Vigils Reading – St Teresa of Avila

ST TERESA’S CHILDHOOD

From the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila

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To have had virtuous and God-fearing parents along with the graces the

Lord granted me should have been enough for me to have led a good life, if I had

not been so wretched. My father was fond of reading good books, and thus he

also had books in Spanish for his children to read. These good books together

with the care my mother took to have us pray and be devoted to our Lady and to

some of the saints began to awaken in me…to the practice of virtue. And they

themselves possessed many.

We were in all three sisters and nine brothers. All resembling their

parents in being virtuous, through the goodness of God, with the exception of

myself – although I was the most loved of my father. And it seemed that he was

right – before I began to offend God. For I am ashamed when I recall the good

inclinations the Lord gave me and how poorly I knew how to profit by them.

My brothers and sisters did not in any hold me back from the service of

God. I had one brother about my age. We used to get together to read the lives

of the saints… When I considered the martyrdoms the saints suffered for God, it

seemed to me that the price they paid for going to enjoy God was very cheap, and

I greatly desired to die in the same way. I did not want this on account of the

love I felt for God but to get to enjoy very quickly the wonderful things I read

there were in heaven. And my brother and I discussed together the means we

should take to achieve this. We agreed to go off to the land of the Moors and beg

them, out of love for God, to cut off our heads there.

Having parents seemed to us the greatest obstacle. We were terrified in

what we read about the suffering and the glory that was to last forever. We spent

a lot of time talking about this and took delight in often repeating: forever and

ever and ever. As I said this over and over, the Lord was pleased to impress

upon me in childhood the way of truth.

When I saw it was impossible to go where I would be killed for God, we

made plans to be hermits. And in the garden that we had in our house, we tried

as we could to make hermitages piling up little stones which afterwards would

quickly fall down again. And so in nothing could we find a remedy for our

desire. It gives me devotion now to see how God gave me so early what I lost

through my own fault.

I gave what alms I could, but that was little. I sought out solitude to pray

my devotions, and they were many, especially the rosary, to which my mother

was very devoted; and she made us devoted to it too. When I played with other

girls I enjoyed it when we pretended we were nuns in a monastery, and it

seemed to me that I desired to be one, although not as much as I desired the

other things I mentioned.