April 12 | Saint Teresa of Los Andes

Welcome, young history buffs and curious minds, to My Daily Saint, the podcast that digs deep into the incredible lives of the saints, those remarkable people who shaped history and continue to inspire us today. Forget dusty old portraits and boring stories. Today, imagine this for a second. You are a teenager. You're from a wealthy, comfortable family. You are incredibly athletic, and you have a notoriously strong will. You love hanging out with your friends, playing sports, writing letters, and laughing until your sides hurt.

On the outside, you look like a typical, popular kid living a normal life. But on the inside, you are undergoing a rigorous, intense... You are preparing for a mission that requires absolute sacrifice, and you will finish this amazing mission before your 20th birthday.

This is the life of Juanita Fernandez-Solar, who the world now knows as Saint Teresa of Los Andes. Juanita was born on July 13, 1900, in Santiago, Chile. As a teenager, she had a fiery personality. She struggled heavily with impatience, pride, emotional attachments, and a deep, very real fear of suffering. But from her early teenage years, she felt this profound, magnetic attraction to Christ, especially when she was praying silently before the Eucharist.

Juanita realized early on that becoming a saint wasn't about having warm, sentimental feelings. Instead, she trained herself like an elite spiritual athlete. She practiced obedience, embraced silence, and learned self-denial. She kept journals where she wrote about her flaws and failures with ruthless honesty.

She didn't romanticize holiness. She knew it was going to require hard work, and she was ready to put in the reps. When she was 19, Juanita made a dramatic decision that shocked her friends and family. She traded her comfortable life and her sports to enter a strict convent, becoming a discalced Carmelite nun in the town of Los Andes. She took the name Teresa. When you see pictures of her today, she is usually shown wearing her traditional Carmelite habit, holding roses and a crucifix.

But life in the convent wasn't a fairy tale. The transition was Brutal. The physical toll of her new life made her sick, and the emotional pain of being separated from her beloved family was immense. On top of that, her prayer life suddenly went dark. She experienced intense periods of interior dryness, feeling nothing but emptiness.

But Teresa didn't quit. She pushed through the darkness, because she was firmly convinced of one powerful truth. True love proves itself in perseverance, not in feeling good or receiving consolations. She consistently chose to stay faithful when it was hard. Then tragedy struck.

Within just 11 short months of entering the convent, Teresa contracted typhus, A deadly disease. Her time was running out, just as her life as a nun had barely started. Knowing she was going to die, she was permitted to make her final religious profession on her deathbed. When she passed away on April 12, 1920, she was fully conscious and completely at peace.

After she died, you might think such a young nun would be forgotten. Instead, her fiercely honest journals and letters started to spread rapidly, especially catching fire among young people. They read the words of this normal, athletic, impatient teenager who had transformed herself into a saint, and they were deeply inspired.

In 1993, Pope John Paul II officially canonized her, making her the very first saint of Chile. He presented her to the world as proof that being a saint is not reserved for some perfect, ancient spiritual elite. Her life is a decisive rebuttal to the modern myth that you need a long life or extraordinary, world-changing achievements to be holy. Sanctity is a path available to anyone, including teenagers today, who loves seriously and lives honestly.

Because of her incredible, youthful witness, Saint Teresa of Los Andes is the patron saint of youth, of her home country of Chile, and of those who are discerning their vocation, trying to figure out what God is calling them to do.

St. Teresa's story proves that holiness is joyful and realistic, but it requires discipline. Maybe, like Teresa, start a spiritual journal of your own. You don't have to write it for anyone else to see. Just take five minutes tonight to be brutally honest with yourself and with God about one thing you struggled with today. Maybe you were impatient with your sibling, or let your pride stop you from apologizing to a friend. Write it down. Then, write down one small, practical way you will train yourself to be better tomorrow, just like Teresa did, through self-denial and discipline.

You don't have to be perfect right now. You just have to be willing to train. Thank you for joining us on My Daily Saint. We look forward to sharing another incredible story of faith and courage with you tomorrow.