Man's Ways Are Not God's Ways
The next two foundations, in Toledo and Pastrana, were characterized by extreme difficulties resulting from the Spanish preoccupation at that time with social rank. St. Teresa, who came from the merchant class but bore the prestigious title of Doña (pronounced d-oh-nya), had to work with these people whom God often placed in her path as benefactors. Her own feelings about their sometimes mundane excesses were clearly stated in her writings: “I have always esteemed virtue more than lineage (Foundations 15:15).”
A Merchant’s Spiritual Hunger and Thirst: Toledo
A devout merchant named Martín Ramírez in the city of Toledo, just southeast of Avila in the center of Spain, hoped to arrange for a chapel to offer Masses and devotions after his death, for he was very sick. Fr. Pablo Hernández, a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) who had been a confessor of St. Teresa’s while in Malagón, wanted a foundation in the city of Toledo and so he wrote to her and told her of this man’s desires. After Martin’s death, his brother Alonzo Alvarez Ramírez took up the cause. St. Teresa left Valladolid at once, feeling it was God’s will to establish a foundation in Toledo. She brought with her two nuns from St. Joseph’s in Avila: Isabel of St. Pablo and Isabel of St. Dominic, who later became prioress at the foundation in Pastrana. They went to the home of St. Teresa’s friend Lady Louisa de la Cerda and were given a suite of rooms where they could maintain enclosure and recollection as in a monastery.
Though off to a good start, the project soon met with difficulties. At that time, certain rights and privileges over churches were enjoyed by the nobility. The governor of Toledo would not grant a license for the monastery because Martin Ramírez was not a member of the nobility. Neither would the administrator of the archdiocese, who was acting on behalf of the absent bishop, grant permission. On top of that, and perhaps because of these blockades, the nuns were not able to find a suitable house to rent. Alonzo Alvarez had put his son-in-law in charge of the matter; he demanded many conditions St. Teresa could not accept. Even Louise de la Cerda and another powerful friend named Pedro Manrique, a canon who later entered the Jesuits, could not prevail over the general opinion of the city council, the governor and the ecclesiastical administrator.
One day, St. Teresa decided to take the matter into her own hands. She went to Mass at the church that was next door to the governor’s house. After the Mass, she approached the governor and convinced him to grant the license.
With only three or four coins in her purse, St. Teresa bought two paintings for a chapel, two straw mattresses and a woolen blanket: but still no house. At this juncture, God sent a young man named Andrada to help them. He was no more than a youth, and a poor student, not appropriately dressed and inspiring contempt in some of the nuns. He told them that their mutual friend Martin of the Cross (Martín de la Cruz), a holy Franciscan friar, had asked him to help them. He promised to do all he could to find a house for them, although only the Saint believed that “his offer to help had a mystery to it (Foundations 15:7).” The other nuns laughed.
Sure enough, within two days the young man presented them with a very nice house where they stayed for almost a year. Another merchant friend named Alonzo de Avila provided the guarantee for the rent, since St. Teresa still had not reached an agreement with Alonzo Alvarez Ramirez, the brother of Martin Ramirez, the original sponsor. So after almost three months of searching by very wealthy people for a suitable house to rent, this poor man secured one in a few days. Perhaps St. Teresa told this story to illustrate her own profound conviction that those who are poor enjoy a greater freedom in carrying out God’s works.
The nuns went to the house with Andrada and only two mattresses, a blanket and two paintings for the chapel, arriving at nightfall. They borrowed what they needed for a Mass in the morning. However, there was no suitable room within the house for a chapel, so they had to carve a door through a wall into the little house next door, which they had also rented. Two women were sleeping in the house, and needless to say were quite alarmed at the intrusion. However, when they learned that the house would be a chapel, they were appeased. They rang their little bell and the first Mass was offered there the next morning, in St. Teresa’s words, “in order to take possession of the house (Foundations 15:9).”
However, that morning, as the news of the monastery spread through the city, the owner of the house where they had made the chapel, the wife of an entailed estate, was furious and appeased only when the nuns assured her they would probably buy the house. Likewise, when the city council heard that the monastery had been established despite their opposition, they complained to the canon Pedro Manrique, in the absence of the ecclesiastical administrator, and eventually the nuns received an excommunication so no Mass could be offered there until proper authorization had been proven with documents. St. Teresa asked Pedro Manrique to show them the documents. But “so much was said to the ecclesiastical administrator (Foundations 15:15)” about the lack of social status of the family of Martin Ramirez that in the end the administrator granted the license only on the condition that the monastery be founded without an income.
Still without income or alms, the three Sisters began living at the house and despite these difficulties were filled with joy. Their poverty was extreme. Even Lady Louise did not provide for them at this time, perhaps, as St. Teresa said, “because she wasn’t aware (Foundations 15:13).” St. Teresa was disturbed by the excessive conflict and, after the foundation was made and negotiations over the chapel were again taken up, she decided to give the patronage to the family of the good merchant Martin. However, another family of higher rank also wanted the patronage. At last God Himself spoke to her, telling her that “lineage and social status mattered not at all in the judgment of God (Foundations 15:16).” Feeling humbled, St. Teresa gave the patronage of the chapel to Alonzo Alvarez, brother of Martin Ramirez, who paid for the house they were then living in as a rent. She writes that she never regretted this decision.
It is worthwhile to note here St. Teresa’s comment about her work on the foundation in Toledo, which included “the little church, the grates, and other things (Foundations 17:1).” The use of the grate was to ensure the privacy and separation of the Sisters from the world. It was designed in such a way that even a small hand could not pass through. The document Verbi Sponsa, released by the Holy See in 1999 for enclosed nuns, maintains that: “The law of papal enclosure extends to the residence and to all areas, indoors and outdoors, reserved to the nuns. The means by which the monastery building itself, the choir, the parlours and all areas reserved to the nuns are separated from the outside must be physical and effective, not just symbolic or “neutral.” These means are to be defined in the Constitutions and supplementary legislative documents, with due regard both for the places themselves and for the different traditions of individual Institutes and monasteries. The participation of the faithful in the liturgy is not a reason for the nuns to leave the enclosure nor for the faithful to enter the nuns’ choir. Guests cannot be allowed to enter the monastery enclosure (Verbi Sponsa, Instruction on the Contemplative Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns, 14:2, May 13th, 1999).”
From Princess to Nun: The Foundation in Pastrana
By now, most people in Spain had heard of the great Saint and her work of foundations. More and more people, rich and poor, wanted to help, sometimes for the wrong reasons. The princess of Eboli, Doña Ana de Mendoza, was related to Louisa de la Cerda. She was married to Prince Ruy Gómez de Silva, a Portuguese by birth who had been raised with “the Catholic King” Philip II, and remained friends. While still in Toledo, St. Teresa was summoned at the orders of the princess who wanted Teresa to establish a foundation in her town of Pastrana. The year was 1569. At first, St. Teresa resisted – perhaps, unlike the other foundations, she did not feel God’s blessing upon this particular project. She went before the Blessed Sacrament to pray. Jesus spoke to her, and told her to go: “that I was going for more than that foundation, and that I was to bring the Rule and Constitutions (Foundations 17:3).” She felt it was important to work with the prince, who was a friend of the King, for the sake of the friar’s foundations. Ironically, although the nuns’ foundation in Pastrana failed, a foundation for friars was established there.
St. Teresa and her two companion nuns traveled by way of Madrid, where they stayed in a monastery of Franciscan nuns whose founder, Doña Leonor Mascareñas, had befriended Teresa and wanted her to meet a hermit named Mariano de San Benito who was lodging there, along with another man named Juan de la Miseria (John of the Passion), an artist who later painted a famous portrait of the Saint. Leonor rightly saw that the way of life of these hermits was similar to the primitive Rule of the Carmelites. As for St. Teresa, she writes that since she had only two friars at that time, she hoped to gain more.
Mariano was an Italian doctor, “very intelligent and talented (Foundations 17:7).” He was on his way to Rome to defend the eremitical life he had been living for eight years in a desert near Seville with some other men. St. Teresa showed him the primitive Rule of St. Albert for Carmelites, and convinced him to join the Order. Providentially, Mariano had been given a place in Pastrana by Ruy Gomez for a hermitage. He promised to accept this gift for a new foundation for friars.
During her three-month stay in Pastrana, St. Teresa endured many trials because the princess took it upon herself to design the new monastery, and many things were wrong. Although she wanted to leave, Teresa stayed for the sake of the new foundation for friars, which the prince and princess agreed to accept. It is interesting to note here that St. Teresa must have been quite a good seamstress, for she writes that she made habits and mantles for the friars while waiting for them to arrive. She wrote to Fr. Anthony of Jesus, the superior at Mancera (the first foundation for friars, transferred from Duruelo in 1570). In the meantime, she traveled back to Medina to get more nuns, and there met a friar named Balthazar of Jesus who wanted to join the new monastery. Acting as superior there, he gave the habit to Mariano and Juan, who at the time insisted on being simple lay brothers, although later Mariano was ordained. After Fr. Anthony came, more men joined the foundation and it flourished.
The princess favored the new monasteries, and treated the nuns well until the death of her husband in 1573. Stricken with grief, she insisted on joining the monastery as a nun. Here again St. Teresa mentions the nuns’ observance of the rule of enclosure, which was displeasing to the princess: “With the afflictions she was experiencing, the practices of enclosure to which she was not accustomed could only displease her, and because of the holy Council the prioress could not give the liberties the princess wanted (Foundations 18:16).” Certain decrees of the Council of Trent regarding the enclosure of nuns were at that time being introduced into Spain.
The princess grew to dislike the prioress and all of the nuns. She discarded the habit, and lived in her own house with her servant. The nuns served the princess well, but the disturbance was so great that St. Teresa resolved to abandon the foundation. Much to the sadness of the townspeople, the nuns left Pastrana for Segovia, leaving behind all the princess had given them with the exception of some nuns whom she had ordered them to accept.
Garrets, Students and Leaking Roofs: Salamanca
“Certainly I am very often consoled in the choir when I see these very pure souls praising God, for one cannot help but recognize their holiness in many things, seeing their obedience, the joy so much enclosure and solitude give them, and their happiness when some opportunities for mortification come along (Foundations 18:5).”
The rector of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in Salamanca, Fr. Martín Gutiérez, wrote to Saint Teresa about his hope for a foundation in Salamanca. It was a poor city, with a university, so she was reluctant at first, but then reflecting on how God had provided for foundations in other poor areas, she wrote to a Lady she knew there and secured a house to rent. Taking with her only one other nun (Maria of the Sacrament, who was older than St. Teresa), the two arrived on the vigil of All Saints. St. Teresa immediately inquired as to whether the house was vacated, because the students had not yet left the city. A friend named Nicholas Gutierez helped get the students who were still in the house to leave, and so the nuns were able to enter by nightfall. The house was very large and a mess had been left behind by the angry students.
As the foundations progressed, St. Teresa, having learned from experience, tried to do everything as quietly as possible. Many of the foundations, including Salamanca, were accomplished during the protective darkness of night, with a Mass in the morning, and she traveled with as few nuns as possible, so as not to attract curiosity.
The house in Salamanca was very large with many garrets, and the nun who accompanied her was frightened that some of the students, who had left in anger, may be hiding there. So they locked themselves in one room with two borrowed blankets and some straw for beds. St. Teresa writes that, even after they had retired for sleep in a locked room, her companion kept looking around nervously for angry students. St. Teresa asked her why she was looking around so much, since they were in a locked room. She answered, “Mother, I was wondering what would happen if I were to die now; what would you do here all alone (Foundations 19:5)?” It was the vigil of All Souls, and the bells of the city were tolling. Even the Saint began to feel disturbed at the thought of keeping vigil with a dead body. But she recognized it as a temptation, and answered, “Sister, when this happens, I’ll think about what to do. Now, let me sleep (Foundations 19:5).”
The house in Salamanca was in need of repair, and was cold and damp. Perhaps for that reason the Blessed Sacrament was not reserved there. The Sisters bore all with great joy. They stayed there for three years. However, a superior (the apostolic visitator, Pedro Fernandez, who had ordered St. Teresa to return to her former monastery of the Incarnation in Avila to serve as prioress) saw the great need of the nuns, he ordered St. Teresa to return. A gentleman in the town was willing to sell them a different house. Taking Fr. Julian of Avila with her, they looked at the house and decided to move on the feast of St. Michael, when their former lease would expire and other renters were moving in.
Many people had heard that the Blessed Sacrament would be reserved in the new house, and that a sermon would be preached there; but it was raining hard on the feast of St. Michael. Although the chapel had been whitewashed, the roof had not been repaired, and the rain came in. St. Teresa began to feel very afflicted, but once again a layman, Nicholas Gutierrez, who had helped them from the beginning, assured her that God would help. When the people began to arrive, the sun began to shine, there was music and great solemnity, and all were consoled.
Their trials were not yet over. Perhaps in his envy of the Blessed Sacrament, the devil stirred up the owner of the house. He was furious, and wanted the money for the house immediately in order to provide for two daughters. St. Teresa writes that as of the writing of the account three years later, the house still had not been purchased. In fact, the nuns moved out of that house after the death of the Saint in 1582.
An insight is gained into the general conditions of the reformers by St. Teresa’s own words regarding this foundation. She writes that the trials endured in Salamanca were very great, but the nuns remained peaceful and sacrificial, often thanking God that they were living in a house they could be thrown out of. “It has happened to us at times in these foundations that we were in a house we didn’t own, and the truth is that I never saw a nun distressed about that. May it please His Majesty that through His infinite goodness and mercy we will never be in want of the eternal dwelling places, amen, amen (Foundations 19:12).”
A Merchant’s Spiritual Hunger and Thirst: Toledo
A devout merchant named Martín Ramírez in the city of Toledo, just southeast of Avila in the center of Spain, hoped to arrange for a chapel to offer Masses and devotions after his death, for he was very sick. Fr. Pablo Hernández, a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) who had been a confessor of St. Teresa’s while in Malagón, wanted a foundation in the city of Toledo and so he wrote to her and told her of this man’s desires. After Martin’s death, his brother Alonzo Alvarez Ramírez took up the cause. St. Teresa left Valladolid at once, feeling it was God’s will to establish a foundation in Toledo. She brought with her two nuns from St. Joseph’s in Avila: Isabel of St. Pablo and Isabel of St. Dominic, who later became prioress at the foundation in Pastrana. They went to the home of St. Teresa’s friend Lady Louisa de la Cerda and were given a suite of rooms where they could maintain enclosure and recollection as in a monastery.
Though off to a good start, the project soon met with difficulties. At that time, certain rights and privileges over churches were enjoyed by the nobility. The governor of Toledo would not grant a license for the monastery because Martin Ramírez was not a member of the nobility. Neither would the administrator of the archdiocese, who was acting on behalf of the absent bishop, grant permission. On top of that, and perhaps because of these blockades, the nuns were not able to find a suitable house to rent. Alonzo Alvarez had put his son-in-law in charge of the matter; he demanded many conditions St. Teresa could not accept. Even Louise de la Cerda and another powerful friend named Pedro Manrique, a canon who later entered the Jesuits, could not prevail over the general opinion of the city council, the governor and the ecclesiastical administrator.
One day, St. Teresa decided to take the matter into her own hands. She went to Mass at the church that was next door to the governor’s house. After the Mass, she approached the governor and convinced him to grant the license.
With only three or four coins in her purse, St. Teresa bought two paintings for a chapel, two straw mattresses and a woolen blanket: but still no house. At this juncture, God sent a young man named Andrada to help them. He was no more than a youth, and a poor student, not appropriately dressed and inspiring contempt in some of the nuns. He told them that their mutual friend Martin of the Cross (Martín de la Cruz), a holy Franciscan friar, had asked him to help them. He promised to do all he could to find a house for them, although only the Saint believed that “his offer to help had a mystery to it (Foundations 15:7).” The other nuns laughed.
Sure enough, within two days the young man presented them with a very nice house where they stayed for almost a year. Another merchant friend named Alonzo de Avila provided the guarantee for the rent, since St. Teresa still had not reached an agreement with Alonzo Alvarez Ramirez, the brother of Martin Ramirez, the original sponsor. So after almost three months of searching by very wealthy people for a suitable house to rent, this poor man secured one in a few days. Perhaps St. Teresa told this story to illustrate her own profound conviction that those who are poor enjoy a greater freedom in carrying out God’s works.
The nuns went to the house with Andrada and only two mattresses, a blanket and two paintings for the chapel, arriving at nightfall. They borrowed what they needed for a Mass in the morning. However, there was no suitable room within the house for a chapel, so they had to carve a door through a wall into the little house next door, which they had also rented. Two women were sleeping in the house, and needless to say were quite alarmed at the intrusion. However, when they learned that the house would be a chapel, they were appeased. They rang their little bell and the first Mass was offered there the next morning, in St. Teresa’s words, “in order to take possession of the house (Foundations 15:9).”
However, that morning, as the news of the monastery spread through the city, the owner of the house where they had made the chapel, the wife of an entailed estate, was furious and appeased only when the nuns assured her they would probably buy the house. Likewise, when the city council heard that the monastery had been established despite their opposition, they complained to the canon Pedro Manrique, in the absence of the ecclesiastical administrator, and eventually the nuns received an excommunication so no Mass could be offered there until proper authorization had been proven with documents. St. Teresa asked Pedro Manrique to show them the documents. But “so much was said to the ecclesiastical administrator (Foundations 15:15)” about the lack of social status of the family of Martin Ramirez that in the end the administrator granted the license only on the condition that the monastery be founded without an income.
Still without income or alms, the three Sisters began living at the house and despite these difficulties were filled with joy. Their poverty was extreme. Even Lady Louise did not provide for them at this time, perhaps, as St. Teresa said, “because she wasn’t aware (Foundations 15:13).” St. Teresa was disturbed by the excessive conflict and, after the foundation was made and negotiations over the chapel were again taken up, she decided to give the patronage to the family of the good merchant Martin. However, another family of higher rank also wanted the patronage. At last God Himself spoke to her, telling her that “lineage and social status mattered not at all in the judgment of God (Foundations 15:16).” Feeling humbled, St. Teresa gave the patronage of the chapel to Alonzo Alvarez, brother of Martin Ramirez, who paid for the house they were then living in as a rent. She writes that she never regretted this decision.
It is worthwhile to note here St. Teresa’s comment about her work on the foundation in Toledo, which included “the little church, the grates, and other things (Foundations 17:1).” The use of the grate was to ensure the privacy and separation of the Sisters from the world. It was designed in such a way that even a small hand could not pass through. The document Verbi Sponsa, released by the Holy See in 1999 for enclosed nuns, maintains that: “The law of papal enclosure extends to the residence and to all areas, indoors and outdoors, reserved to the nuns. The means by which the monastery building itself, the choir, the parlours and all areas reserved to the nuns are separated from the outside must be physical and effective, not just symbolic or “neutral.” These means are to be defined in the Constitutions and supplementary legislative documents, with due regard both for the places themselves and for the different traditions of individual Institutes and monasteries. The participation of the faithful in the liturgy is not a reason for the nuns to leave the enclosure nor for the faithful to enter the nuns’ choir. Guests cannot be allowed to enter the monastery enclosure (Verbi Sponsa, Instruction on the Contemplative Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns, 14:2, May 13th, 1999).”
From Princess to Nun: The Foundation in Pastrana
By now, most people in Spain had heard of the great Saint and her work of foundations. More and more people, rich and poor, wanted to help, sometimes for the wrong reasons. The princess of Eboli, Doña Ana de Mendoza, was related to Louisa de la Cerda. She was married to Prince Ruy Gómez de Silva, a Portuguese by birth who had been raised with “the Catholic King” Philip II, and remained friends. While still in Toledo, St. Teresa was summoned at the orders of the princess who wanted Teresa to establish a foundation in her town of Pastrana. The year was 1569. At first, St. Teresa resisted – perhaps, unlike the other foundations, she did not feel God’s blessing upon this particular project. She went before the Blessed Sacrament to pray. Jesus spoke to her, and told her to go: “that I was going for more than that foundation, and that I was to bring the Rule and Constitutions (Foundations 17:3).” She felt it was important to work with the prince, who was a friend of the King, for the sake of the friar’s foundations. Ironically, although the nuns’ foundation in Pastrana failed, a foundation for friars was established there.
St. Teresa and her two companion nuns traveled by way of Madrid, where they stayed in a monastery of Franciscan nuns whose founder, Doña Leonor Mascareñas, had befriended Teresa and wanted her to meet a hermit named Mariano de San Benito who was lodging there, along with another man named Juan de la Miseria (John of the Passion), an artist who later painted a famous portrait of the Saint. Leonor rightly saw that the way of life of these hermits was similar to the primitive Rule of the Carmelites. As for St. Teresa, she writes that since she had only two friars at that time, she hoped to gain more.
Mariano was an Italian doctor, “very intelligent and talented (Foundations 17:7).” He was on his way to Rome to defend the eremitical life he had been living for eight years in a desert near Seville with some other men. St. Teresa showed him the primitive Rule of St. Albert for Carmelites, and convinced him to join the Order. Providentially, Mariano had been given a place in Pastrana by Ruy Gomez for a hermitage. He promised to accept this gift for a new foundation for friars.
During her three-month stay in Pastrana, St. Teresa endured many trials because the princess took it upon herself to design the new monastery, and many things were wrong. Although she wanted to leave, Teresa stayed for the sake of the new foundation for friars, which the prince and princess agreed to accept. It is interesting to note here that St. Teresa must have been quite a good seamstress, for she writes that she made habits and mantles for the friars while waiting for them to arrive. She wrote to Fr. Anthony of Jesus, the superior at Mancera (the first foundation for friars, transferred from Duruelo in 1570). In the meantime, she traveled back to Medina to get more nuns, and there met a friar named Balthazar of Jesus who wanted to join the new monastery. Acting as superior there, he gave the habit to Mariano and Juan, who at the time insisted on being simple lay brothers, although later Mariano was ordained. After Fr. Anthony came, more men joined the foundation and it flourished.
The princess favored the new monasteries, and treated the nuns well until the death of her husband in 1573. Stricken with grief, she insisted on joining the monastery as a nun. Here again St. Teresa mentions the nuns’ observance of the rule of enclosure, which was displeasing to the princess: “With the afflictions she was experiencing, the practices of enclosure to which she was not accustomed could only displease her, and because of the holy Council the prioress could not give the liberties the princess wanted (Foundations 18:16).” Certain decrees of the Council of Trent regarding the enclosure of nuns were at that time being introduced into Spain.
The princess grew to dislike the prioress and all of the nuns. She discarded the habit, and lived in her own house with her servant. The nuns served the princess well, but the disturbance was so great that St. Teresa resolved to abandon the foundation. Much to the sadness of the townspeople, the nuns left Pastrana for Segovia, leaving behind all the princess had given them with the exception of some nuns whom she had ordered them to accept.
Garrets, Students and Leaking Roofs: Salamanca
“Certainly I am very often consoled in the choir when I see these very pure souls praising God, for one cannot help but recognize their holiness in many things, seeing their obedience, the joy so much enclosure and solitude give them, and their happiness when some opportunities for mortification come along (Foundations 18:5).”
The rector of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in Salamanca, Fr. Martín Gutiérez, wrote to Saint Teresa about his hope for a foundation in Salamanca. It was a poor city, with a university, so she was reluctant at first, but then reflecting on how God had provided for foundations in other poor areas, she wrote to a Lady she knew there and secured a house to rent. Taking with her only one other nun (Maria of the Sacrament, who was older than St. Teresa), the two arrived on the vigil of All Saints. St. Teresa immediately inquired as to whether the house was vacated, because the students had not yet left the city. A friend named Nicholas Gutierez helped get the students who were still in the house to leave, and so the nuns were able to enter by nightfall. The house was very large and a mess had been left behind by the angry students.
As the foundations progressed, St. Teresa, having learned from experience, tried to do everything as quietly as possible. Many of the foundations, including Salamanca, were accomplished during the protective darkness of night, with a Mass in the morning, and she traveled with as few nuns as possible, so as not to attract curiosity.
The house in Salamanca was very large with many garrets, and the nun who accompanied her was frightened that some of the students, who had left in anger, may be hiding there. So they locked themselves in one room with two borrowed blankets and some straw for beds. St. Teresa writes that, even after they had retired for sleep in a locked room, her companion kept looking around nervously for angry students. St. Teresa asked her why she was looking around so much, since they were in a locked room. She answered, “Mother, I was wondering what would happen if I were to die now; what would you do here all alone (Foundations 19:5)?” It was the vigil of All Souls, and the bells of the city were tolling. Even the Saint began to feel disturbed at the thought of keeping vigil with a dead body. But she recognized it as a temptation, and answered, “Sister, when this happens, I’ll think about what to do. Now, let me sleep (Foundations 19:5).”
The house in Salamanca was in need of repair, and was cold and damp. Perhaps for that reason the Blessed Sacrament was not reserved there. The Sisters bore all with great joy. They stayed there for three years. However, a superior (the apostolic visitator, Pedro Fernandez, who had ordered St. Teresa to return to her former monastery of the Incarnation in Avila to serve as prioress) saw the great need of the nuns, he ordered St. Teresa to return. A gentleman in the town was willing to sell them a different house. Taking Fr. Julian of Avila with her, they looked at the house and decided to move on the feast of St. Michael, when their former lease would expire and other renters were moving in.
Many people had heard that the Blessed Sacrament would be reserved in the new house, and that a sermon would be preached there; but it was raining hard on the feast of St. Michael. Although the chapel had been whitewashed, the roof had not been repaired, and the rain came in. St. Teresa began to feel very afflicted, but once again a layman, Nicholas Gutierrez, who had helped them from the beginning, assured her that God would help. When the people began to arrive, the sun began to shine, there was music and great solemnity, and all were consoled.
Their trials were not yet over. Perhaps in his envy of the Blessed Sacrament, the devil stirred up the owner of the house. He was furious, and wanted the money for the house immediately in order to provide for two daughters. St. Teresa writes that as of the writing of the account three years later, the house still had not been purchased. In fact, the nuns moved out of that house after the death of the Saint in 1582.
An insight is gained into the general conditions of the reformers by St. Teresa’s own words regarding this foundation. She writes that the trials endured in Salamanca were very great, but the nuns remained peaceful and sacrificial, often thanking God that they were living in a house they could be thrown out of. “It has happened to us at times in these foundations that we were in a house we didn’t own, and the truth is that I never saw a nun distressed about that. May it please His Majesty that through His infinite goodness and mercy we will never be in want of the eternal dwelling places, amen, amen (Foundations 19:12).”