St. Teresa of Ávila was a hardworking, tenacious, no-nonsense woman with a sharp sense of humor. She spoke her mind readily, even to God. But she was also a perceptive and sensitive student of the spiritual life who left us a phenomenal study in self-awareness called, The Interior Castle.
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According to a story attributed to her that says a lot about her personality, Teresa of Avila is crossing a river. The cart tips over, and she ends up soaked and covered in mud. She turns to God. If this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them.
She's not the ethereal, detached mystic we might picture. Teresa, in 16th century Spain, is a practical, witty, stubborn woman who spends her life founding convents, traveling all over Spain under brutal conditions. Bad roads, hostile bishops, no money, political resistance at every turn. And at the same time, this deeply practical woman writes some of the most profound texts ever composed on the interior life.
The interior castle, where she describes the soul as a castle made of crystal with seven rooms, a journey toward one's own center, where God dwells. Her life was also marked by extraordinary mystical experiences. Descended from a family of Jewish converts, she lived in an era shaped by the limpieza de sangre, purity of blood controversies. And on more than one occasion, her spiritual experiences were carefully examined by the church authorities of her time.
In 1970, she becomes, alongside Catherine of Siena, one of the first women in history proclaimed Doctor of the Church, a recognition of her originality and authority as a mystic and writer, after nearly 2,000 years in which the title had gone only to men.
