ST. TERESA of Ávila, Spain was a sixteenth-century mystic whose writings are filled not just with highly challenging concepts but with wise practical advice. She founded cloistered convents where extreme poverty and discipline were the rule and counseled her sisters for the sake of their spiritual advancement and to maintain community life in harmony and peace.

St. Teresa emphatically warned against indulging health fears and the aches and pains of life. She said this was one of the most important messages she had to convey to those women under her instruction.

Her advice: Don’t talk about it (unless you are seriously ill, and even then patience was paramount). Keep your headaches and fatigue, muscle pains and sore throats, nausea and indigestion to your self.

“For this body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it.”

Needless to say, this inspiring woman who was herself sick for years, once so seriously that a grave was dug for her well before her death, and who is the patron saint of headache sufferers, would be disappointed by the world we live in.

“Unless we resolve to put up with death and ill-health once and for all, we shall never accomplish anything,” she said.

“Try not to fear these and commit yourselves wholly to God, come what may. What does it matter if we die? How many times have our bodies not mocked us? Should we not occasionally mock them in our turn? And, believe me, slight as it may seem by comparison with other things, this resolution is much more important than we may think; for, if we continually make it, day by day, by the grace of the Lord, we shall gain dominion over the body. To conquer such an enemy is a great achievement in the battle of life.”

St. Teresa, pray for us.

[Quotes from The Way of Perfection, Teresa of Ávila (Transl., E. Allison Peers), Doubleday, 1946.]

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