Novena to Saint Teresa of Ávilanine days of prayer · memorial of October 15

Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Dávila de Ahumada was born in Ávila, Spain, on March 28, 1515, and lost her mother at thirteen. In November 1535 she entered the Convent of the Incarnation, of the Carmelite nuns of Ávila; shortly after her profession she fell gravely ill, and the wrong remedies she was given left her for years in a pitiful state. It was in those years that she began to practice mental prayer — and at one point even gave it up, judging herself unworthy of the graces she received.

The turning point came in Lent of 1554, when she was thirty-nine. In chapter 9 of the Book of Her Life she tells it herself: she entered the oratory and saw an image brought for a feast of the house — "It was of Christ sorely wounded, and so devout that, on looking at it, I was utterly troubled to see Him so, for it showed well what He suffered for us." She threw herself down beside Him, with many tears, and begged Him to strengthen her once and for all never to offend Him again.

On August 24, 1562, after much opposition, she founded in Ávila the Convent of Saint Joseph, of the Discalced Carmelites, with the primitive rule of Carmel. On November 28, 1568, with Saint John of the Cross, she brought the reform to the friars as well. In all she founded seventeen convents — and wrote the Book of Her Life, The Way of Perfection and the Interior Castle, which describes the soul as a castle of dwelling places through which one goes until reaching God's own.

She died at Alba de Tormes, on the night of October 4, 1582 — and the next day, because of the reform of the calendar, was already counted as the 15th; that is why her feast is celebrated on October 15. She was canonized in 1622 by Gregory XV and, on September 27, 1970, Paul VI proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church — the first woman to receive that title —, quoting the definition she left in the Book of Her Life: mental prayer is "nothing other than an exchange between friends: being often alone with the One we know loves us."

The novena in these pages is an anonymous work, printed in Barcelona around 1780, "by a devotee of the Holy Mother", and reprinted in 1856 with an imprimatur. We kept the age-old rite — the sign of the cross, the Act of Contrition, the Opening Prayer, the prayer proper to the day, three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, and the Prayer to Saint Teresa — and added the Glory Be and the Collect the Church prays today on the saint's memorial. The companion book in PDF carries the whole novena, ready to print and pray alone or with a group.