The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus

Relation X. -Of a Revelation to the Saint at Avila, 1579, and of Certain Directions Concerning the Government of the Order.

In St. Joseph of Avila, on Pentecost eve, in the hermitage of Nazareth, thinking of one of the greatest graces our Lord had given me on that day some twenty years before, [1] more or less, my spirit was vehemently stirred and grew hot within me, [2] and I fell into a trance. In that profound recollection I heard our Lord say what I am now going to tell: I was to say to the Barefooted Fathers, as from Him, that they must strive to observe four things; and that so long as they observed them, the Order would increase more and more; and if they neglected them, they should know that they were falling away from their first estate. The first is, the superiors of the monasteries are to be of one mind. The second, even if they have many monasteries, to have but few friars in each. The third, to converse little with people in the world, and that only for the good of their souls. The fourth, to teach more by works than by words. This happened in the year 1579; and because it is a great truth, I have put my name to it. Teresa de Jesús.


1. See Life, ch. xxxviii. § 11.

Psalm xxxviii. 3: "Concaluit cor meum intra me."