The Death of a Beloved Saint: Teresa of Avila's Final Journey by Jeff Callaway

 

The Death of a Beloved Saint: Teresa of Avila's Final Journey

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

The old woman was dying, and she knew it. At sixty-seven years old, Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada had worn her body down to nothing more than raw will wrapped in tired flesh. Her feet carried her across Spain one last time that late summer of 1582, though by rights those feet should have been propped up in some quiet corner, resting after a lifetime of walking dusty roads in sandals that barely held together. But Teresa was not one for quiet corners, not until Jesus Himself called her home.

And call her home He would, but not before asking one more impossible thing from His faithful daughter.

The Road From Burgos

Teresa had established her final convent at Burgos in April 1582, her seventeenth foundation of Discalced Carmelite nuns. She was exhausted beyond anything most of us could fathom. The woman had spent the last twenty years of her life crisscrossing Spain, establishing reformed Carmelite convents when everyone told her it could not be done. She did it anyway, because obedience to God meant more to her than rest, more than comfort, more than her own crumbling health.

On July 26, 1582, she left Burgos for Avila, longing to return to her spiritual home at the Convent of Saint Joseph where her reforma had begun. She traveled with Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew, the young lay sister who had become her constant companion, nurse, and secretary, and her niece Teresita. The journey should have been straightforward, but nothing in Teresa's life ever was.

At Medina, Antonio de Jesus, the acting vicar provincial, met them with news: Teresa must detour to Alba de Tormes because the Duchess of Alba wanted to see her, and because there was trouble at the convent there requiring the prioress election to be supervised.

Teresa's heart sank. Still weak from her lingering illness, longing to get back to Avila, she fell into a deep sadness. Anne of St. Bartholomew watched the transformation in her beloved madre and never forgot it. This was obedience at its most brutal, most honest. The Duchess wanted her, the vicar provincial ordered her, and so Teresa would go, even though every bone in her body screamed for rest.

Later, in a moment of characteristic bluntness, Teresa would say something that echoed through the convent walls: "God forgive the Duchess, but she has killed me." Not bitter, just honest. The kind of honest only saints can manage when death is breathing down their necks.

Blessed Anne wrote that "from Burgos to Alba the route was one chain of sufferings for the saint." Every jolt of the cart sent pain shooting through Teresa's frail body. The roads were rough, the weather unforgiving, and Teresa's strength was measured not in miles but in prayers. Yet she pressed on, because that is what she had always done.

Alba de Tormes: The Final Stop

On September 20, 1582, they arrived at Alba de Tormes. Teresa could barely walk. The woman who had once hiked across mountains to establish convents in places that did not want them now struggled to climb a single step. Her body was giving up, surrendering to decades of illness, exhaustion, and unrelenting work for the glory of God.

The convent at Alba de Tormes was in disarray. In a previous letter dated August 6, Teresa had bluntly stated her displeasure over the conduct of some of the nuns, worrying that no prioress would want to stay there very long since so many were trying to get out of the office. She wrote with the sharp tongue only a mother superior who truly loves her daughters can wield, pointing out that if the nuns were what they ought to be, what would it matter who the prioress was?

But now, barely able to speak or move, Teresa had little energy left for correction. The work of reforming this house would have to wait, because Teresa's own final reform was beginning, the purification that happens when the soul prepares to meet its Maker.

The Medical Reality Behind the Mystical Death

We need to talk straight about what was killing her. Medical historians believe Teresa suffered from uterine cancer, though the sixteenth century did not have that vocabulary. What they knew was that she bled, she hurt, and she was dying from something deep in her abdomen that no physician could fix.

Recent examinations of Teresa's remains revealed calcareous thorns in her foot that would have made walking almost impossible. Yet she walked to Alba de Tormes. The woman should not have been able to stand, let alone travel across Spain, yet there she was, still moving because obedience demanded it.

This was not some delicate spiritual swooning. Teresa was tough as mesquite bark and twice as stubborn. She had survived paralysis in her youth, spent three years unable to move her legs, fought her way back to health through sheer willpower and prayer. She had endured fevers, convulsions, dizzy spells that dropped her to the ground, and chronic stomach pains that would have laid a lesser person flat. Despite her health difficulties, her dedication to the church and its mission was unwavering.

But now, at sixty-seven, her body had no more fight left. The spirit was willing, blazing even, but the flesh had reached its limit.

The Mystical Heart That Bears Witness

Here is where things get strange and beautiful in that way only God can manage. Years before, around 1560, Teresa had experienced what the Church calls the Transverberation, the piercing of her heart by divine love. She described it in her autobiography with words that make your chest ache:

She saw an angel close by her, on her left side, in bodily form. In the angel's hand was a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to be thrusting it at times into her heart and to pierce her very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave her all on fire with a great love of God.

This was not metaphor. When Teresa's body was exhumed in 1582, her body was found to be incorrupt with no evidence of decay. At one point her heart was removed from her body, and people were astonished to see an actual wound from the angel's spear. The physical reality matched the mystical experience. Visible to the naked eye is a puncture wound in her heart, evidence of a rare mystical grace called the transverberation.

That heart, marked by the fire of God's love, was still beating in Teresa's chest as she lay dying in Alba de Tormes. The woman who had been wounded by divine love was about to be fully consumed by it.

The Final Days and Hours

Within days of arriving at Alba de Tormes, Teresa knew her time had come. She told her sisters, "My daughters and ladies, the time has come." No drama, no fanfare. Just the plain truth spoken by a woman who had never been afraid to tell it like it was.

She asked for the sacraments. Father Antony Heredia came and heard her confession, a confession that must have been brief because Teresa had spent her entire life examining her conscience with ruthless honesty. Then he gave her the Anointing of the Sick, what they called Extreme Unction in those days, the final blessing of the Church for those about to cross over.

Father Antony asked where she would like to be buried, to which she replied, "Would they deny me a little ground for my body here?" Even facing death, Teresa kept her humility and her sense of humor. She was not picky about where they planted her bones.

The pain was severe now. Teresa could barely speak, could barely move. But Anne of St. Bartholomew never left her side. On the day of her death she was unable to speak from early morning; in the evening, Father Anthony asked Anne to go take some nourishment. But scarcely had Anne left than the Saint became restless; with an anxious air she looked from one side to the other.

The Father asked her if she wished Anne near her. She answered yes, by signs. They called Anne back. As soon as Teresa saw her, she smiled, showed such condescension and affection that she caught Anne with her two hands and rested her head in her arms.

This is the image that breaks my heart: the great reformer, the mystic, the Doctor of the Church, resting her head in the arms of a simple lay sister who loved her. No titles, no formality, just two daughters of God holding onto each other at the end.

The Last Words of a Warrior Saint

Teresa's final words have been preserved, passed down through the sisters who witnessed them. "My Lord, it is time to move on. Well then, may your will be done. O my Lord and my Spouse, the hour that I have longed for has come. It is time to meet one another."

And then, in true Teresa fashion, she made one more declaration, one more act of pure defiance against any devil that might try to claim she was anything less than what she was: "I am a daughter of the Church."

Those words were not an afterthought. They were a battle cry, a final stand, a declaration of loyalty that echoed everything Teresa had ever fought for. She was a daughter of the Church, had been since the day she snuck out of her father's house at twenty to enter Carmel. She was a daughter of the Church through every reform, every persecution, every moment when men tried to tell her to sit down and be quiet. And she would die a daughter of the Church, faithful to the end.

Shortly before Teresa's death, Ana de San Bartolome saw Our Lord at the foot of Teresa's bed in majesty and splendor, attended by myriad angels, and at the head, The Ten Thousand Martyrs who had promised Teresa, in a rapture experienced years before, to come for her in the moment of death.

Anne prayed to Jesus: "My Lord, even should Your Majesty wish to leave her for my consolation, I would ask you, now that I have witnessed your glory, not to leave her one moment in this exile." Scarcely had she uttered these words than Teresa expired, and this blessed soul soared like a dove to enjoy the possession of her God.

When she sighed her last breath, one of the sisters saw something like a white dove pass from her mouth.

Teresa died at 9:00 in the evening on the 4th of October in the year 1582 in the Carmel of Alba de Tormes. She died in the arms of the woman who had cared for her, loved her, and followed her to the ends of Spain.

The Calendar That Ate Ten Days

Now here is where things get truly strange, the kind of strange that only happens when God has a sense of humor about bureaucracy. Pope Gregory XIII had reformed the calendar earlier that year to correct errors that had accumulated over centuries. According to his plan, October 4, 1582, was to be followed by October 15, 1582.

Ten days were dropped from the calendar to bring the vernal equinox from March 11 back to March 21. The church had chosen October to avoid skipping any major Christian festivals. In countries that adopted the new calendar, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4, 1582, was directly followed by October 15.

Teresa went to bed on the night of October 4. When she died, it was technically the morning of October 15. October 5 through 14, 1582 simply never existed in Catholic Europe.

Think about that. The woman who had spent her entire life trying to align the Church with the will of God died on the very week that the Church was realigning its calendar with the movement of the sun. Even in death, Teresa was caught up in the great work of reform.

Her feast day is celebrated on October 15, the day the new calendar recognized as the day after her death, even though she technically died on what would have been October 5 in the old reckoning. Only Teresa could manage to die on a date that did not exist.

The Body That Would Not Decay

Teresa was buried at the Convento de la Anunciación in Alba de Tormes. Nine months after her death the coffin was opened and her body was found to be intact but the clothing had rotted.

Let that sink in. The linen and wool that had covered her body had crumbled to dust, but Teresa's flesh was fresh as the day she died. Despite all her illness, which she endured her entire life, the body of St. Teresa remains as white and smooth as alabaster, like that of a three year old child. All the wrinkles that had gathered since her illness have vanished.

A sweet smell which nobody could describe or identify came from the body and everything that had touched it, towels, garments, even Teresa's fingerprints on a plate. It became so overpowering in the cell where she died that the windows had to be opened to prevent headaches and fainting.

This was not mummification. No special effort was made to preserve her body at the time of her death. This was something else, something that defies natural explanation, something that makes scientists scratch their heads and believers fall to their knees.

The Battle Over Her Bones

Before the body was re-interred one of her hands was cut off, wrapped in a scarf and sent to Ávila. This was not grave robbery. This was how the Church honored its saints in those days, by distributing relics so the faithful in many places could venerate them.

But things got complicated, because everybody wanted a piece of Teresa. Gracián cut the little finger off the hand and, according to his own account, kept it with him until he was captured by Barbary corsairs when sailing from Messina to Rome, from whom he had to redeem it with a few rings and 20 reales.

Imagine that: a Christian priest held captive by North African pirates, ransoming a saint's finger with pocket change and jewelry. The sixteenth century was wild.

The body was exhumed again on 25 November 1585 to be moved to Ávila and found to be incorrupt. An arm was removed and left in Alba de Tormes at the nuns' request, to compensate for losing the main relic of Teresa, but the rest of the body was reburied in the Discalced Carmelite chapter house in Ávila.

The removal was done without the approval of the Duke of Alba de Tormes and he brought the body back in 1586, with Pope Sixtus V ordering that it remain in Alba de Tormes on pain of excommunication.

The nuns in Alba refused to release her body back to Ávila. Ávila insisted the foundress belonged with them. It became a polite but heated ecclesial custody dispute, the kind that required Rome to step in and lay down the law. Eventually Teresa's body was returned to Alba de Tormes, where it remains to this day.

Teresa's heart, hands, right foot, right arm, left eye and part of her jaw are on display in various sites around the world. This would be macabre if it were anyone else, but for a saint, it is an honor. It means Teresa is everywhere, still teaching, still interceding, still loving God's people from beyond the grave.

The Heart That Tells No Lies

Preserved and displayed in a stunning reliquary in the Church's museum in Alba de Tormes is Teresa's incorrupt heart. And on that heart, clear as day, visible to the naked eye is a puncture wound.

The heart is of a brown-greyish color, of full natural length, but rather shrunk in width. The chief wound distinctly visible is horizontal, about an inch and a half in length; it looks as if it had been inflicted with a knife, but formerly distinct traces of burning could be seen.

This is not legend. This is not pious imagination. This is documented, examined, verified reality. Teresa said an angel pierced her heart with a flaming dart of divine love. The physical evidence says she was telling the truth.

In August 2024, the tomb of St. Teresa of Ávila was opened for the first time in 110 years. Father Marco Chiesa of the Carmelite Monastery of Alba de Tormes announced that her body was still incorrupt, in the same condition as when it was last opened in 1914.

Four hundred and forty-two years after her death, Teresa's body has not decayed. Medical experts, scientists, skeptics have all examined the evidence. No one can explain it naturally. This is remarkable, given that no special effort was made to preserve her body at the time of her death.

The Legacy of a Woman Who Would Not Quit

Teresa was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, the feast being fixed on 15 October. Forty years after her death, the Church officially recognized what everyone already knew: Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was a saint.

But the honors did not stop there. In 1970, Pope Paul VI declared Teresa a Doctor of the Church, the first woman ever to receive that title. Think about that. A woman who had to fight for permission to do anything, who had to endure men telling her to be quiet and obey, was eventually recognized as a teacher of the universal Church. God has a sense of justice that makes humans look petty.

Teresa left behind writings that are still read today: The Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, her autobiography. She left behind seventeen reformed Carmelite convents and monasteries that continue her mission. She left behind an example of what it means to be faithful when faithfulness costs you everything.

But more than that, she left behind a body that will not decay and a heart that bears the wound of divine love. These are not metaphors. These are physical realities that testify to the truth of everything Teresa taught: that God is real, that He loves us with a love that wounds and heals, and that a life given entirely to Him is a life that death cannot fully touch.

What Her Death Teaches Us

Teresa's death fits her whole life: obedient to the end, humorous in the face of hardship, deeply united to Christ, utterly loyal to the Church, humble even when exhausted beyond reason. She died the way she lived, tired, holy, obedient, and honest.

She did not die in some peaceful monastery surrounded by flowers and soft music. She died on the road, doing one more thing she did not want to do because obedience demanded it. She died in pain, worn out from years of service, her body broken but her spirit blazing.

And yet she died happy. Her last words were not complaints but a love song to the Spouse she had served her entire life. She died knowing exactly where she was going and Who was waiting for her there.

This is what holiness looks like in real life. Not perfect, not easy, not comfortable. Just faithful. Faithful when it hurts, faithful when it makes no sense, faithful when you are so tired you can barely stand but you stand anyway because Jesus asked you to.

Teresa died on a night that technically did not exist, in the arms of a woman who loved her, with the name of Jesus on her lips and the mark of His love in her heart. She died a daughter of the Church, and she died free.

And four hundred and forty-two years later, her body lies incorrupt in Alba de Tormes, testimony to the truth she lived and died proclaiming: that God is faithful, that holiness is possible, and that love is stronger than death.

May we all die half as well as Teresa did. May we all live half as faithfully. And may we all, in our final moments, be able to say with her: "My Lord, it is time to move on. The hour I have longed for has come."

She was a daughter of the Church. So are we. May we follow where she led.

~ Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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