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St. Teresa of Avila
00:31:07
Dr. Ben Akers and Annette Bergeon, Executive Director of Endow, discuss St. Teresa of Avila and her love of conversations with Jesus.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at the Jesuit Refugee Service. They work in 58 countries accompanying and.
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Serving forcibly displaced people, providing life changing.
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Emergency assistance, education, mental health support and.
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More to millions each year.
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Get to know their work, visit jrsusa.org agustin. You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Hello and welcome to Form. Now, my name is Dr. Ben Akers and I'm the executive director of Formed. Joining me today is a special guest. Her name is Annette Bergen. She is the executive director, newly appointed executive director of endow, which is an acronym which stands for educating on the nature and Dignity of Women. It's a wonderful apostolate that we have here, headquartered in the Archdiocese of Denver, but many different groups around the United States and probably the world even as well. So Annette's going to join me today and we're going to be talking about St. Teresa Vavila, a wonderful saint, my wife's confirmation saint, saint I have great devotion to. I was able to go and visit Avila just a year ago and go on pilgrimage to visit some of the sites important to her life. Her dates are 1515 to 1582. And she is a wonderful saint because she, I think she's very relatable. That's one of the things that we're going to discuss, is how relatable she is. She's also known as a doctor of the church. So not only is she a saint known for her charity, the perfection of charity, the love of God and love of neighbor, but she's also a doctor of the church. And doctors of the church are few and far between. They're highlighted for their wisdom that they teach us about the purpose and plan of God's life. And Pope beneath the 16th Pope, St. John Paul II, have highlighted that in a particular way. Teresa is a model for us on prayer. So that's one of the themes that we're going to be talking about today is as Saint Teresa of Avila as a teacher of prayer. But first, Annette, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with Endow, what Endow does, and then we'll move into St. Teresa.
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That sounds great. That sounds great. So I have been involved with endow for about 10 years. I started my first endow group about nine years ago and it was right before my mother was diagnosed with cancer. And what I found was through this group, not only did we study the teachings of the Catholic Church, and did we learn about the true nature and dignity of women and the role of women, not just in the church, but in the life, in our families, in our society. But we also connected and bonded very deeply. And my Endow group has become a very big part of my life and has aided me in my formation in the faith as well as my journey through life. So with that background, when Endow approached me a few months ago about the executive director position, I was intrigued because it was an apostolate that is very near and dear to my heart. And I've been with Endow on the inside now for about a month, and it's very exciting. Lots of really great things going on, growing rapidly, and it's. It's really a joy to be a part of it.
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So how do the studies work? Is it scripture themes, or what are the things that you study as a school?
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Oh, great. Yeah. That's a great question. Endow originally started around Pope John Paul II's letter. He wrote a letter to women that was for the United Nations Council on Women in 1995. He wrote this beautiful letter to women. And if you read the letter, it's really heartwarming to see how Pope St. John Paul II felt about women and the role of women. And the sad part is, because it is a papal apostolic letter, not a lot of people have access to that. So not a lot of people have access to that teaching. And our founders actually found the letter and read it and said, wow, we really think that lots of women would be interested in this. So they wrote the foundational Endow study letter to women, which explained and shared all of the beautiful teachings that are a part of this letter and decided that the best way to propagate this information is through small groups of women, because women love to get together anyway. And we would get together for any number of reasons. But to have a reason, like studying the writings of the popes or studying the intellectual tradition of the Church, all of those things are just an enhancement then, and lead to formation and ultimately transformation in the lives of the women who participate in Endow.
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B
That's a beautiful way to put it. If you haven't had a chance to read the letter of John Paul ii, it's incredible. Muliers dignitatum. It's just everything always sounds better in Latin. No, that's the language of the Church, so he's put it in Latin. But the dignity of women, and he has beautiful reflections on the feminine genius.
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Absolutely.
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What makes. What's so special about women? What's A special gift. What's the special way that they image the image and likeness of God? And it's so edifying to read even as a man. It's so edifying to see the beauty that I see in my wife and my daughters, reflecting and seeing the feminine genius as it's in them as well. So you're exactly right. There's so much power in small groups. I've experienced that in my own life. And different apostles that I worked with is you get together anyway. But when you start to get around the word of God or the lives of the saints, the teachings of the doctors of the Church, it transforms your mind. It changes the way that you look at the world. If you change the way that you look at the world, it's going to change the way that you live within the world. It's going to change the way you make decisions in the world. And so I love the way that you put that information leading to transformation.
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Absolutely. And I think that's one of the greatest blessings of being a part of an endow group. First of all, you learn together with your fellow sisters. So you're taking on a subject, whether it's the writings of the popes, the lives of the saints. We have in a dao study Aquinas for beginners, which most women wouldn't have the opportunity or the initiative to pick up the summa, but they can pick up the endow study Aquinas for beginners. And to just have an understanding of the things that he taught and how he viewed the world, how he parsed his existence and kind of passed that on, is so valuable. And it does lead to change in your thinking and also in your behavior. And it's very enriching.
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So the church, in her wisdom, puts before our eyes saints. And the saints are models for us because they're so creative in the way that they live out the vocation. To be a Christian, to follow Christ, you think that it would be, you know, cookie cutter mold, right? That you have to be this way to live out your Christian life. But the saints give us such freedom because they hear the call of Christ. Come, be my disciple. Come follow me. Go and bear fruit. Go and make other disciples. But they do it in so many different ways. And the saint that we're reflecting on today that the Church puts before us is St. Teresa of Avila. And she's so relatable. Just she's got a. One of her works is the story of her, of her life. And I love the way that she starts off that work she says, I had great family, I had great parents. They gave me the faith, and I would have been such a good person, except that I'm a terrible person. I remember from the very beginning, you laugh when you read it. You're like, I like this lady. She's going to be awesome.
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And you already know how amazing she is. And you already know that the church has made her a doctor, one of the very few female doctors of the church. So you know that she's brilliant, and you know that she's extremely holy. But then you read her story and you see that she was. As a young girl, she was captivated by things like clothes and makeup. She was very. She loved to be. She really wanted to be popular. So she loved to be with friends and wanted to, you know, was always seeking the approval of everyone around her and who can't relate to that. Who can't relate to that feeling of seeking approval and being caught up in the trappings of the world. I always think if Teresa of Avila was alive today, she would be on Instagram and she would have thousands of followers because she was so popular and beautiful and evasive and just charismatic. So one of her struggles was always being as amazing as she was, was the whole, how do I divide my life between the, you know, being in the world and then my life of prayer with God? She had a very intensive prayer life, but she was always struggling with, you know, making time for prayer versus making time for all of her other pursuits, worldly pursuits. And I really connected to her on that one point in particular. And one of my favorite quotes.
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Does she have some advice for us that are living in that same exact situation?
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Well, one of the things she writes in the book of my life, she said, all the things of God gave me great pleasure, and I was a prisoner to the things of the world. It seemed as if I wished to reconcile two contradictions so much at variance, one with another, as are, as are the life of the Spirit and the joys and pleasure and amusements of sense. And to me, that is probably, in a nutshell, one of the biggest battles, because I always am struggling with, you know, starting my day in prayer versus starting my day with attacking my to do list or on the way home from work, making time to run by the Adoration Chapel. I actually drive by an Adoration Chapel on my way home and. And an hour of adoration versus an hour of errands. You know, it's always a struggle and a battle, and reconciling the two are very difficult. But for Me to know that Teresa of Avila had the same struggles is just. It's very encouraging that I'm on the right track and keep fighting the good fight and don't give up. And that was one of her big messages as well. She had very many periods in her life when her prayer was not fruitful. We all know about her mystical experiences and the times in her life when her prayer was very fruitful, but she had times when it wasn't. And her biggest challenge and encouragement is to just keep going. No matter what your struggles, no matter what your difficulties, the dryness, the distractions, whatever comes, don't give up your prayer practice. Keep doing it, stick with it, don't give up. And that, to me, is really encouraging as well.
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B
Yeah, exactly. The perseverance that she models is incredible. One of my favorite quotations from her is when she talks about finding God among the pots and the pans. So that if you're assigned to the kitchen. So she's thinking, in convent life, if you're in charge of preparing the meals for the other sisters, you're in charge of sweeping out the chapel. But for us, it is a quick analog for us living in the world of we have to do dishes, we have to prepare meals, we have to do laundry and fold laundry and run errands. That is our life. But she encouraged her sisters and by extension, us. And that's why the church puts her in front of our eyes of to find God among the pots and the pans. And I can't help but think that she's thinking of the story from the scriptures of the Martha and Mary story, where Jesus goes to Martha and Mary's house. He's their friend, and they're preparing a meal, and Mary's sitting at the feet of Jesus, and Martha is in the kitchen, and she tells the Lord what to do. Lord, you tell my sister that she needs to come and help me in the kitchen, and you get this kind of loving response of crisis. At least that's how I imagine it. Martha, Martha, you're troubled and anxious about many things, but Mary has chosen the better part.
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Right?
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So he's not saying, Martha, you know, we don't have to eat. We don't know. You know, I'm the bread of life, and I can make bread. I can multiply the bread. He doesn't say any of those things. He recognizes Martha where her heart is and where Mary's heart is. And Mary's heart is where she is, should be. She's at the feet of Jesus listening to Jesus. But can Martha, who's doing a good deed, a good service, hospitality for the Lord, can she listen to the Lord while she's in the kitchen with the pots and the pants? So you can be like, Mary, Mary's here at my feet. But Martha, can you listen while you're in the midst of this work? And that's always a scripture passage I like to go to in thinking about that.
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Absolutely. And the whole Martha and Mary debate is really a perfect analogy for the struggle that we have between our to do list and our desire to spend time and grow our relationship with God. And with Teresa of Avila, she's just a marvelous, marvelous model of making that a priority in your life. And one of the reasons why I think St. Teresa of Avila did achieve all that she achieved in her life is because she always said yes to God. No matter what he asked of her, she always said yes. If he asked her something that she thought was extreme, she might even say, this is ridiculous that you're asking me this. But yes. And it's encouraging because it makes it just such a great model for us to try to always be open to what God is asking of us and to say yes when he calls us.
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It's a very Marian posture towards the world. When Mary, the mother of Jesus, says yes to the Lord, she didn't know that it was going to entail the cross. She didn't know it entailed, even before that, of losing her son at 12 years old when he was in the temple. But her yes was a posture towards the Lord and the world. And that was the journey that the Lord wanted to bring her, bring her along and bring us along as well. When we say yes. It's an incredible grace to be able to say, I've never said no to the Lord. I mean, I know that I can't say that now in my life, but I would love to say, from this point on, I've never said no to the Lord. One of the things that I find incredibly relatable to St. Teresa of Avila's life is that she reads the letters of St. Jerome. And she is enough that she's convinced that she should go and be a sister, a religious sister. So she leaves the world. She answers, enters the convent, and she suffers greatly. She goes even paralyzed. She becomes bedridden for years, an invalid. They actually prepared her tomb. They thought that she had actually died.
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They planned her funeral.
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Yeah, they planned her funeral, absolutely. And she is healed through the intersection of St. Joseph. She has a great devotion to St. Joseph and introduces that to the church. But the thing that I find relatable is that she really doesn't have a deeper conversion in her life. Even though she's already a religious sister, even though she's going to mass every day, even though she's praying every day, many hours, she has a conversion at 40 years old where this is where she really becomes fully converted to Christ.
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Exactly. And even though she always said yes and even though she always followed, you can kind of, if you read the story of her life, you can kind of see her being pulled away repeatedly by, you know, the things of the world that were attractive and that were appealing to her. But then finally, when she does commit fully to the Lord, that's when he kind of takes her on this journey into mystical experiences that I have to say, most people have not had in their lifetime. I haven't met or talked to a lot of people that have mystical experiences like Teresa of Avila did. But because of the way she writes about them and the very human analogies that she uses. Like, she uses the analogy of watering a garden or the analogy of the interior castle with the many rooms with our Lord at the center. And you're trying to work your way through this castle to get to the center to commune with our Lord. So when she uses these really human analogies, even though you haven't shared her mystical experience, you can understand what she's saying and you can say, yes, I can see. I imagine that what she's saying is true and that it really happened to her. And so if that could happen to her, imagine what could happen in your own prayer life if you dedicate yourself and commit and say yes to God.
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That's a beautiful way to put it. That's one thing that I have noticed and others noticed as well. When you start to read St. Teresa of Avila, you realize that she's teaching you about prayer. But she's teaching you by praying with you, that you don't even know it. Almost. It's this kind of ninja move that she does where you're going through the text and you're just like, wait, she's teaching me how to pray. She's sitting right next to me, in a sense, as a good mother, as a good sister, teaching me how to pray to the Lord. She has a work that's called the Way of Perfection. And her sisters say they see these mystical experiences. They see that her life looked one way before. And then after this deeper conversion, she looks a different way. They said, we want that. It's very, very the Biblical analogy would be when the apostle, the apostles see Jesus pray in Luke 11, that we want to pray like that. Teach us how to pray. And when her sisters come to her and they say, teach us to pray like you pray, she says, I can't help but teach you the prayer that Jesus taught you. There's no other way to pray. And so the way of perfection is this beautiful extended meditation on the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer. And it's just. And she's just taking you through the different steps of the. Of the Our Father and different steps of prayer.
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Yeah. And she's so humble that you forget that you're talking to or reading the writings of an amazing saint. You feel like you're talking to a friend. And that's one of the things that has always endeared me to Teresa, and I do feel like she's a friend.
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One of the things that precipitated her conversion at 40 years old is that she was reading the Confessions of St. Augustine. So that's close to our heart here at the Augustine Institute of. She's reading the life of St. Augustine. Who. You know, the life of St. Augustine. We've done shows on Forum now about the life of St. Augustine, but you know that it was a life of sin and then a life of full conversion to Christ. And the beautiful thing is that she sees in Augustine's conversion a chance for God to work in her life as well. So for me. And then the second thing that led to that was that she saw a very bloodied image of Christ being presented to the crowd, called the Ecce Homo in Latin, of Pilate, presenting the scourged and beaten and crowned with thorns, Christ. And she's really moved by this, what Christ had done for her to save her from her sins. And what I love about that is that St. Augustine, if you read the life of his life, he's converted through hearing the word of God, through reading Scripture, but also the witnesses of saints in his life of St. Monica, of St. Ambrose, of others, St. Anthony of Egypt, the story is told in the Confessions. And so to have a St. Teresa of Avila, who's converted by reading a saint and his conversion by saints, like for us living today, this is why we want to read the saints.
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Absolutely.
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That this can lead to our conversion as well.
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And think of how many have been converted by Teresa of Avila. We also at endow have a study, Edith Shine. And she was actually born and raised Jewish. And there were a few key moments in her life that led to her conversion. But One of those few was reading Teresa Avila's the Book of My Life. And she read that, and her response, her reaction was kind of similar to mine, which was, this is truth, this is true. Even though I can't share your experience, the way she writes about her experience is so compelling. And you know it's true.
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Yes, I forgot about the story of St. Edith Stein. And we began the month we're celebrating the feast day of Trees of Avila on October 15th. But the month of October began with Saint Therese of the Little Flower. Therese was named after the great Teresa of Avila. So saints being inspired by saints and parents of saints being inspired by saints. It's a great model for us, for parents, and we're called to raise our children as saints. In looking at the life of Teresa of Avila, is there anything else that stands out you think that we can learn for today?
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A
Well, you know, I haven't shared my favorite quote. I do have quite a few, but my absolute favorite is she was going to visit. So Teresa of Avila entered the convent as a Carmelite, but then ended up being dissatisfied with the rules and practices of her convent and went on to start a more strict reformed Carmelite movement called the Discalced Carmelites. So then she opened a whole bunch of convents and monasteries all around. I think there was even a male version of the religious order that she started. And she was visiting. She would go and travel across Spain visiting all of her convents. And one time her horse. I don't know if you've heard this story. This is a story. But the horse bucked her off and she fell into a river and got soaking wet. And her response was, she said, dear Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few. And so what I love about that is that, you know, who talks to God like that? Who talks to God in that kind of an intimate relational, intimate relational way. It's almost like she's not talking to, you know, the Creator of the universe, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. She's talking to a friend. And I wonder if maybe God wishes that more of us would speak to him in prayer that way. And to think of him as a friend, a father, a confidant, it just. It makes you ponder.
- [23:25]
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She has a beautiful description of prayer, this great teacher and model of prayer, doctor of the church, about prayer. And she just has that very simple, concrete, very humble explanation of it. Very relatable of prayer is a conversation among friends, conversation amongst. With someone whom we know loves us that's incredible. That's worth reflecting on and praying through is, do I regard Jesus? Do I regard the Father, the Spirit, Do I regard the triune God as the friend whom I know loves me and I'm sharing my life with them? And this is exactly what she does in teaching about prayer, that prayer is this conversation among friends, anything else about her life or her writings that really, I love that story about this is how you treat your friends. Because how does God treat his friends is he gives us the cross. That's a key part of being a friend of Christ, is to be close to him. And our friend is the crucified Lord. And suffering is an important part of her life that led her closer to Christ.
- [24:31]
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Absolutely. She did have a lot of suffering in her life. And that's once again very relatable because I have yet to meet the individual who's fortunate enough to get through life without serious suffering. So she had illnesses, she had struggles in prayer. She had struggles with, you know, making time for all of the various duties that she had. And she also felt. She often felt that God called her to things that she didn't feel equipped for or experienced enough or intelligent enough. If you read her writing, she's so humble. And she never thought even writing about her experiences was something that was within her capabilities. She always felt that she was asked to do things that were beyond her abilities. But once again, she said yes. And she. She gave us these great treasures, right?
- [25:28]
B
She'd be this incredible reform of the church along with St John of the Cross, who's forming does the reform among the male Carmelite orders. And one of the things that Saint Teresa of Avila gave the church and gave us as well is this devotion to St. Joseph. Now, we know St. Joseph from scripture. He doesn't say a single word in Scripture. But Teresa of Avila saw her recovery from this illness that made her Invalid, attributed to St. Joseph and always promoted devotion to Joseph. There's some great stories if you read the story of her life and if you get to go and visit the places where she lived, where when she would leave sometimes to go and found another convent or visit other sisters somewhere else, that she would put a statue of St. Joseph in her chair and she'd come back and the St. Joseph, the mother Teresa would know the stories of what sister had broken this rule and that rule, and who's the Spirit among us? And the story is that the St. Joseph statue would tell her. So you go to Avila and see the St. Joseph statue, and they call him St. Joseph the Tattletale. But more than that, the Joseph being a tattletale is she says that Joseph, that there's nothing ever in her life that she didn't ask of St. Joseph and he didn't give her. And every church you go to now around the world, you see a statue of St. Joseph that wasn't common, really, St. Teresa of Avila, who helped us have this devotion to Joseph.
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Yep, that's true. That's true.
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And I think she loved Joseph because of his care and protection of Jesus. Her name, her religious name was Teresa of Jesus, that really she saw Christ as the center of everything that she did in her life.
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So I think St. Teresa of Avila is just an amazing saint to study. You could, if you were interested, pick up a copy of her compiled works and writings. But to many people, I think, especially in our day and age, we don't have the time, we don't have the bandwidth, we don't have the. We just don't have the space to read her actual writings as she wrote them. So I could offer as an alternative, the wonderful Endow study, Teresa of Avila, teacher of prayer, which would cover not only the book of her life, but the interior castle and a little bit of the way of perfection as well. And this study is something that ideally you would get together with a group of five, six, eight, maybe 10 friends and read the study out loud together. And there are discussion questions at the end of each section where after you've read a little bit about Teresa Vala, about her life, about her experiences and about her teachings, then you have the discussion questions where you really can say, how is this relevant to my life today? How does what Teresa Avila experienced in the 16th century and what she wrote about, how is that relevant to me today and how does that affect me? And it's through those discussion questions and those conversations that you have with your friends and your peers that you really make the connection. And that leads to the transformation where you make different choices about how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you raise your children. All of those things then incorporate into your life today. And that's where the real value from studying someone like St. Teresa comes from.
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B
Thank you for that. How would someone find out? Our viewers at home, how would they find out? Or get this study and find out more about Endow.
- [29:11]
A
Well, if you're interested in Endow, you can always go to our website, www.EndowGroups.org. we are also on Facebook and Instagram. You can follow us, ndowgroups and other than that. I think that if you ask around, you might find that you have a mother or a sister or a friend or a daughter who knows about endow who's been in an endow group and just, you know, reach out to us. Let us know how we can help you. We love to have you as part of our Endow family.
- [29:49]
B
Thank you for sharing that and thank you for joining us today on Forum. Now I have to want to close with a story. I was blessed to go on a pilgrimage to Spain this last year. So before COVID struck and everything. And we were able to go to Avila. And Avila is the Convent of the Incarnation is where Teresa of Avila first entered as a convent, as a nun and reformed her life and helped reform the convent. And we were able to visit with an American sister that's over there and she's part of one of the 14 sisters that's there. And she shared with us the secret that Teresa shared with her sisters. And so there's still a convent of discal sisters there in Avila that pray for us, that pray for the church. And her secret was read the Gospels every day, learn the life of Christ that you revealed in Scripture and pray your rosary, pray the divine mercy chaplet, do acts of charity and make acts of sacrifice. It's as simple as that. It's not easy, but it's simple. And Teresa of Avila and all the saints that we're blessed with in the Church teach us these things. Thank you for your support. If you'd like to join us in the mission circle, you can find that information on the banner below. Thank you and God Bless.
- [31:01]
A
You can watch these interviews in video format by visiting form.org formed is an online Catholic streaming service created by the Augustine Institute and Ignatius Press with award winning studies and parish programs, inspiring audio content, movies, ebooks and family friendly kids programming to support the mission of the Augustan Institute, please visit missioncircle.org.