St. Teresa of Avila's writings describe how she faced years of illness

St. Teresa of Jesus, the 16th-century Carmelite from Avila in central Spain, fell so seriously ill that she lay unconscious for almost four days. She then spent more than eight months in extreme weakness and took close to three years to walk normally again. She wrote about how she lived through it, what helped her bear it and, years later, left specific instructions on how the sick were to be treated in her convents.

Her words set out several points for facing illness as a Christian without treating suffering as good in itself and without confusing trust in God with refusing care. Teresa does not hide how hard those months were: she reached a point where she could move "neither arm, nor foot, nor hand, nor head," and two people had to use a sheet to change her position.

Not denying the pain or pretending to be strong

Teresa does not dress up her suffering in pious language. When she writes about her illness she uses extremely harsh language. She describes constant pain, fever, great weakness and a physical state that her doctors came to regard as hopeless. After the four days unconscious, she says that only God could know the "unbearable torments" she felt.

Even once some of her sharpest sufferings had passed, she says she went on enduring others she also called "unbearable." She admits she came to fear that her patience would run out. Her experience offers a first, simple lesson: having faith does not require pretending that an illness does not hurt or that it is easy to bear.

Accepting care and asking for help

Teresa does not present illness as something to be faced through prayer alone. During her illness she was looked after by her family, by religious sisters and by doctors. Her father, her sister and a religious sister who was a friend cared for her when she moved away to seek a cure.

Years later, when she was able to draw up the rules for her own convents, she wrote: "Let the sick be cared for with all love and kindness and compassion." She also requires that they be visited and consoled by the other sisters, and orders the prioress to pay particular attention to their needs. Trust in God comes with something concrete: accepting that we need other people and letting ourselves be cared for when we are ill.

Prayer in weakness

During her long convalescence, Teresa found one of her main supports in prayer. After she was left almost completely immobile, she writes that one of the reasons she wanted her health back was to be able to spend time alone praying again. She continued to go to confession frequently and to talk about God with those around her.

Prayer would become one of the central threads of her whole spirituality. Applied to illness, her teaching is simple: prayer does not require feeling well or having fine words to say. It can consist simply of staying before God and speaking to him from the situation one is in.

Spiritual supports for patience

Teresa also describes what helped her when the pain was at its worst. During one of the hardest stretches she found support in the Book of Job and in the words with which Job accepts both good and evil from God's hand. Keeping those words in mind, she writes, gave her "strength."

She does not present her patience as a natural quality. Looking back on those months, she says she is surprised to have been able to endure them, and credits that strength to God. She spent the years of convalescence "with great acceptance" and, after the first stage, even "with great joy." The practical lesson is to look for concrete spiritual supports, such as Scripture, prayer and the sacraments, when one's own strength does not seem to be enough.

Asking for healing without resting all hope on it

Teresa accepted that she might remain ill, but she did not stop wanting to be cured. "All my longing to be healed," she writes in the Libro de la Vida, the Book of Her Life. She wanted her health back because she thought she could serve God better if she were well.

There is a balance here. Teresa wanted to be cured, and at the same time she came to understand that she could not make her whole spiritual life depend on that cure arriving. She acknowledges the danger of thinking we know perfectly well what would be best for us, and ends by admitting that God "knows better what is good for us." Asking to recover one's health and accepting that the outcome is not in our hands are not incompatible.

The role of St. Joseph

One name is inseparable from Teresa's illness: St. Joseph. Finding herself so young and almost entirely incapacitated, she says she decided to turn to him. "I took for my advocate and lord the glorious St. Joseph and commended myself greatly to him," she writes in the Book of Her Life.

Teresa credited his intercession with the recovery that allowed her to get up and walk again. Her trust in him went far beyond that illness and became one of the marks of her spirituality. For anyone going through an illness, this is among the most explicit recommendations in her writings: to commend oneself to St. Joseph and ask for his intercession.

Illness does not define a whole life

Teresa went almost three years without being able to walk normally. Her life was not defined by those years. After recovering, she founded convents, traveled widely in Spain, wrote some of the major works of Christian spirituality and undertook the reform of the Carmelite order.

This does not mean that a sick person has to ignore their limits or force themselves to keep the same pace as when they were well. Teresa herself laid down special care for those who fell ill. But her life shows that illness can be part of a life without necessarily becoming the whole identity of the person who suffers it.

Support and consolation

The Constitutions Teresa wrote for her convents do not stop at ordering that a sick sister receive food or physical care. She lays down that the sick are to be "visited and consoled." Caring for a sick person also means being with her.

Her letters show how closely she followed those who fell ill in her communities. In one of them she tells a prioress to take particular care of her sick sisters and to "treat them with great kindness." Illness does not have to become isolation: accepting a visit, talking, letting oneself be consoled and allowing others to be present are part of the Teresian way of going through it.

Those who care for the sick also have a calling

Teresa stops speaking as a patient and speaks as a founder in a letter to a prioress: "the day you have no sick sisters, you will lack everything."

She is not wishing illness on her sisters. The context and her own Constitutions show the opposite: the presence of a sick person becomes an opportunity to practice charity. That is why she demands care, attention, visits, consolation and an infirmarian with two qualities, competence and charity.

Teresa offers no recipe for making suffering disappear, and she does not present illness as easy to accept. But because she knew that reality herself, her writings describe a concrete way of going through it: letting oneself be cared for, praying even from weakness, looking for support in the word of God, asking for healing without resting all hope on it, commending oneself to St. Joseph, and accepting one's limits without letting illness take over one's whole life.