From The Life os St Teresa of Avila, as Told by Herself

Dim Bulb — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:37:20 +0000

1. I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God.
Our Lord also helped me with His grace.  All this would have been
enough to make me good, if I had not been so wicked.  My father
was very much given to the reading of good books; and so he had
them in Spanish, that his children might read them.  These books,
with my mother's carefulness to make us say our prayers, and to
bring us up devout to our Lady and to certain Saints, began to
make me think seriously when I was, I believe, six or seven years
old.  It helped me, too, that I never saw my father and mother
respect anything but goodness.  They were very good themselves.
My father was a man of great charity towards the poor, and
compassion for the sick, and also for servants; so much so, that
he never could be persuaded to keep slaves, for he pitied them so
much: and a slave belonging to one of his brothers being once in
his house, was treated by him with as much tenderness as his own
children.  He used to say that he could not endure the pain of
seeing that she was not free.  He was a man of great
truthfulness; nobody ever heard him swear or speak ill of any
one; his life was most pure.

2. My mother also was a woman of great goodness, and her life was
spent in great infirmities.  She was singularly pure in all her
ways.  Though possessing great beauty, yet was it never known
that she gave reason to suspect that she made any account
whatever of it; for, though she was only three-and-thirty years
of age when she died, her apparel was already that of a woman
advanced in years.  She was very calm, and had great sense.
The sufferings she went through during her life were grievous,
her death most Christian. [1]

3. We were three sisters and nine brothers. [2]  All, by the
mercy of God, resembled their parents in goodness except myself,
though I was the most cherished of my father.  And, before I
began to offend God, I think he had some reason,--for I am filled
with sorrow whenever I think of the good desires with which our
Lord inspired me, and what a wretched use I made of them.
Besides, my brothers never in any way hindered me in the service
of God.

4. One of my brothers was nearly of my own age; [3] and he it was
whom I most loved, though I was very fond of them all, and they
of me.  He and I used to read Lives of Saints together.  When I
read of martyrdom undergone by the Saints for the love of God, it
struck me that the vision of God was very cheaply purchased; and
I had a great desire to die a martyr's death,--not out of any
love of Him of which I was conscious, but that I might most
quickly attain to the fruition of those great joys of which I
read that they were reserved in Heaven; and I used to discuss
with my brother how we could become martyrs.  We settled to go
together to the country of the Moors, [4] begging our way for the
love of God, that we might be there beheaded; [5] and our Lord, I
believe, had given us courage enough, even at so tender an age,
if we could have found the means to proceed; but our greatest
difficulty seemed to be our father and mother.

5. It astonished us greatly to find it said in what we were
reading that pain and bliss were everlasting.  We happened very
often to talk about this; and we had a pleasure in repeating
frequently, "For ever, ever, ever."  Through the constant
uttering of these words, our Lord was pleased that I should
receive an abiding impression of the way of truth when I was yet
a child.

6. As soon as I saw it was impossible to go to any place where
people would put me to death for the sake of God, my brother and
I set about becoming hermits; and in an orchard belonging to the
house we contrived, as well as we could, to build hermitages, by
piling up small stones one on the other, which fell down
immediately; and so it came to pass that we found no means of
accomplishing our wish.  Even now, I have a feeling of devotion
when I consider how God gave me in my early youth what I lost by
my own fault.  I gave alms as I could--and I could but little.
I contrived to be alone, for the sake of saying my
prayers [6]--and they were many--especially the Rosary, to which
my mother had a great devotion, and had made us also in this like
herself.  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.

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From The Life os St Teresa of Avila, as Told by Herself