The Way of Perfection

The convent of St. Joseph at Avila having been inaugurated on August 24, 1562, and the storms occasioned by its foundation having sOlnewhat subsided, St. Teresa received perrnission, from the Provincial, Fray Angel de Salazar, to leave the Monastery of the Incarnation and join her new conununity; she crossed the threshold of that 'Paradise', as our Lord vouchsafed to call it, about Mid-Lent, 1563, never to leave the enclosure again-as she fervently hoped. She did not know then that God had destined her to more arduous work which would compel her to sally forth and establish convent after convent in distant parts of Spain. Her sojourn at St. Joseph's only lasted four and a half years, but, as she says, it was the happiest time of her life. The convent was small and poor, the observance as stria: as human nature, strengthened by grace, can bear, but she enjoyed to the full the peace which, after the many struggles graphically described in the Life, had at length been granted her. The visitor who has the privilege of penetrating into the hallowed enclosure will have to reconstruct in his mind the convent as it was in St. Teresa's time. The handsome church was not yet begun, and what is now called the primitive chapel was in reality built at a later period, though undoubtedly on the original lines. For even now it is only about twelve paces long and eight paces wide, and the sanctuary, the sacristy, and the nuns' choir are of diminutive proportions. The main building of the convent, in the shape of a quadrangle, is likewise a later addition: in the Saint's tinle a few old and small houses served for a convent, and the kitchen, the refectory, and other dependencies being on a lower level than the surrounding land, were both dark and damp. There were then no lay sisters to do the house-work. The few choir nuns took it in turns to see to the washing, the scrubbing, the service in the kitchen and scullery, and Teresa, who had been nominated Prioress by the Bishop, and retained that office until her death (employing a Vicaress during her prolonged absences), took her share, and more than her share, in the common work. Never was the convent so scrupulously clean as when it was her turn to do the scrubbing. Never was the food so tasty as when she did the kitchen, though she might have been seen in an ecstasy, saucepan in hand. The Divine Office was performed with a devotion and a refinement which were at once a source of edification for the faithful and a revelation to the clerics who came to assist at it.