Why is st teresa of avila the doctor of the church

The title of Doctor is associated with the academy. However, Teresa never had formal education. When one thinks of women in the 16th century, most did not know how to read or write, their life consisted of taking care of their families subordinated to men.

Teresa knew how to read since she was a little girl because her father taught her so that she could read to her mother who was ill, later a convalescing uncle asked her to read to him and to play chess with him. This is how she came into contact with silence, reflection and spiritual ideas.

Teresa was traveling about Spain founding her reformed Carmelite convents her pen was busy too. All of her books have become spiritual classics. Life, her first work and autobiography written in , describes how she experienced a spiritual marriage with Christ as bridegroom to the soul; she had this experience on November 18, Following this experience she wrote The Way of Perfection , about the life of prayer. This was followed by The Interior Castle , her best-known work, in which she presents a spiritual doctrine using a castle to symbolize the interior life.

This latter book was revealed to her on Trinity Sunday, , in which she saw a crystal globe like a castle that contained seven rooms; the seventh, in the center, held the King of Glory. After founding her last convent at Burgos, in , St. Teresa returned in very poor health to Avila. The difficult journey proved to have been too much for her frail condition.

She took to her deathbed upon her arrival at the convent and died three days later on October 4, The next day the Gregorian Calendar went into effect, thus dropping ten days and making her death on October Her feast day is October This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

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The harsh and painful treatment, which lasted for three months, aggravated her condition. A grave was dug for her at the convent, but her father refused to have her buried. Her entreaties to be taken back to the convent was eventually approved by the nuns. After three years, she can move unaided, crawling on her knees and hands. She desired solitude and her spiritual life deepened. She sought cure from Saint Joseph. At 26, she could rise and her paralysis was cured.

The Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation practiced strict rules on spirituality for centuries. Determined on achieving holiness for all, she became so prayerful and lead a life of increasing sanctity. Teresa lost the pleasure and joy of life in the convent. She began eventually to experience great spiritual delight. She even was so overcome by the power of God that she began to levitate. There are accounts of the other nuns having to sit on her to hold her down to the ground.

She did not like the public attention that it was bringing. Of all of these great gifts of God, she saw them more as chastisements from God. They helped her stay on track. In those two years, she became determined to reform the Carmelite order, namely, a simple life of poverty devoted to prayer. She was denounced from the pulpit, threatened with the Inquisition, and the town started legal proceedings against her for suggesting that a new convent be built.

With total trust in God, she pushed onward. She believed in working, not begging. She also saw obedience as more effective than penance. Focusing on the task at hand, she continued to work for the reformation of the Carmelite order. Under obedience, she began a book of her life.

But she was concerned that the Inquisition might discard it all if she was too forceful. Traveling all about, at the age of 51, she founded more convents. Teresa wanted to call people to a higher way of living, focused on true love of God. She was hated for it. However, she was not alone. There were others who saw how she was treated and wanted to reform the convents as well. Teresa founded the Discalced Carmelites, so called because they only wore sandals or went barefoot.

They practiced a severe austerity in service of the Lord. In our society, which all too often lacks spiritual values, St Teresa teaches us to be unflagging witnesses of God, of his presence and of his action. She teaches us truly to feel this thirst for God that exists in the depths of our hearts, this desire to see God, to seek God, to be in conversation with him and to be his friends.

This is the friendship we all need that we must seek anew, day after day. Therefore time devoted to prayer is not time wasted, it is time in which the path of life unfolds, the path unfolds to learning from God an ardent love for him, for his Church, and practical charity for our brothers and sisters.