First part: The Teresian roots of charisma:
Context of Teresa's life and principles for reading
The historical, socio-cultural, and religious framework of Teresa's life
6. The social environment of St. Teresa is Castile in the 16th century, a period of great contrasts, where the upper class plays a decisive role, thriving on conventionalism, titles, and prescribed etiquette (cf. Ž 37,6.10). Although inevitably integrated into the contemporary system of social classes, Teresa responds in the Book of Life with a critique of three pseudo-values of this society: the cult of honor, the accumulation of wealth, and the pursuit of pleasure (cf. Ž 20,25–28). St. Teresa is born and raised during the expansion of the empire of King Charles I (as in Spain) and the same Charles V (as in the Holy Roman Empire; 1516–1556), and she develops her activity and personality under the reign of Philip II (1556–1598). At that time, Castile ceases to be an insular area and opens up to the European horizon of Italy, France, and Flanders.
7. Teresa harbors deep concerns about the problems of Europe, immersed in religious wars and exposed to the threat of Turkish incursions, as well as about issues in Africa. However, she shows particular sensitivity to the vast panorama of America and its troubles. Teresa was only seventeen when the exodus of her brothers to America began (in Teresa's vocabulary, "to India"). From that moment on, she never stops turning her gaze towards the American continent. During the last twenty years of her life, themes of India become part of her inner world and are a crucial factor in her foundational work among the brothers. Regarding Teresa and her stance towards India, it is often repeated that it was a usual source of financial support she received from there. However, she experienced the problem of America on a deeper level and underwent a radical development regarding it. She continued to receive information first-hand. A decisive impetus for her was the year 1565, when the Franciscan missionary Alonso de Maldonado stopped by the Carmel of St. Joseph; he was a disciple and successor of Father Las Casas, an opponent of colonial conquests and a supporter of missions. Teresa is deeply affected by listening to these reports, as is typical of the sensitivity of her time, and cannot help but retreat to the solitude of a hermitage in the convent garden, where she prays to God for the millions of people who are heading towards damnation. Suddenly, a limitless, entirely new horizon opens up for her (cf. Z 1,7; Letter to Lorenzo de Cepeda of January 17, 1570).
8. A woman did not hold such a position in 16th-century Spanish society that would allow her to be a great protagonist or to have important decision-making power. She faced difficulties in trying to access cultural resources, had no access to university, nor were any other centers of education or social advancement open to her; she was even prohibited from reading spiritual books in the vernacular. Teresa would protest against these prohibitions, which also existed within the church: "It is not enough, Lord, that the world keeps us silent, that we do not do anything publicly that is worth anything for you, nor do we dare to speak of certain truths, for we weep in secret; and would you not listen to such a just plea? Lord, I cannot believe that, for your goodness and justice, for you are a just judge, and not like earthly judges, who – like Adam's sons, and in the end, all men – do not find a woman's virtue that they do not suspect" (CE 4,1; cf. 35,2; Ž 26,2). Without striving for it, Teresa becomes an instigator of the movement of women's culture. She enters the stream of Spanish spiritual literature of the first half of the 16th century. When she founds a new Carmel, she insists that the nuns be capable of praying the Liturgy of the Hours and assisting with choral singing (cf. St 6). However, soon thereafter, when an illiterate shepherdess from Almendral, Anna García (future Anna of St. Bartholomew), knocks on the door of her Carmel, Teresa accepts her contrary to this requirement. She teaches her to read and write. In the new Carmel, Teresa will befriend books, letters, scholars, folk songs, and... the songs of her brother John of the Cross. Later, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a host of educated Carmelite women will emerge, among whom Maria of St. Joseph, Cecilia of the Nativity, and Anna of the Trinity (from Calahorra) stand out.
9. Regarding the religious environment, Castile was a theocratic and almost exclusively Catholic society: Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and those with Jewish ancestors who were themselves converts were persecuted for suspicion that they still adhered to their original faith. Those who came into contact with the Protestant Reformation were also persecuted. Only small groups of Muslims (Moriscos) remained. Teresa mentions as a child the hostile land of the Moors and the possibility of suffering martyrdom there (cf. Ž 1,5), and she and her family will have to refute suspicions regarding the purity of their blood, i.e., regarding Jewish origin. Her views on the Protestant Reformation are also well known: she perceived it from the political-religious environment in which she lived (cf. CV 1,2).
10. Spanish society of the Golden Age was ostentatiously religious in its structures, customs, and ways of thinking. This resulted in popular piety becoming an all-encompassing educational factor: it is present in all spheres. In childhood, Teresa experiences it in her family. Then she experiences it in various ways throughout her religious life, as a certain counterpoint to conventual liturgy. Ultimately, she incorporates it, albeit very refined, into her mystical life. The most significant fact is the connection of popular piety with mystical experience: day by day, Teresa increasingly experiences “the immense beauty of Christ’s face,” deeply emotionally experiences communion with the Trinity, etc., and yet remains almost indispensable in her everyday and community practice: images (cf. CV 34,11), holy water, processions, folk songs. The Inquisition was one of the institutions that most influenced everyday life in Spanish church and society at that time. The same goes for Teresa. Inquisitorial interventions will call into question both her person and her mystical graces (cf. Ž 33,5), as well as her first work, The Book of Life. Nevertheless, Teresa does not succumb to the atmosphere of fear generated by the Inquisition that spreads across Castile.
11. For Teresa, as well as for the entire time of Philip II, the Church identifies with the clergy and hierarchy. The clergy forms the social layer that is closest to Teresa and most influences the lives of religious women. Teresa comes into contact with various strata of the church hierarchy. She holds great respect for the bishops she knows, but especially values priests positively. A priest for her is not an employee, but a standard-bearer, a sort of captain of Christians. He is the defender of the cause of Christ (cf. CV 3,1–2). In church history, Teresa is included within the framework of reform movements in Castile in the broader context of the Catholic reform movement, which begins in the mid-14th century and is directed primarily by the Council of Trent; this movement sought to instill a new spirit in the Church to encourage Christian life, education, theology, and seminaries.
12. Teresa's mystical life and her desire to create a small contemplative community with a new spirit and style of life precede the Council of Trent, even though they will later prove to be in harmony with its course and implementation. She often refers to it as the holy council. However, she is not merely an additional reformer of religious life; she is also a bearer of charisma and an inspirer of a certain lifestyle within the Church, characterized by her Christian humanism. Open to transcendence, which is the community of Trinitarian love and friendship with Christ – God and man, who understands our weaknesses – St. Teresa has a high awareness of the human person and values human abilities (cf. CV 4,4; 41,7; 1H 1,1nn). Her mysticism is moreover prophetic mysticism, an experience so powerful that it is expressed in words that invite, inspire, and urge us, thus becoming a testimony for society and the Church.
13. St. Teresa simply and concretely describes in few words the value of the Christian upbringing she received in her family: “Having virtuous and God-fearing parents, along with what the Lord granted me, should have been enough – had I not been so wretched – for me to be good” (Ž 1,1). The image of the family sketched by Teresa on the first pages of the Book of Life is entirely positive and clearly characterized, driven by sound Christian humanism. The portrait of her father, Don Alonso, is that of a just and moderate man, a friend of truth, socially oriented, dedicated to reading, honoring the Eucharist, rich in acts of love toward the poor, and merciful to the sick and serving (cf. ibid.,2). Very similar is the female portrait of Lady Beatrix, her mother: patient, discerning, very calm and intelligent, inclined to cultivate Marian devotion and other Christian virtues in her children (cf. ibid.,3). Teresa, who so fervently and intensely carried out her mission as the Mother of spiritual persons, both within and outside the Carmel, also nurtured this aspect of family life. Initially as a nun concerned with her father's spiritual life (cf. ibid. 7,13); and subsequently as a mystic interested in the spiritual life of her brothers.
14. Against this backdrop, Teresa experiences, between the ages of eighteen and twenty, within the development of her vocation, the moment of entering the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation. Here she realizes that she is rooted in a spiritual tradition of centuries, intensely inspired by the Bible and based on the Rule. The Carmelite Rule is the second most referenced text by the saint after Scripture. Written in the first decade of the 13th century, it was later revised and confirmed during the pontificate of Innocent IV (1247), and this thus formed text is referred to by Teresa as the "primary Rule" (cf. Ž 36,26). On the first pages of the Way of Perfection, she tells her nuns that in founding this “corner (...) she intended for this Rule of Our Lady and Mistress to be kept with such perfection as at the beginning” (CV 3,5). The prompts derived from the Rule that she embraces most intensely are evangelical poverty (cf. Ž 35), prayer (cf. CV 4,4), the solitude of the cell (cf. C 8; C 4,9), silence (cf. 3H 2,13), work, and the example of St. Paul, as well as the traditional relationship between the Rule and the model of the Virgin Mary; that is also why the Rule is commonly referred to by Teresa as the "Rule of the Virgin" or "Rule of Our Lady of Mount Carmel" (cf. Z 14,5; Ž 36,26).
15. During the total of twenty-seven years spent in the convent of the Incarnation, Teresa undergoes significant spiritual growth: reading St. Augustine and the vision of Christ, marked by wounds, brings a definitive change in her religious life (cf. Ž 9,1.8). In the convent of the Incarnation, there are also mystical graces, which she describes in The Book of Life. These are interspersed with Christological experiences that center her mystical life on the experience of Christ's holy humanity (cf. Ž 22), from the grace of heart transverberation (so-called transverberation; cf. Ž 29,13) to the charismatic graces that urge her to found a new Carmel. Here occurs the decisive event that will change the direction of her life, and that is in the year 1554, after almost twenty years of Carmelite life. Teresa informs us about it in the ninth chapter of her autobiographical account. The reality is no longer about bridging the struggle she had undergone for the previous ten years, but rather about opening a new horizon to a new way of relating to God and facing everyday life. She describes it this way: "I had before several beginnings of what I will now narrate. It would happen to me in this presence, by which I brought myself to Christ, as I said, and sometimes even during reading, that a feeling of God's presence suddenly came to me, such that there was no doubting that He was in my soul or I wholly immersed in him" (Ž 10,1). It was simply the beginning of a mystical life; the beginning of a new way of prayer and life, with consequences that she did not yet foresee. It is her experience of new life that will give rise to the new Carmel. Thus begins the second period of her life (1554–1582), characterized by intense mystical experiences, of which John of the Cross will be a witness, confessor in the convent of the Incarnation during the three years of 1571–1574, when Teresa was prioress there. This period is also characterized by her intensive writing and founding activity, in which John of the Cross will also participate, and which will essentially trace until her death.
(To be continued in the next issue.)
