"15

the back of her father, she became intensely interested in books on knight-errantry. To this reading she afterwards traced " the beginning of lukewarmness in my good desires and the occasion of my falling away in many respects.' Her father prudently diverted her attention from knights and turned it to martyrs. Impelled less by admiration for their heroism than by the belief that martyrs went to heaven without detention in purgatory, she, in collusion with her brother, ventured in search of a martyr's crown by running away from home to the land of the Moors. The children were foiled in their attempt by an uncle who met them near the gate of the city and returned them to their mother. But they continued to give vent to their childlike religious enthusiasm and anticipated the work of later years in building hermitages by piling up small stones scattered in her father's garden. "I used to delight exceedingly, when playing with other children in the building of monasteries as if we were nuns, and I think I wished to be a nun though not so much as I did to be a martyr or a hermit." 16 With all her religious inclinations, she was by no means insensible to the allurements of the world. She might have become a belle as well as a nun. This element in her nature needs to be remembered if we are to understand her vacillating life in the monastery. She seems to have been an attractive girl fitted to enter social life and to enjoy the world. She writes of herself: "Then growing up, I began to discover the natural gifts which our Lord had given me they were said to be many; and when I should have given Him thanks for them I made use of every one of them to offend Him." 17 She was not averse to the vanities and flirtations of a pretty girl. "I began to make much of dress, to wish to please others by my appearance. I took pains with my hands and

15 Autobiography, chap. 2, 1. 16 Autobiography, chap. 1, 6. 17 Autobiography, chap. 1, 8,

...

18

my hair, used perfumes and all vanities within my reach. This fastidiousness of excessive neatness lasted some years. Later, however, she assures us that she never permitted herself to be led astray by men; "nor if I had the power, would I have ever constrained any one to like me, for our Lord kept me from this." 19

When St. Theresa was "about fourteen years old "20 she came under the sinister influence of a "light" and frivolous" relative who was often in the house. She was very fond of her company and found pleasure in her vanities. "The conversation of this person so changed me, that no trace was left of my soul's natural disposition to virtue and I became a reflection of her and of another who was given to the same kind of amusements.'

"21

Both her father and her older sister were much distressed by her association with these persons. Partly to save her from her friends and partly to continue her education, the father placed her in an Augustinian monastery in the city. Here she remained about a year and a half, without a thought of becoming a nun. Yet she could not, impressionable as she always was, escape the influence especially of the good and holy conversations of one of the nuns a person of great discretion and sanctity." Later she wrote: "This good companionship began to root out the habits which bad companionship had formed, and to bring my thoughts back to the desire of eternal things, as well as to banish in some measure the great dislike I had to be a nun." 22

Her residence in the monastery was cut short by

a serious illness:" She was obliged to return to her father's house. She spent some time, also, in the home of a devout uncle.

18 Autobiography, chap. 2, 2. 19 Autobiography, chap. 5, II. 20 Autobiography, chap. 2, 4. 21 Autobiography, chap. 2, 5. 22 Autobiography, chap. 3, 1.

What she heard from him and read to him, helped her to come to a decision in life. "I came to understand the truth I had heard in my childhood that all things are as nothing, the world vanity, and passing rapidly away." 23 Thus she began a struggle with herself which lasted "three months " and ended in her resolve to become a nun. In this she was strengthened by reading the Epistles of Jerome.24 Her father refused his consent when she made known her purpose. The utmost I could get from him was that I might do as I pleased after his death." 25

At the age of eighteen she left her home and became a novice in the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. It was by no means an easy step for her to take. "I remember perfectly well," she writes, " and it is quite true, that the pain I felt when I left my father's house was so great that I do not believe the pain of dying will be greater, for it seemed to me as if every bone in my body were wrenched asunder." "26

II

"27

From the moment of her entrance into the monastery her inner struggle ceased and she felt happy. "I was filled with a joy so great that it has never failed me to this day." She devoted herself ardently to the cultivation of saintliness, greatly helped by the perusal of a book given her by her uncle, entitled, Tercer Abecadario by Fray Francisco de Osuna, and treating of the prayer of recollection. The effect of this book upon her she describes as follows: "I was much pleased with the book, and resolved to follow the way of prayer, which it described, with all my might. And 23 Autobiography, chap. 3, 6. 24 Autobiography, chap. 3, 8. 25 Autobiography, chap. 3, 9. 26 Autobiography, chap. 4, 1. 27 Autobiography, chap. 4, 2.

as our Lord had already bestowed upon me the gift of tears, and I had found pleasure in reading, I began to spend a certain time in solitude, to go frequently to confession, and make a beginning of that way of prayer, with this book for my guide."

"28

But now, again, after the time of her novitiate had expired, she became the victim of her vacillating nature. Her first zeal for holiness died down. She yielded to the more easy-going life of the other nuns who lived under the mitigated rule of the Carmelites. This allowed much freedom and condoned slackness in discipline. The sisters had free intercourse with the society of Avila, received and returned visits, and often absented themselves from the monastery for weeks and months at a time. St. Theresa was only too ready to accept these privileges though not without scruples of conscience. On one side," she says, "God was calling me; on the other, I was following the world. All the things of God gave me great pleasure; and I was a prisoner to the things of the world." 29 She found no satisfaction in this wavering and inconstant mood. "I may say that it was the most painful life that can be imagined, because I had no sweetness in God and no pleasure in the world." 30

After twenty years of "strife and contention which arose out of my attempt to reconcile God and the world," 31 she began a life of absolute surrender to God. This may be called her conversion, not indeed from the world to God, but from a life of compromise between the world and God, to a life of unconditional submission to God. She was fully conscious of the change. "Henceforth, it is another and a new book I mean another and a new life. Hith

28 Autobiography, chap. 4, 8. 29 Autobiography, chap. 7, 27. 30 Autobiography, chap. 8, 1. 31 Autobiography, chap. 8, 4.

erto my life was my own; my life, since I began to explain these methods of prayer, is the life which God lived in me,— so it seems to me.'

" 32

33

As she had ascribed her former life to her failure "to lean on the strong pillar of prayer,' SO she found the secret of her later life in the resumption of prayer. "Prayer is the door to those great graces which our Lord bestowed upon me." 34 "34 Of course she always prayed, but in a perfunctory and servile way. "The days that passed over without my spending a great part of them in prayer were few." 35 It was, however, only the ordinary customary vocal prayer neutralized by her worldly affections.36

After she had given herself wholly to God, "trusting in His Majesty" alone and "thoroughly distrusting" herself, she began a new way of prayer, which in distinction from vocal she calls "mental prayer.37 She defines it as nothing else but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him who, we know, loves us." Prayer now became for her spontaneous, irresistible, the joy of her life. "I understood perfectly well that what had happened was something supernatural, because at times I was unable to withstand it; to have it when I would was impossible." 38

The beginning of her conversion, i. e., her advance from one stage of prayer to another, and the time when she began to mend her ways and "grow better," was an experience she had one day in the oratory.3 She saw a picture of the wounded and suffering Christ. She was overcome by the

39