VATICAN CITY — While Saint Teresa of Avila was outstanding in many ways, her union with Christ through prayer made her an “exceptional woman,” Pope Francis said.
In a video message April 15 marking the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Teresa of Avila as a Doctor of the Church, the pope said the Spanish saint’s “audacity, creativity and excellence as a reformer are the fruit of the interior presence of the Lord.”
“We are dealing with a person who was outstanding in many ways,” he said. “However, it should not be forgotten that her recognized relevance in these dimensions is nothing more than the consequence of what was important to her: her encounter with the Lord, her ‘determined determination,’ as she says, to persevere in union with him through prayer.”
In his message, the pope said holiness is not a virtue reserved to “specialists of the divine” but is the “vocation of all believers.”
Saints, like St. Teresa, “stimulate and motivate us, but they are not for us to literally try to copy them,” he said. “Holiness cannot be copied because even that could lead us away from the unique and different path that the Lord has for each one of us. ... What is important is that each believer discerns his or her own path, each one of us has his or her own path of holiness, of an encounter with the Lord.”
The path St. Teresa followed, which “made her an exceptional woman and a person of reference throughout the centuries,” was that of prayer, which is a path “open to all those who humbly open themselves to the action of the Spirit in their lives.”
However, he added, “such a path is not open to those who consider themselves pure and perfect, the Cathars of all centuries,” referring to the 12th century gnostic movement.
Instead, the path of prayer is open “to those who, aware of their sins, discover the beauty of the mercy of God, who welcomes all, redeems all and calls all to his friendship,” he said.
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