A DOUGHTY CHARMER

Today is the feast of St Teresa of Avila, that redoubtable organiser and absolute mystic -- an unusual combination at any time -- who died in the early hours of the first day of the Gregorian Calendar, October 15, 1582, which followed directly upon October 4. The most authentic portrait of her is the one above, a copy of a 1576 portrait, when she was 61. A solid Spanish face, quite different from what Kenneth Clark called the 'swooning beauty' in Bernini's virtuoso Ecstasy of St Teresa. She hauled St John of the Cross out of his monastery to help her found a Carmelite house for men, and herself founded seventeen convents. The Wikipedia article on her is crisply informative, but the short biography by Terry Matz in Catholic Online is more human and more charming. Readers of English poetry may remember Richard Crashaw's wonderfully strange poem in her honour. But the best way to get to know her is to read her masterpiece, The Interior Castle or the Mansions. To adapt what Victor Borge said about Mozart: 'When Teresa was my age, she had been dead for seven years. It makes you realise how little you've accomplished.'

After her death, a card was found in the pages of her breviary, on which she had written the prayer that has since become known as 'St Teresa's Bookmark':

Nada te turbe,

nada te espante;

todo se pasa,

Dios no se muda.

La pacientia todo lo alcanza.

Quien a Dios tiene nada la falta:

solo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing dismay you,

All things pass,

God never changes.

Patience attains all.

He who has God lacks nothing:

God alone suffices.