Teresa of Jesus: Woman, Prophet, Mystic

A Woman's Transformation through Her Relationship with Christ

María Rosaura González Casas, S.T.J.
Translated by Judy Roxborough, S.T.J.

Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda—later known, by her choice, as Teresa of Jesus and now as St. Teresa of Ávila—was, above all, a woman who searched for an encounter with God, and her search was not in vain. Once she encountered God, she wanted nothing more than to put him at the center of her life and proclaim his greatness. Teresa's objective in writing was to teach her nuns the way of prayer utilizing her own "systematized" experience.

However, as a woman writer, Teresa had to confront misogynistic forces by unmasking them down to their very roots. As a skilled teacher of the spiritual life, Teresa knew how to spot inner resistances and movements to listen to and follow God's call. At the same time, she considered the inner dynamics that generate the process of relationship with God, making her writing a sixteenth-century treatment of psychology. In her feminine humanity, Teresa supports a relational perspective.

Teresa of Jesus: Woman, Prophet, Mystic looks at relationships as a point of encounter and dialogue between Teresian spiritual theology and psychology. In the first part, Sister María Rosaura reveals St. Teresa's feminine humanity by studying her life within her sixteenth-century historical context. The second part turns to Teresa's masterwork, The Interior Castle, and analyzes the union between the soul and God from Teresa's feminine relational perspective established in the first part. By drawing close to Teresa's life, this book enables readers to drink from a spiritual fount that always yields fresh water.