Teresa of Avila

As a Catholic young woman, having close relationships with the saints has always been very important to me. This is something some of my Protestant friends don’t seem to understand.

“I don’t pray to human beings,” one of them once said (rather snarkily, I thought).

“Neither do I,” I told him. “Catholics don’t pray to Mary and the saints; we ask for their intercession.”

“You address them directly, do you not?” he said, determined to be proved right. That struck me as the silliest argument of all.

“When you ask your mom, or your brother, or a dear friend, to pray for you,” I asked him, “do you address them directly, or not?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, but my response helped me understand why I love the saints so much. They are our big brothers and sisters in faith. They have finished the race and kept the faith – and they are cheering us on as we follow in their footsteps. They are the kindest of friends and the wisest of mentors, and I’ve been grateful for their help many times in my life.

Today is the feast of my patron saint, Teresa of Avila. My mother named me after her because Teresa is her favorite saint. She even gave me a copy of Teresa’s best-known book, Interior Castle, when I was only 11 (although I didn’t end up reading it until many years later, when I took a class on it in college).

St. Teresa has pulled me out of many scrapes over the course of our long friendship. To celebrate her feast, I wanted to share with you, dear readers, a few fun stories about “the great Saint Teresa.”

1. When Teresa was a very little girl, she decided that nothing could be a better than to be a martyr for the Faith. So she convinced her brother to join her and they ran away from home and headed for Moorish lands to be martyred. Being so young, however, she didn’t get very far before her uncle found her and brought her home.

2. Teresa was quite the party girl in her teens, but she reformed after sickness compelled her to read the lives of the saints. “Spiritual reading has made many saints,” wrote Josemaria Escriva, another great Spanish saint – it’s so true!

3. When Teresa became a Carmelite nun, her order had fallen into disorder and lax living. She reformed it almost single-handedly and was a crucial part of the “counter-reformation,” the Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant revolution.

4. Teresa was a very sassy, spunky woman, even in her relationship with God. One day, she was traveling to visit another convent when a terrible rainstorm overthrew her coach. As she and the driver climbed out of the mud, she could be heard saying crossly, “If this is the way you treat your friends, Lord, no wonder you have so few of them!”

5. Teresa had a very special relationship with St. John of the Cross, a Carmelite priest and a mystic like Teresa herself. Theirs was a model of the loving “spiritual friendship” that is possible between holy men and women. Alice von Hildebrand wrote about their relationship in her (amazing) new book, Man and Woman: A Divine Invention.

Finally, here is a beautiful prayer that Teresa composed and kept as her bookmark:

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you,

All things are passing:

God never changes.

Patience obtains all things.

He who has God

Finds he lacks nothing;

God alone suffices.

Were you named after a particular saint? How do you celebrate your feast day? My family usually has cake and presents in honor of the occasion. Who is your favorite saint? Besides St. Teresa, I'm very close to St. Peter and also St. Anthony (because I lose things so often, and St. Anthony is the patron of finding lost objects!).

May St. Teresa bless you today!