Carmelites Appoint Commission for Saint's Celebration
ROME, (Zenit.org).- A commission of Discalced Carmelites is already preparing for the celebration of the 5th centenary of the birth of St. Teresa of Jesus, which will be celebrated in 2015.
The celebration for the saint, also known as St. Teresa of Avila, will be directed by this commission, which was appointed after an initiative of the order's general chapter.
The Carmelite vicar general, Father Emilio MartÃnez, will head the commission and will be assisted by Father Alfredo Amesti, a press release on the order's Web page reported.
The executive committee will coordinate various topical sections of activities.
The section for community projects will prepare study aids for each of St. Teresa's books as well as dynamics and activities to help individual, community, and lay reading of these works.
The pastoral projects section will organize activities with a special focus on young people, including the upcoming World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011.
The task of the cultural projects section will be the organization of seminars, conferences and other academic activities in collaboration with the Teresianum College in Rome, the International Teresian-St. John Center of Avila and other Carmelite institutes.
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born March 28, 1515 in Avila and died October 4, 1582 in Alba de Tormes. She founded the Discalced Carmelites, a branch of the Order of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and was a mystic and writer, and a doctor of the Church.
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Teresa de Jesus, more popularly known as Teresa of Avila, lived in a time of turmoil and religious reform. She was a nun in Catholic Spain during the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, when Spain saw itself as the most secure bastion of traditional Catholic faith and practice.
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Teresa entered the Carmelite order of nuns against the wishes of her father. She eventually joined the "discalced" movement within the Carmelite order, a movement that advocated simplicity, humility, and the spiritual life over the increasingly worldly and sometimes corrupt practices that dominated many other communities of monks and nuns. Her reputation for holiness along with her immense energy and practical talents quickly made her a leader of the discalced Carmelites and the foundress of several monasteries. These activities led her into a world of politics, legal battles, letter campaigns, and long periods of exhausting travel.
Like Francis of Assisi, Teresa also suffered from a series of debilitating illnesses and injuries, often made even worse by the treatments of the time. Later in life, for example, she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. It was poorly set and limited her movement. Someone had to rebreak her arm in order to reset it, but an even worse job was done, leaving her essentially crippled and needing aid for such simple things as dressing herself.
Obedience was one of the virtues Teresa particularly extolled. Politically, this was significant at a time when the Catholic world was being challenged by the Protestant reformation, and when many mystical movements within the Catholic church narrowly escaped the label of heresy. Yet obedience, for her and for monastics throughout the centuries, has the spiritual value of freeing the individual from self-will and the trap of ego. In other words, when practiced with intelligent caution, obedience can be understood as a technique that opens the heart and the awareness.
Despite her physical sufferings and the challenges of her foundational work within the Catholic church, she remained supremely dedicated to the mystical life. She shared a close spiritual connection with John of the Cross, her younger contemporary, and was in some ways a mentor to that great poet and mystic.
Teresa of Avila wrote poetry, many letters, histories of her work in establishing monastic foundations, but it is her book on the path of prayer, The Way of Perfection, and her spiritual autobiography, The Interior Castle, that are most widely read and considered her masterpieces.