Maria Teresa

“ Just go to the Villa Borghese to see the group of Apollo and Daphne which Bernini executed when he was eighteen,* and in particular see his statue of Santa Teresa in ecstasy at Santa Maria della Vittoria! Ah! that Santa Teresa! It is like heaven opening, with the quiver that only a purely divine enjoyment can set in woman’s flesh, the rapture of faith carried to the point of spasm, the creature losing breath and dying of pleasure in the arms of the Divinity! I have spent hours and hours before that work without exhausting the infinite scope of its precious, burning symbolisation. ”

“ But we fear it can not be said that she obtained any high degree of excellence in these or in any other accomplishments. She was not inclined to study; and, with the exception of the abbé, her masters and mistresses were too courtly to be peremptory with an archduchess. Their favorable reports to the Empress-queen were indeed neutralized by the frankness with which their pupil herself confessed her idleness and failure to improve. But Maria Teresa was too much absorbed in politics to give much heed to the confession, or to insist on greater diligence ”

“ At the door Teresa felt her arm taken possession of by a strong hand with which she had had more than one disconcerting encounter.
"Let us walk," said Sister María Sal in her harsh but strong old voice. "I have permission. I must talk of Concha tonight or I should burst. It is not for nothing one keeps silent for years and years. I at least am still human. And you loved her the best and have spoiled your pretty face with weeping. You must not do that again, for the young love a pretty nun and will follow her into the one true life on earth far sooner than an ugly old phiz like mine." ”

“ The old woman still sharply surveyed her mistress as she observed, "I cannot abide that Donna Maria; she speaks the thing which is false."
"Teresa!" Inez began reprovingly; but the old domestic tyrant would have out her say.
"I heard this very morning that Donna Maria boasts that she possesses a silver reliquary holding a lock of the blessed Santa Veronica's hair" (here Teresa crossed herself devoutly) , "a reliquary once belonging to Philip the Second, our most Catholic [Pg 119] king,—the saints have his soul in their keeping!" ”

“ Maria, the younger, died suddenly of rapid consumption at Paris, and was buried at Père la Chaise. Teresa after some time resumed her life of travel, but since her marriage with M. Parmentier, an eminent French military engineer, has retired into private life. ”

“ St. Peter kept her for St. Teresa. She was called from this day forth Antonia of the Holy Ghost. The second was Maria de la Paz, brought up by Doña Guiomar de Ulloa. Her name was Maria of the Cross. The third was Ursola de los Santos. She retained her family name as Ursola of the Saints. It was Gaspar Daza who brought her to the Saint. The fourth was Maria de Avila, sister of Julian the priest, and she was called Mary of St. Joseph. It was at this house, too, that the Saint herself exchanged her ordinary designation of Doña Teresa de Ahumada for Teresa of Jesus (Reforma, i. c. xlvi. § 2) . ”

“ Ch. xxiii. § 6; Gaspar Daza (ibid.) .
26. He died Oct. 18, 1562.
27. Ch. xxvii. § 21.
28. "El Padre Presentado, Dominico. Presentado en algunas Religiones es cierto titulo de grado que es respeto del Maestro como Licenciado" (Cobarruvias, in voce Presente) . The father was Fra Pedro Ibañez. See ch. xxxviii. § 15.
29. From the monastery of the Incarnation. These were Ana of St. John, Ana of All the Angels, Maria Isabel, and Isabel of St. Paul. St. Teresa was a simple nun, living under obedience to the prioress of St. Joseph, Ana of St. John, and intended so to remain. ”

“ On one of these occasions Teresa determined to imitate them, so she hid behind the palisade, and spent the day in prayer. When discovered at last by one of her companions, and asked what she was doing, she replied, "I hide like the Mothers to pray for you, for myself, for the French, and for the Indians." "She is so constant in her faith, so well instructed, so fervent," said one of her own race, "that it would seem as if she had not been born a Huron. When she comes home she will be looked up to by the whole tribe. Her teacher must surely be one of the wisest persons in all France." ”

“ The Chronicler of the Order, Fra Francis a Sancta Maria, is inclined to the belief that they were written by St. Peter of Alcantara, to whom the Relation is addressed, and the more so because Ribera does not claim them for any member of the Society, notwithstanding the reference to them in §§ 22, 28.
"1. The end God has in view is the drawing a soul to himself; that of the devil is the withdrawing it from God. Our Lord never does anything whereby anyone may be separated from Him, and the devil does nothing whereby any one may be made to draw near unto God. ”

“ Mother Anne of St. Bartholomew, in her life (Bruxelles, 1708, p. 40) , says that she changed the Saint's linen on the day of her death, and was thanked by her for her carefulness. "Her soul was so pure," says the Ven. Mother, "that she could not bear anything that was not clean."
2. Maria de Cepeda, half-sister of the Saint. She was married to Don Martin de Guzman y Barrientos; and the contract for the dowry was signed January 11, 1531 (Reforma de los Descalços lib. i. ch. vii. § 4) .
3. The Augustinian Monastery of Our Lady of Grace. ”

“ The sense of the reality of divine and unseen things in Teresa’s life of prayer is simply miraculous in a woman still living among things seen and temporal. Her faith is truly the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Our Lord was as real, as present, as near, as visible, and as affable to this extraordinary saint as ever He was to Martha, or Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or the woman of Samaria, or the mother of Zebedee’s children. ”

“ Nuns employed in the sacristy might talk, and in a few days
Veronica's nature revealed itself in many little questions.
"It is strange you should wish to be a nun."
"But why is it strange, Veronica?"
"For you are not like any of us, nor has the convent been the same since you came."
"Are you sorry that I wish to be a nun?"
"Sorry, Sister Teresa? No, indeed. God has chosen you from the beginning as the means He would employ to save us; only I can't see you as a nun, always satisfied with the life here."
"Every one doesn't know from childhood what she is going to do. ”

“ The old nun did not answer for some time.
"It is hard to say, Teresa. There are deceptions everywhere, in the convent as in the world; and the mediocrity of the Sisters here is tiresome; one longs for a little more intelligence. And, as I was saying just now, everything declines; an idea ravels like a sleeve. Are you happy here?... You are not; I see it in your eyes."
"The only ones who are happy here," Evelyn answered, "I am sure, are those like Veronica, who pass from the schoolroom to the novitiate." ”

“ Oh, Mary, isn’t it splendid? Don’t you think I am the luckiest girl... Don’t you think it is wonderful that he should care for me?”
“Yes... Does he?”
There was an incredulity in the voice in which the words were put which arrested Teresa in her flow of eloquence. She stared with lips agape, her blue eyes darkening in amaze.
“Does he? Does he care?... You ask me that! What are you dreaming about? If he didn’t care, why in the world should he ask me to be his wife? We are not rich; we are not grand. Ours is not exactly a lively family for a man to marry into. ”

“ As, even in a time and place of considerable monastic corruption—for no one who has read her life and 57letters can regard the Convent of the Incarnation as a forcing-house of the spiritual life—still the idea of her order conditioned her great and Godward-tending soul, and her dedicated life filled up the measure of its glory; yet more has Teresa’s own, separate, unique achievement conditioned the spirit of her order ever since. All the saints which it has nourished have been salted with her salt. All that she won has flowed out from her in life-giving streams to others. ”

“ In the work before us we have the varied experience of one of the very noblest and most courageous souls, through a long and eventful life, related in language which charms while it inspires. St. Teresa's spirit was peculiarly one of chivalry and honor. She was a true child of her native Spain, that land of romance, the mother of so large a proportion of the more distinguished of the canonized saints of the Church. ”

“ But, while that was not to be, it is the immense talent, and the unceasing toil, and the splendid faith and self-surrender that Teresa brought to bear on her intramural reformation; and, all through that, on the working out of her own salvation,—it is all these things that go to make Teresa’s long life so memorable and so impressive, not only in her own age and land and church, but wherever greatness of mind, and nobleness of heart, and sanctity of life, and stateliness of character are heard of and are esteemed. ”

“ A shipwreck this was, indeed, for all the Prioress's plans! If Sister Mary John left, how was Evelyn to be persuaded to take the veil? "At every moment I am confronted with some unexpected obstacle." She tried to argue with Sister Mary John; but the nun was convinced she must go. So the only thing to do was to make terms.
"Teresa must know nothing of what has happened, on that I insist. There is too much of this kind of thing going on in my convent; I have heard of it among the younger nuns, all are thinking of visions. ”

“ Teresa alone ruled by a look, a word, a gesture, this impetuous character, which yielded beneath the hand of a woman, and which beneath the hand of a man might have broken, but could never have been bended. Teresa was lively and gay, but coquettish to excess. The two piastres that Luigi received every month from the Count of San-Felice's steward, and the price of all the little carvings in wood he sold at Rome, were expended in ear-rings, necklaces, and gold hairpins. So that, thanks to her friend's generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and the best-attired peasant near Rome. ”

“ The mistake you make, Hilda, seems to me to be that you imagine every one turns to religion and to the convent for the same reason, whereas the reasons that bring us to God are widely different. You are disappointed in Teresa, not because she lacks piety, but because she is not like Jerome or Angela or Veronica, whom we both know very well. Each seeks her need in religion, and you are not acquainted with Teresa's, that is all. ”

“ Teresa once said: "God preserve me from those great nobles who can do something, yet who are such strange cranks." She reminded her nuns on more than one occasion when she found in them a tendency to go to too great lengths in austerity that we have a body as well as a soul, and that this body when disregarded revenges itself upon the soul. There are few subjects of importance in life on which St. Teresa has not expressed herself wisely, and to know her writings is to be able to quote many marvellous summations of worldly experience that the cloister might seem to have precluded in her. ”

“ At any rate, I would be if I did not revere and love and imitate such a saint of God. Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit: given sin and salvation and prayer and a holy life; and, with many drawbacks, Teresa’s was just the life of self-denial and repentance and prayer and communion with God that we should all live. It is not Teresa who is to be bemoaned and blamed and called bad names. p. 25It is we who do all that to her who are beside ourselves. It is we who need the beam to be taken out of our own eye. Teresa was a mystery and an offence ”

“ That is how Mother Hilda teaches St. Teresa when we read her in the novitiate."
"Sister Teresa is wonderful—her ravishments when God descended upon her and she seemed to be borne away. But I didn't think that any one among you experienced anything like that. It doesn't seem to me that a counterpart is quite the same; there is something earthly."
"No, Sister, nothing earthly whatever."
"But, Veronica, you said that Sister Mary John left the convent because she believed me to be her counterpart. I am in the world, am I not?" ”

“ Your gentle influence, Carmina, has a power of its own over those who love you—and who loves you like Teresa?—of which perhaps you are not yourself aware. Use your power discreetly; and, with the blessing of God and his Saints, I have no fear of the result.
“Write to me, my child, when Teresa arrives—and let me hear that you are happier, and better in health. Tell me also, whether there is any speedy prospect of your marriage. If I may presume to judge from the little I know, your dearest earthly interests depend on the removal of obstacles to this salutary change in your life. ”

“ Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness; and even the best professional sainthood of former centuries, pent in as it is to such a conception, seems to us curiously shallow and unedifying.
Take Saint Teresa, for example, one of the ablest women, in many respects, of whose life we have the record. She had a powerful intellect of the practical order. ”

“ It was impossible for the Prioress to say no, and a slaty blush of anger came into her cheek. "Hilda will do all she can to prevent her." Nor was the Prioress wholly wrong in her surmise, for they had not walked very far before Evelyn admitted that the idea of the white veil frightened her a great deal.
"Frightens you, my dear child?"
"But if I had a vocation I should not feel frightened. Isn't that so,
Mother Hilda?"
"I shouldn't like to say that, Teresa. One can feel frightened and yet desire a thing very much; desire and fear are not incompatible." ”