St. Teresa, too weak to turn in bed, kneels unaided for Communion

ALBA DE TORMES, this week, October 1582 AD — Saint Teresa of Ávila got up without help this week and knelt to receive Viaticum, the Communion given to those in danger of death. For the two days before, she could not be moved in her bed unless two nuns lifted her. She was anointed the same night. She is sixty-seven and has been in bed in the Carmelite convent at Alba de Tormes since September 29.

She is dying away from her own convent. St. Teresa founded seventeen convents of Carmelite nuns in twenty years, and she is prioress of one of them, St Joseph’s at Ávila. She was on her way back there in September when the Duchess of Alba asked for her: the duchess’s daughter-in-law was about to give birth, and the duchess wanted St. Teresa in Alba to bring a blessing on the birth. Father Antonio de Jesús, the friar who was vicar of the province, could order St. Teresa where to go, and at Medina del Campo he ordered her to Alba. She did not want to go, but she had obeyed her superiors all her life, and she obeyed him. She reached Alba on September 20. The child had already been born.

For eight days she got up at the usual hour and heard Mass, though the doctors the prioress called in said she could not recover. On September 29, during Mass, she suddenly got worse and went to bed. She asked for a small cell in the infirmary upstairs, because it had a little window looking down on the high altar and she could hear Mass from it.

In that cell she worried about the poverty of St Joseph’s at Ávila. St. Teresa kept saying: “How shall we get the nuns bread to eat?” She gave an order in these last days to Venerable Anne of St Bartholomew, the lay sister who nursed her and had been with her for fourteen years. St. Teresa told her: “Mind, my daughter, as soon as you see that I am a little better, you are to get a carriage, put me in it, and take me back to Avila.”

One morning this week, after a night in which she slept little, St. Teresa sent for Father Antonio at daybreak to hear her confession. He gave her absolution. Then, in front of all the nuns, he went down on his knees and begged her to ask God not to take her so soon. St. Teresa answered him: “Hush, Father, why do you ask me such a thing? There is no more need of me in this world.”

Later, alone with Anne, St. Teresa said: “Daughter, the hour is come!” Anne said afterwards: “The word pierced my heart like a dagger.” From then on Anne did not leave the cell.

On the afternoon of a later day this week St. Teresa had a sudden, violent pain in her chest. The doctors came in a hurry and ordered her carried to a warmer cell. They prescribed cupping, a treatment in which small cuts are made in the skin and a cup is put over them to draw blood. She smiled at their remedies and expected nothing from them, but she was glad of the cupping, because it hurt. Diego de Yepes, who had been her confessor, said afterwards that she had longed all her life to suffer.

At five o’clock St. Teresa asked for Viaticum. The nuns put her veil and white cloak on her, set lights burning around the cell and knelt round the bed, each with a candle in her hand. The priest was slow in coming. While the nuns waited, St. Teresa joined her hands and wept. She spoke to them about the Constitutions, the rule she had drawn up for her convents. St. Teresa said: “My daughters and señoras, forgive me for the bad example I have set you, and do not imitate me who have been the greatest sinner in the world and the most lax member of the Order in keeping the Constitutions.” She went on: “I beg you, for the love of God, to observe them perfectly and to obey your Superiors. If you do this, as you are bound to do, no other miracles will be required for your canonisation.” The nuns wept and prayed without speaking until they heard the bell that meant the priest was coming with the Blessed Sacrament.

For two days it had taken two nuns to lift St. Teresa in the bed, and she could not turn from one side to the other unless someone turned her. When she saw the Blessed Sacrament come through the door of the cell she got up quickly, with nobody helping her, and knelt on the mattress. She moved as if to throw herself out of the bed, and the nuns had to hold her. Her face was flushed and looked much younger than her age. With her hands joined, St. Teresa said: “O my Bridegroom, my Master! at last the longed-for hour has come! now it is time for us to see one another! My Master, it is time to set forth! Blessed be this hour, and may Thy will be done!”

She would have said more. Her superior gave her a formal order to be silent, so that she would not harm herself, and she stopped.

After she received Viaticum, St. Teresa thanked God again and again. The nuns heard St. Teresa repeat: “After all, Lord, I am a child of the Church!” She asked God to forgive her sins and said she hoped to be saved by the merits of the Blood of Christ. She asked the nuns to pray that she would be. She repeated verses of the psalm Miserere in Latin. She said one half-verse more often than the rest: Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies (a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise).

As night came on she asked for Extreme Unction, the sacrament in which a priest anoints the seriously ill. She received it at nine o’clock, answering the prayers and joining in the psalms.

Then Father Antonio asked her whether she wanted her body taken to Ávila or left at Alba. The question annoyed her, and it showed in her face. St. Teresa answered: “What, my Father, is that for me to decide? Have I anything of my own? Will they not give me a little earth here?”

One of the nuns said to her: “You are right, Mother, for our Lord had no home of His own.”

St. Teresa replied: “You may well say that, your words comfort me greatly.”