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ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES

St. Teresa has the unique distinction of being the only woman in the history of the Church ever to reform an order of men. It was the most authentic of all possible reforms because it began with the most valid of origins: a personal reform of her own life. In the process of reforming her life, she returned to the original ideal of her Order and carryout a successful reform mainly on the strength of her enormous personality.

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BIRTH OF A MYSTIC

Born in Avila on March 28, 1515, she was the third child of Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda and Dona Beatriz Davila y Ahumada.
Her undaunted spirit first began to show signs of itself when she was only seven and decided to set off with her brother Rodrigo for the land of Moors to have her head cut off for Christ. It was her desire to gain martydom because she "wanted to see God",  a desire that devour her soul in the fire of love for her God. The two children slipped out off the house, passed over the bridge on the river Adaja, and were on the Salamanca road a few miles from home when they caught and returned by an uncle. With same ardor she enjoyed playing hermit life wih other children-praying, giving alms, and doing penances.

ADOLECENCE

Teresa was a typical Spanish girl of her era, and when she grew into her teens she began to give close attention to her appearance. The earlier piety now cold down under the whims of adolecence. She became over eager to read romantic tales of chivalry, began to cultivate her feminine charm and to plan a possible marriage. She was a merry conversationalist.
Her mother died when she was almost fifteen, and the young girl was plunged into deep sorrow. She writes: When I began to realize what had I lost, I went in distress to an image of Our Lady, and with many tears asked her to be a mother to me. Though I did this in my simplicity, I believe it was of some avail to me, for whenever I have commended myself to this Sovereign Virgin I have been conscious of her aid, and she has eventually brought me back to herself.Now Teresa began to meet with opposition at home because of her affection for her cousins and her friendship with a unidentified relative whose influence was not of the kind that strengthened Teresa's piety. To free his daughter from these vain company Don Alonso sent her to board at the Augustinian convent in Avila.

WITH AUGUSTINIAN NUNS

Augustinian nuns of Our Lady of Grace in Avila were a kind of finishing school for girls from the better families. Teresa remained there for a year and a half and her contact with the nuns specially an eighty-year-old nun- Dona Maria Briceno- influenced her to think about the religious vocation. Illness compelled her to leave the school, and when she went to the home of her sister, they stopped along the way for a visit to her uncle Don Pedro de Cepeda. He introduced her to spiritual books, which helped her in the struggles she was experiencing over her vocation. The Letters of St. Jerome, finally, became the occasion of her courage to make a definite decision. But her father refused to give his consent.

A  CARMELITE

On November 2, 1535, at the age of twenty, she once again stole away from her father's house, this time not to go off to the land of Moors but to give her life to God as a nun in the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation. The next year she received the habit of Carmelites and made her religious profession on November 3, 1536.
From the novitiate she was an enthusiastic novice, faithful to all the convent prescriptions, carefully obeying the mother prioress, attending all of the community activities regularly. The nuns of the Incarnation later stated that they felt she was a holy nun. But a few months after her profession she had a severe breakdown in health. After the doctors admitted they could find no cure for her sickness, with the permission of mother Teresa's father decided  to bring her to Becedas for treatment by a quack, famous there for many cures.

"O, how everything that is suffered with love is healed again!"

Teresa spent next eighteen months out of the convent with a companion from the Incarnation convent, first in the country village of Becedas, then at her sisters's home and finally at her father's house at Avila.

"Anyone who cannot find a master to teach him prayer should take this glorious saint(St. Joseph) for his master, and he will not go astray."

(Life, Ch 6:7)

Teresa discovered Osuna's book, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, when she paused to visit her uncle's home on the way to the country. This small book was a treatise on prayer, and it gave her new insights into mental prayer. During these months, she practiced prayer according to the techniques she found in Osuna's book and advanced afar.
The healer of Becedas killed her with their treatment, when she returned to her father's house she was unable to swallow anything but liquids, and after a severe attack of catalepsy the family thought she was dying. She remained unconscious for four days, and a grave was dug for her at her convent. Eventually she regained consciousness and brought back to the convent, in a pitiful state, where she remained paralytic for three years.

At the end Teresa became able to walk again through the intercession of her glorious father St. Joseph. She was faithful to the practice of prayer till now, but after the cure she found a new difficulty in prayer time, which was chiefly because of the problem of technique she used. She didn't understood that the mind or imagination can wander, while the soul on a deeper level may remain quiet in a hardly perceptible contemplation. These difficulties went on for eighteen years until she went through a conversion experience.

Now back in the convent life, Teresa became more careful for her health. She spent more and more time in the convent parlor. And slowly she allowed her early eagerness at prayer to diminish. Practice of mental prayer stopped but the vocal prayers she continued. Teresa was not satisfied with her present life. It bothered her and she knew that this was not the way she should travel, that God wanted more of her.

CONVERSION

She was thirty-eight years old when she experienced what she called her "conversion." She had been reading the Confessions of St. Augustine at that time, and she particularly impressed with the saint's statement when he was attempting to change his life: "When? Tomorrow, tomorrow? Why not today?" She wrote: "When I came to his conversion and I read how he herd that voice in the garden, it seemed that the Lord had addressed it to me as well, so clearly did I hear it in my heart." Then one evening when she entered the chapel she discovered a statue of the Ecce Homo, Christ scourged and bleeding at the pillar, which had been placed there for Lenten devotions.

"In the measure you desire Him, you will find Him."

(WP, Ch 26:3)

A radical change came over Teresa, and the other nuns noticed it immediately: she no longer spent long hours chatting in the parlor, she became less concerned about her health, and she devoted long hours to prayer. The Lord reciprocated to her love immediately with new favors in prayer. Because she was concerned about her prayer life to be authentic, as the favors increased she consulted the most intelligent guides she could find. The first two persons Teresa consulted about her experience decided after examining that her supernatural experiences were from devil. Deficient in experience, those she consulted frequently disturbed and afflicted her. It was Friar Peter of Alcantara, austere and saintly, who ultimately understood her and, through his own experience, was able to explain things, comfort, and encourage her.

Teresa was also fortunate in her current confessor, the young Jesuit Diego de Cetina, who was content to let the Spirit have his way with her. "I began to make many changes in my habits, although my confessor did not press me to do so and in fact seemed to trouble about it very little. But this moved me the more, for he led me by the way of love for God which brought me, not oppression, as it would if I had not done it out of love, but freedom."

SPIRITUAL BETROTHAL

The final step in her complete commitment to God came during a period of illness, when she went to live with Dona Guiomar de Ulloa, a friend who plays a large role in her life. A widow at twenty-five, famous for her beauty and frivolity, Dona Guiomor now devoted her life to piety. On this occasion Teresa remained in Dona Guiomar's house for three years(1555-1558), and during that time frequented Dona Guiomar's confessor, John de Pradanos, the twenty-six year old rector of the Jesuit college in Avila. "This father began to lead me to greater perfection." He guided her to a solution of the problem that continued to haunt her: what to do about human relationships which did not offend God and even appeared obligatory, yet seemed to form an obstacle to her perfect freedom. "He told me to commend the matter to God for a few days, and to recite the hymn Veni Creator,

'I will have thee converse now, not with men, but with angels.'

Our Lord to St. Teresa

and I should be enlightened as to which was the better and then, beseechig the Lord that He would help to please Hm in everything, I began the hymn. While I was reciting it, there came to me a transport so sudden that it almost carried me away: I could make no mistake about this, so clear was it. This was the first time that the Lord had granted me the favor of any kind of raptures. I heard these words: 'I will have thee converse now, not with men, but with angels.' This simply amazed me, for my soul was greatly moved and the words were spoken to me in the depths of the spirit. . . .

"Sola cum sola"
"Alone with alone"

"Since that day I have been courageous enough to give up everything for the sake of God, Who in that moment- for I think it happened in no more than a moment- was pleased to make His servant another person. . . . Blessed forever be God, Who in one moment gave the freedom which, despite all the efforts I had been making for so many years, I had never been able to attain, though sometimes I had done such violence to myself that it badly affected my health.'
Solitude and a simple life-style now became indispensable for her.

NEW STYLE OF LIFE

Teresa continued to live at the Incarnation for the next seven years. Teresa remarks in her autobiography that she had been thinking for some time about the possibility of establishing a reformed convent of nuns who would follow the original rule without mitigation or deviation, but she first discussed the matter openly in a conversation with a group of friends one day in 1558 at the Incarnation.

Maria de Ocampo, an eighteen-year-old boarder at the convent, and the daughter of one of the cousins of Teresa, "asked me why we should not become discalsed nuns, for it would be quite possible to find  a way of establishing a convent." Teresa raised some objections to Maria's suggestion, mainly the financial difficulties involved, but the excited girl offered to donate a thousand ducats she had received from her family. A t that point of discussion the group was joined by Dona Guiomar. She became interested in this new adventure and offered her help. Finally Teresa concluded their discussion with the promise that she would comment the matter before God.

"This monastery will be A STAR SHINING IN GREAT SPLENDOR..."

(Life, Ch 32:14)

One day after communion, Jesus answered her prayers and explicitly command her to work for this aim. He promised her that "the convent would not fail to be established; that great service would be done to Him in it; that

it should be called St. Joseph's; that he would watch over us at one door and Our Lady at the other; that Christ would go with us; that the convent would be a star giving out the most brilliant light.

"I desire no other prayer for myself than that which causes me to grow in virtue."

She explained her plan to her confessor Baltazar Alvarez, a Jesuit. She told him that she wanted to found a single convent which followed the rule of Our Lady of Mount Carmel "in its entirety and without mitigation, in the form drawn up by Brother Hugh, Cardinal of Santa Sabina, and given in the year of pontificate of Pope Innocent IV." He advised her to discuss the matter with the Carmelite provincial and he approved the idea. When Teresa was preparing for the reformed convent and the provincial was drawing up the necessary papers to send to Rome a storm of opposition broke out. The nuns at the Incarnation protested against it. The oppostiion apparently unsettled the provincial, and he suddenly withdrew his approval for the new convent. The saint knowing the God's will determined to go ahead and made a plan which cut swiftly through the legal net in which she was caught. Teresa made Peter Ibanez and Dona Guiomar write directly to Rome and her sister Juana de Ahumada, to purchase a house in her own name and prepare it as a convent.
At this tme Teresa was ordered by provincial to leave for Toledo, where she was to cosole the recent and disconsolate widow, Dona Luisa de la Cerdo. Teresa was away form Avila for the next six months and when she returned from Toledo they received the brief from Rome.

"I can assure you on His authority that before fifty years are over your Order will be one of the most illustrious in the Church."

St. LouisBeltran

"This is in truth, is a house of St. Joseph, and another grotto of Bethlehem."

St. Peter of Alcantara

"God willed to have a house in which He could recreate Himself; a house in which He could take up His abode; a garden in which flowers should grow- not of the kind which expand on earth, but those which bloom only in heaven."

Fr. Julian of Avila

ST JOSEPH'S, AVILA

The brief dated February 7, 1562, and signed by Pius IV, permitted the one convent which would follow the original Carmelite rule, and it allowed Teresa to draw up a set of constitutions for the nuns, and it placed the convent under the direct care of the bishop of Avila. The new convent was officially inaugurated on August 24, 1562. She received four young women, whom she instructed in the primitive rule of the order while waiting for the permission to come.

Teresas draw up a constitution to implement the rule of 1247, and they emphasized strict cloister, solitude, poverty, and mortification and two hours of mental prayer. Teresa directed that the nuns chant the Divine Office in a simple, one-tone note to make the office more simple and prayerful. As a symbol of their renunciation of the past and their new allegiance to God, she made the nuns drop the use of their family names and adopt a new religious name. Thus Teresa de Ahumada became Teresa of Jesus.

MORE HOUSES

Teresa remained at St. Joseph's for over four years. It was her original intention to remain there all her life. She only wanted to found a single convent which would follow the rule, and she had no intention of founding a series of convents, much less of reforming the Carmelite Order. In the summer of 1566, a Franciscan, Alonso Maldonado, who had recently returned from missionary work in the Indies, visited the St. Joseph's convent and informed them "the millions of souls perishing there for lack of teaching." This made Teresa much distressed and she returned to one of the hermitages- huts which are built for the nuns to withdraw occasionally and remain in prayer- to pray that God may give her "a means for saving souls for his service."

"Let us leave alone things which are nothing, and attend to those which bring us near to Him, who is our end, to serve and love Him more and more.."

The Lord appeared and told her: "Wait a little while, daughter, and you shall see great things.' Meanwhile the prior general of Carmelite order visited the Spain and came to St. Joseph's convent, Avila.
The general, on the contrary to Teresa's expectations pleased by the new style of life granted permission to make as many foundations she wished. Later he restricted her foundation to Castle. The general left Avila, expressing his high regard for this woman. He wrote two years later: "She is more profitable to the order than all the Carmelite friars in Spain." Eventually Teresa obtained permission to found monasteries of friars.

Thus she founded 17 convents in her lifetime. To help the sisters in their sacramental life and understand their way of life she initiated men monasteries who follows same charism but free to carryout apostolic works as their state of ordination demands from them. 

The order grown in spain and in 1583 there are 55 monesteries for men and 234 for nuns. in 1585 order seperated from the carmelites and form their own juridiction . 

 

Now the presence of daughters of St. Teresa, one of the largest women contemplatives, can be found in the world around 890 monasteries spread over 98 countries.

The order expanded through the difficulties of french revolution, the civil war in spain and the world wars producing holiness in the Church.The Discalced Carmelite nuns, hidden in the silence of their monasteries and apparently unknown by the world, are present all over the globe. According to the latest statistics, the nuns reach the considerable number of 11,500 (thus being the most important female Cloister Order in the Catholic world). Around 750 monasteries live according to the Constitutions approved in 1991, and 140 according to the Constitutions approved in 1990. These monasteries are found in 98 countries. The great development of the Order is very remarkable in South-East Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. The numerous and new vocations allow them to open new foundations in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Poland, Croatia and some countries of the ex-Soviet Union. The fact is certainly reassuring that vocations still continue firmly in the west of Europe, especially in Spain, France and Italy.

 

Order

CARMELS IN INDIA

HOLY MOTHER ST. TERESA *

Look down from heaven upon us,

consider

THE VINEYARD WHICH YOU HAVE PLANTED,

visit it by your presence, and perfect the work

which YOUR RIGHT HAND HAS BEGUN.

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