Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Memorial of St Teresa of the Andes
Juanita Fernandez Solar was born in
Santiago, Chile, on July 13, 1900, to a family of Santiagan lineage. Her
parents were Don Miguel Fernández Jaraquemada and Doña Lucía Solar Armstrong.
The children of this marriage were Lucía, Miguel, Luis, Juana (who died a few
hours after birth), Juanita (St Teresa of the Andes), Rebeca, and
Ignacio. From her earliest years, she knew the suffering that came to the
family due to her father’s bankruptcy. This came about perhaps from his poor
administration of the great patrimony that the Fernandez Solar family had
inherited. One after another, he lost all their properties. This situation
caused a gradual distancing between Don Miguel and Doña Lucía. He lived
in the countryside attempting to administer the inherited properties while Doña Lucía lived in Santiago with her six children, trying to give them an education
corresponding to their high position in society and trying to survive on the
little money the father was able to provide. The most painful thing for Juanita
was not the lack of money but the tension this caused between her
parents. She herself was very caring and sensitive and a veritable angel
of peace in the bosom of the family.
For eleven years, she was a student
at the College of the Sacred Heart, or of “the English nuns,” as the sisters
who ran the place were called. Of these eleven years, she spent three as
an internal student. Especially at the beginning, it was a real martyrdom
for her to be separated from her family, even though her sister Rebeca shared
this internship with her. At the age of eighteen, she entered the Carmel of the
Holy Spirit in Los Andes, where she spent only eleven months. A brief
sickness ended her life on April 13, 1920. On April 3, 1987, his Holiness
John Paul II beatified her during his apostolic visit to Chile; and on March
21, 1993, he canonized her in Rome.
Today her mortal remains lie in the
Sanctuary of Auco, a veritable citadel that has been built in honor of the
saint and for the thousands of pilgrims who come there every month.
Another Carmelite Mystic
The Carmelite Order is clearly
contemplative. It has its origins in Israel in the twelfth century and was reformed
by St Teresa of Avila. It has been a seed-bed of saints and mystics who have
been nourished by the charisma of St Teresa and St John of the Cross. But within
this charisma, there is great diversity. In fact, each Carmelite lives it
in the light of his or her own personal vocation. Numbered among the saints and
mystics have been Teresa Margaret Redi, the little Florentine saint of the
eighteenth century; Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Elizabeth of the
Trinity, French women of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth
centuries; St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a German Jewess
martyred in 1942 and recently canonized by his Holiness John Paul II. This is
just to mention a few of the more well-known ones and without reference to
the Carmelite friars. All these lived the charisma of the Order
completely, but each one lived it according to their own time and according to
their own personal temperament; moreover, each one had his or her own concrete
mission within the Church.
Different from St Thérèse and Bl Elizabeth
of the Trinity, who arrived at the highest degrees of union with God by a
simple path, with few mystical phenomena, Teresa of the Andes had a rather
extraordinary spirituality from her earliest years. She did not write her
autobiography and so, to be able to understand her experience of God, all we
have is her diary, sometimes interrupted by long time lapses; her letters,
particularly those written to her spiritual directors Fathers José Blanch, CMF;
Artemio Colom, SJ; some testimonies from those who knew her better like Mother
Angélica, prioress of Los Andes and her mistress of novices; Father
Avertano of the Most Holy Sacrament, OCD, her confessor in Carmel; and an
extract from a letter of Father Fauvert, which tells of an ecstasy and
levitation of Juanita described by Father Félix Henle, a Redemporist and eye
witness of the event. Nevertheless, these few facts are sufficient to approach
a little into the mystical phenomenology of Teresa of the Andes. But it is
important to keep in mind that what interests a person approaching a mystic is
not a kind of phenomena that has been experienced, but the experience of God,
the acceptance of God’s will, and the work brought about by God in this person.
Let us not imagine that Juanita was
born a saint. Like every human being, she had defects and limitations of which
she was aware. She had a strong character, a great sensitivity; she had
tantrums that at times she could not control; but none of this prevented her
from modeling her personality according to the rhythm of God’s demands. Neither
let us believe that her life was boring; on the contrary, she was a joyful
young person with many friends, given the leadership in her temperament. She
was very much into sports and enjoyed horseback riding, swimming, and tennis. She
played the piano and had a beautiful voice. She was admired by many young
people; but even though she accepted friendship, she never wanted to be
enamored of anyone because from her childhood, she was enamored of God. This
young woman whom we might call “modern” had nevertheless from her earliest
years begun to perceive special graces that God bestowed on her. In a letter to
Father Falgueras, she says: “From the age of seven, more or less, a great
devotion to my Mother, the Most Holy Virgin, was born in my soul. I told
her everything that happened to me, and she would speak to me …” (Letter
of April 24, 1919). From her tenth year and from the day of her first
Communion, it is Jesus himself to whom she speaks and whom she is allowed to
see. But Juanita didn’t see these things as exceptional, because she
believed that everyone experienced the same thing. It was only when she
told Mother Ríos, a religious of the Sacred Heart, about it that she was made
to see that she was dealing with extraordinary graces; and on that account, she
would have to be very generous in her response.
These mystical graces were building
up the personality of this youth, and the work of God in her was not made to
wait. She quickly began to struggle with her strong temperament—to make an
effort with her studies and to avoid any friction with her siblings and her
cousins. She was becoming gentler and was a sewer of peace."
-- Originally published in Spanish in Teresa de Jesús and reprinted in Carmelite Digest by Sr Helena Esquerra, ocd
** This is the only photo of St Teresa as a novice in the monastery.
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1 comment:
Thank You Sister for this posting on Santa Teresa de Jesus de Los Andes! I really enjoyed reading this account of her life from a different writer. I have several books about her. Her writings in my humble opinion are on the same level as those of Ste. Therese de Lisieux. I love both of them tho. Santa Teresa de Los Andes Ruega Por Nosostros! John K.
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