Saint Teresa of the Andes

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Teresa of the Andes
Teresa de los Andes.jpg

Teresa of the Andes
Born July 13 1900(1900-07-13) in Santiago, Chile
Died April 12 1920 (aged 19) in Carmelite monastery of Los Andes, Chile
Beatified April 3, 1987, Santiago, Chile

by Pope John Paul II

Canonized March 21, 1993, Rome

by Pope John Paul II

Feast April 12
Attributes small cross, flowers
Patronage Chile, young people

Saint Teresa of the Andes, Teresa de Jesús "de los Andes," (July 13 1900 – April 12 1920) was a Chilean nun canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

She was born as Juana Fernández del Solar in Santiago, Chile: her nickname was "Juanita." She was the daughter of an upper class family. Early in her life she read an autobiography of the French Saint Thérèse de Lisieux; the experience had a profound effect on Juanita's already pious character, coming to the realization she wanted to serve God.

In 1919, at age 19, Juanita became a Carmelite nun and took the name Teresa. Her family didn't oppose to her vocation itself but wanted her to live in another convent different from the one she chose, closer to Santiago and more comfortable for living; Teresa gently but firmly rejected their offers, since that special convent offered the simple lifestyle Teresa desired and the joy of living in a community of women completely devoted to God. She focused her days on prayer and sacrifice. "I am God's," she wrote in her diary. "He created me and is my beginning and my end."

Toward the end of her short life, Teresa began an apostolate of letter-writing, sharing her thoughts on the spiritual life with many people. At age 20 she contracted typhus and quickly took her final vows. She died during Holy Week.

Teresa remains popular with the estimated 100,000 pilgrims who visit her shrine in Los Andes each year. She is Chile's first saint, and is specially popular among females and younger people.

Excepts from her letters

There will never be any separation between our souls. I will live in Him.

Search for Jesus and in Him you'll find me; and there the three of us will continue our intimate conversations, the ones we'll be carrying on there forever in eternity.

Love is the fusion of two souls in one in order to bring about mutual perfection.

Though I am absent from you, this changes nothing in our relationship. I am always with you, invisibly assisting you in all you do. And if my prayers are worth anything, you can count on them for the rest of my life; because every day I have you with me at Communion time.

How much time has passed since we last saw each other, but our souls are always one in the Divine Jesus.

A Carmelite sanctifies herself in order to make all the Church's members holy. The goal she proposes to herself is very great: to pray and sanctify herself for sinners and priests. To sanctify herself for sinners and priests. To sanctify herself so that the divine sap may be communicated through the union that exists between the faithful and all members of the Church. She immolates herself on the cross, and her blood falls on sinners, pleading for mercy and repentance, for on the cross she is intimately united to Jesus Christ. Her blood, then, is mixed with His Divine Blood.

A Carmelite is a sister to priests. Both priest and sister offer a host of holocaust for the salvation of the world. A Sister sanctifies herself, that by being more united to God, the blood of the Divine Prisoner which she receives in her soul might circulate through the other members of Christ's Body. In a word, a Sister sanctifies herself to sanctify her brothers.

This pains me greatly; to see that I'm sensibly experiencing feelings of great love. Sometimes it even reaches the point of taking my strength away or the desire to do anything but stretch out on the bed.

Let's live intimately united with Him, since one who loves tends to be united with the one loved. The fusing of two souls is done through love.

It's true, my dear little sister, we don't live together; but you live in God and I do, too. There, in that abyss of love, we'll live as one. Everything in God is indivisible; we, too, will be inseparable.

Sometimes I felt such great love it seemed I could not go on living if these desires continued any longer…Once when the violence of love took hold of me, I grasped a needle and on my chest drew these letters: J.A.M., which means Jesus My Love.

Despite the distance separating us, my soul will always be one with yours. We both form but a single soul, isn't that so?

Join me in spirit at 11:30 and at 6. At those times I'm alone with Him, behind my beloved grills.

Why do you feel so alone? Aren't we always really one in our Divine Master? Can you be thinking that your Carmelite sister has no room in her heart to love the one who is part of her very being…? You are with me always; we are still working together.

I hope that you are always joined with my Jesus and so joined with your Carmelite sister, too.

When we're there in His presence, if just gazing at Him is enough to make us love Him, and if we are so captivated by His beauty that we can't say anything but that we love Him, why, little sister, should we be upset?

How I would have loved, mother dear, to be by your side to console and weep with you. But our souls met by the tabernacle.

He leaves His angels and millions of people, to come into your soul, to consummate in you the most intimate union, to transform you into God, to nourish in you the life of grace with which you will attain heaven.

See Also

  • Carmelite Rule of St. Albert
  • Book of the First Monks
  • Constitutions of the Carmelite Order
  • Hermit

External links

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