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St. Teresa of Avila was born in Avila, Spain on March 28,1515
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St. Teresa is born in Avila, to a family of 10 siblings and two loving, noble parents. She is baptised as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada.St. Teresa was born to a welcoming, religious and pious family. Her father Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, was a new comer to the religion because of his father's own conversion from Judaism to Catholic. Her mother, Beatriz, was specially keen to welcome a new girl child to raise a noble Christian.
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St Teresa did not study anything but she was in a convent and she started to learn mental prayer.
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Teresa entered the Caramelite Monastry on November 2, 1535. She felt disharmony and a loss of connection between her and God in the monastry. Many nuns lived there and they all worked hard to strengthen the spirit of practicing prayer but it all lost its purpose.
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The amount of visitors destroyed the atmosphere. Many people of different ranks would also come in and out of the monastry. Teresa felt she had to do something about it. She found a resoloution and it was to found a reformed convent of the Caramelite. Fixing the damaged atmosphere and making the practice of prayer have a purpose. Spanish jews were converted by Teresa to follow the Christian faith.
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The new monastry was established in 1562 and was named St. Joseph's, however it fell under poverty. Although they were under poverty the help of strong and high ranked patrons including the bishop helped with this poverty and the monastry get back on its feet
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St Teresa had finally settled in the convent but was still not putting God first in her life. Then suddenly she had a severe seizure that she had woken up to four days later. For three years she was paralysed and instead of using this valuable time to strengthen her faith she believed that God would not have responded to her as she had sinned so greatly against him.
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Teresa faced controversies in her life and another came up. She became seriously ill soon after taking her profession and aborted anything that had to do with medical treatment. She was taken to Becedas by her father as it was their last option. They looked for a woman healer who was famous in the area. Although they had her help Saint Teresa’s health did not recover. She left Becedas in 1538 and stayed with her uncle in Hortigosa .
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St Teresa established 16 convents during her life,Teresa continued throughout her life to suffer from ailments which physicians found it confusing, during the last two years of her life she somehow found strength to establish three more convents. They were at Granada, in the far south, at Burgos, in the north, and at Soria, in Portugal.
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St Teresa of Avila dided on the 4th of october, 1582
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St Teresa was canonized in 1962
