The feast of Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-1562)  is celebrated today by the Carmelite Order. She was born just after Columbus discovered America, and soon after the fall of Grenada in 1492. She  lived through the horrific era of the Spanish Inquisition instituted under Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Mystical experiences were regarded as really dodgy and she had to be careful in the practice of prayer and in the way she talked about it, even in the Carmelite convent. She developed there her own way of describing the soul's journey using the culture of Spain, and the image of the Interior Castle which she later wrote about under the order and the scrutiny of her confessor, which must have been at times terrifying. At the same time she manages to achieve the sense of awe and wonder at the creator God and king, and the intimacy of the relation of the soul and her beloved. 

It was in her forties that she began to express herself strongly as a woman in the church, and began to rebel. I always love that she was a slow burner, taking her time, getting her strength. She left the convent of the Incarnation, founding new convents with a stricter rule, both independently and  alongside John of the Cross. This did imply a criticism of the convents and monasteries of the time, where sisters and brothers were able to live in comparative luxury.  She made plenty of enemies along the way and was in constant danger from the Inquisition. She was required to answer tricky questions, and found herself more than once literally on the run. Once, she had to jump out of a window, shimmy down a rope made of bed sheets and exit on a horse waiting below. On another occasion she was excommunicated for quite a long period of time.

'With friends like you Lord, who needs enemies?' is one of her curious phrases, meaning that the relationship with God in prayer was already challenging enough, without all the complications she met with while trying to found a reform and evade the Inquisition. A lot of people found her frankness with God in prayer a bit shocking, but she was the saint, not the commentators.

In spite of their earlier determination to catch Teresa out, the church finally recognised her as a saint in 1622, catching up with the locals who said when the bells tolled at her death:

'The Saint has gone to heaven.'

On 27 September 1970 she broke the glass ceiling and was named as the first woman Doctor of the church by Pope Paul VI. Until this point, the writing of women had not been recognised as  'useful to Christians in any age of the Church... and  contributed significantly to the formulation of Christian teaching in at least one area.'

Her mysticism and her theological soundness are aspects of the same thing. Recognition of both are met in this acknowledgement of the timeless relevance of her teaching.

She had a great way of communicating, of meeting you where you are, and having a laugh. Grounded, sane, practical, and never above the mundane, because God is where you are, she is my hero.

There is no substitute for reading her yourself.

https://youtu.be/XJIkXSNfsIo

https://youtu.be/N56FJFqpWGE