Teresa of Ávila

Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, reformer, and Doctor of the Church, 1515–1582. From a converso family — her grandfather had been forced to convert from Judaism under the Inquisition. She entered a comfortable, talkative, half-secular Carmelite convent at twenty and spent twenty years there going through the motions of prayer until, at forty, an experience in front of a statue of the wounded Christ broke her open. From that point on she had visions, raptures, and locutions — and she also became one of the most practical, dryly funny, organizationally gifted women in the history of the Church. She founded seventeen reformed (Discalced) Carmelite convents across Spain, fought the Inquisition over them, partnered with John of the Cross to launch the men's reform, and wrote some of the most lucid descriptions of contemplative prayer in any tradition. Core teaching: prayer moves through stages, from beginner's effort to the "prayer of union" — the soul resting in God like a sponge in the sea. The interior castle is a series of dwelling places leading to the center, where Christ already lives. God is in the pots and pans as much as in the chapel. Key works: *The Book of Her Life* (autobiography), *The Way of Perfection*, *The Interior Castle*, *The Book of Foundations*.