if we feel a particular tenderness for our “little” Thérèse, we know what the Carmelite from Lisieux to her impressive patroness. This is because the intimacy of the “great” Thérèse with God seems out of reach. And yet, of all the saints, she is the one who most resembles us. His encounter with God did not happen in one day, like that of Paul Claudel behind the pillar of Notre-Dame.

Who is Teresa of Avila called Santa Teresa de Jesus?

When Thérèse responds “here I am!” » she is already 39 years old. “It’s reassuring!” », explains Christiane Rancé, one of his biographers and author of The passion of Teresa of Avila. “She entered the Carmel of the Incarnation of Avila in 1535, but she did not find the instructions for being a saint. It is prayer that will lead him there. She has her share of lukewarmness, weariness and abortive impulses like all of us. She even dreams of the pleasures of the world. » Thérèse admits it in her Life written by herself : “When I was in the midst of the vain pleasures of the world, the memory of what I owed to God came to spread bitterness in my soul; and when I was with God, the affections of the world brought trouble to my heart. » She expresses herself like a true little sister of Saint Paul, who said: “I don’t know what I’m doing; the good that I want, I do not do; but the evil that I hate, I do. » (Rom 7:15).

The saint therefore took time to become herself. Another kinship with ordinary mortals: she writes as she speaks. “It is not inaccessible,” attests Anne-Sophie Cheuret who created a school of prayer in Toulouse. I was surprised by his cheerful style, his humor, his anecdotes! » She is a local saint, as close to us as to God. She only had the trigger in 1554 while contemplating a suffering Christ. From that moment on, she will work hard on the path to holiness. In nineteen years, she reformed the Carmel under the suspicious eye of the Inquisition – which scrutinized her autobiography – and the howls of the “shod” Carmelites. They follow a so-called “mixed” rule which allows them to maintain a “bling-bling” side whose superficiality Thérèse perceives very well.

Convents were then reservoirs of young women without husbands, often nobles, who saw no harm in being courted in the parlor. Thérèse puts an end to it without excluding herself from this requirement: she gives up her inclination for a zealous worshipper. Thanks to the trust of a few sisters and clerics who feel the strength of Christ in her, she will turn everything upside down. Seventeen new Carmels, called “discalced”, will be born, returning to the poverty of the origins, to closure and assiduous prayer. The first was San José (Saint Joseph, in French), in Avila: a “dovecote of souls” dedicated to Saint Joseph who had once cured her of a fatal heart disease.

The last convent was established in Burgos, the year of her death, in 1582. Thérèse overcame the attractions of the world and “her faith became the capital of her soul”. This new life which is beginning “is indeed, I believe I can say, the life of God in me”.

At the school of Teresa of Avila, Christ as the path of life and prayer

Here she is ready to run the length and breadth of Spain: 5,000 to 7,000 kilometers on a donkey and in sandals. She will obtain everything she decided to obtain, including a strategic location for her convents, in the very heart of the cities. A situation which allows “his daughters” to work on sewing work to earn their living.

It is the comic strip artist Claire Bretécher who makes her the most realistic of portraits: a mistress woman, a good friend, capable of listening without batting an eyelid to the escapades of her great aristocrat friend, Doña Guiomar de Ulloa, all by chatting directly with God and Saint John of the Cross, without ever losing track when it comes to negotiating the price of the “houses” that she wants to acquire for “her daughters”. When she wants to be, Thérèse, saintly as she is, is a bulldozer. The “Madre”, who was said to be pretty but who was not always painted in her best light, had her automatic pilot lodged deep in the soul: Christ himself. It was his reason for being. She never stopped conversing with him while practicing prayer, a dialogue of the soul alone with God. “As long as we are not aware of the love that God has for us personally, we are not convinced to return it to Him in the same way, from the bottom of our hearts, by practicing prayer,” explains Anne -Sophie Cheuret.

And what does Thérèse say that still holds true today, five centuries later? That there is no need to be a theologian to find the words that God listens to, and that we are all inhabited by his grace. A conviction that the Second Vatican Council took up, emphasizing that all lay people are called to holiness.

Being a Doctor of the Church is less about having a big head than having a big heart. Christiane Rancé says it: “Mystics are geniuses in God”. And indeed, we are all called to become one! The path to perfection of Saint Thérèse is a manual on the pedagogy of prayer. We do not read it without it bearing fruit, as it is said that the word of God will not return to him without fruit (Isaiah 55, 10-11). The actress and singer Lucile Vignon testifies to the change she experienced after more than 250 performances of her adaptation of Castle of the soul, another major text of the saint. She describes the different levels which lead to perfect union with God: “At the beginning, I did not understand everything… But by dint of saying the text and taking the veil on stage, the proximity was reinforced and I I felt myself growing internally. I gained joy, peace and moderation. »

The mystical experience, “ultimate possibility of life”

Thanks to the Holy Spirit, Thérèse triumphed over everything in record time, at a time when it was unlikely that a woman would impose herself, in a Spain fevered by the “enlightened” and spied on by the Inquisition, in point that among the 468 letters that the saint left, some are coded… Saint, she seduced non-believers like the novelist Simone de Beauvoir, the philosopher Cioran or the sulfurous writer Georges Bataille, who even recognized that the experience Mysticism is “the ultimate possibility of life”.

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