Aunque Teresa de \u00c1vila y Elizabeth Ann Seton crecieron en \u00e9pocas marcadamente distintas, se enfrentaron a retos similares como fundadoras y m\u00edsticas.<\/p>\n
Cada santa fue moldeada, a su manera, por el choque entre el antiguo catolicismo y el nuevo protestantismo que se extendi\u00f3 por Europa a principios del siglo XVI. Ambas tuvieron que enfrentarse a antiguos prejuicios sobre las mujeres: a menudo se las consideraba f\u00edsicamente fr\u00e1giles, excesivamente emocionales y propensas a ser enga\u00f1adas y a embaucar a los dem\u00e1s. Y ninguna de ellas ten\u00eda acceso a una educaci\u00f3n formal y avanzada.<\/p>\n
The result was a meticulous caution about deviating from church doctrine or guiding others ignorantly. Yet despite their fear of getting it wrong, both founded women\u2019s religious communities that were unique for their times and continue to flourish today. Both left writings that have influenced Catholics for generations\u2014Teresa was declared the first female Doctor of the Church. And both lived uniquely intense spiritual lives, despite the efforts of many of their superiors to dampen their zeal.<\/p>\n
Teresa naci\u00f3 en la devota Espa\u00f1a cat\u00f3lica en 1515, dos a\u00f1os antes de que Mart\u00edn Lutero clavara sus Noventa y Cinco Tesis en la puerta de la iglesia de Wittenberg, Alemania. Lutero fue declarado hereje, excomulgado y condenado como proscrito por el Sacro Imperio Romano Germ\u00e1nico. Sin embargo, a pesar de todos los esfuerzos de la Iglesia por frenar la marea protestante, la Reforma se extendi\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente por el noroeste de Europa.<\/p>\n
Teresa\u2019s Spain resisted; the baleful glare of the Inquisition no doubt served as a major deterrent to would-be reformers. Teresa took the position of most of her fellow Spaniards: the efforts of \u201cthe Lutherans,\u201d as she always referred to them, were \u201cgreat evils,\u201d and a dangerous threat to Christianity itself, for in her mind, the Roman Catholic Church and Christianity were one and the same.<\/p>\n
Yet despite her worry about these heretical threats to the Church, she was drawn to \u201cmental\u201d or silent prayer, a practice associated with Protestantism. She was quite aware that good Spanish Catholics were to follow the \u201clevel\u201d and \u201csafe\u201d path of vocal prayer and regular Mass, not venture into the realm of mysticism. But she could not resist her craving for solitude, adoration before the tabernacle, and frequent Communion, all indicators of unseemly religious enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Roughly 250 years later, Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York, a key port and major urban center in the American colonies. Along with offering an escape from the rigid social hierarchy of Old Europe, the colonies had become a sanctuary for Protestants seeking religious freedom. Many of these new religious communities feared the influence of Rome, even from a distance, and feared especially the allure of Catholicism\u2019s ancient \u201csuperstitions.\u201d In 1774, the year of Elizabeth\u2019s birth, Catholics comprised only 1.6% of the population of all thirteen colonies, in part because so many communities forbade Catholics from settling within them.<\/p>\n
As the daughter of an Anglican British loyalist, Elizabeth knew little about the Church. What she gleaned was mostly prejudicial: \u201cCatholics are the offscourings of the people.\u201d Or as her sister described them: \u201cDirty filthy red-faced.\u201d Her experience of formal religion was limited to the Anglicanism reconstituted in the Episcopal Church after the American Revolution. Though she went faithfully to services, she found little inspiration. Church seemed to be more about teaching ethics and urging parishioners to fulfill their social obligations than about cultivating spiritual experiences such as the ones she\u2019d been having in nature, through reading, or in private prayer; she longed for greater depth.<\/p>\n
Both Teresa and Elizabeth were steeped in the traditional view of women as the weaker sex. They were perfectly aware that what may have been seen as great gifts in a man\u2014creative vision coupled with a powerful will\u2014could easily lead to trouble for a woman religious. Teresa often spoke ruefully of her determinaci\u00f3n, <\/em>or tendency to pursue whatever course she was on, with no holds barred, even when this might attract the notice of the feared Inquisition. And even as Elizabeth\u2019s reputation for sanctity grew and spread throughout Catholic America, she saw herself the way she always had: like \u201ca fiery Horse I had when I was a girl, whom they tried to break by making him drag a heavy cart. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, they both struggled with their religious vows of humble obedience. When Teresa began having visions, she was told by her confessor to assume they were from the devil, and to snap her fingers at them as a sign of contempt. But this excessive fear of the devil, it seemed to her, was a more a sign of her confessor\u2019s insecurity than of great wisdom, so she often didn\u2019t comply. \u201cHow these devils frighten us,\u201d she wrote, \u201cbecause we are asking to be frightened . . . We exclaim \u2018The devil! The devil!\u2019 when we could be exclaiming: \u2018God!\u2019 \u2018God!\u2019 and making the devil tremble.\u201d<\/p>\n Elizabeth was ordered by a solicitous male superior to limit ascetical practices in her community because \u201cthe love of penance must yield in our dear infirm sisters to the voice of obedience, for better is obedience than sacrifice.\u201d Yet she knew her sisters longed for greater mortification, so she told them there was another way: they could simply follow their rule exactly, taking no extra rest and even giving up some of their plain food. \u201cWhere. . . we are forbidden the use of complete and intire abnegation,\u201d she wrote, \u201cat least let us be able to take our God to witness that we are willing to do more and lament to him that we cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet both women knew that it was one thing to resist foolish orders and another to assume that they always knew better. They needed to make sure they were responding to God\u2019s will and not their own. If they didn\u2019t find excellent spiritual direction for themselves, their greatest gift\u2014the determination that helped them persist in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges\u2014could lead to their downfall and, even worse, to the downfall of those who looked to them for wisdom.<\/p>\n God provided them the help they needed. For Teresa, this turned out to be a \u201cwild-haired, leathery, scolding ascetic of great repute,\u201d the Franciscan Fray\u00a0Pedro of Alc\u00e1ntara, who explained it all to her\u2014especially the visions so feared by her other confessors. He told her not to worry, but simply to praise God.<\/p>\n In a way nobody else had been able to, Fray Pedro set Teresa\u2019s fears at rest because he recognized immediately who she was and what God was calling her to do. They became close friends, and she consulted with him for years. The old ascetic\u2014who was later canonized\u2014even appeared to her in spirit form shortly before he died, and as she happily reported, \u201cThe Lord was pleased to let me have more to do with him since his death than when he was alive.\u201d<\/p>\n The spiritual director Elizabeth longed for arrived during her darkest hour. Her beloved daughter Anna Maria had just died of tuberculosis, an agonizing death that plunged Elizabeth into private terror: perhaps, after all, Anna Maria had not died in a state of grace? Yet she told herself she couldn\u2019t reveal her despair to anybody, particularly the Sisters of her community.<\/p>\n Simon Brute, a brilliant young French priest who trained seminarians, was ordered to counsel the grieving prioress. He read her situation immediately, urging her to stop holding back and give way to her grief. When desperate questions about sin, evil, and grace later threatened to overwhelm her, she opened her heart to him in a long letter she couldn\u2019t write to any of her other advisors. Brute saw that more than anything, Elizabeth needed the theological knowledge she\u2019d never been able to pursue through formal studies. He introduced her to centuries of Catholic writing; the two of them read and discussed countless books, and in the process, became soul friends and spiritual collaborators.<\/p>\n Though church factionalism and internecine prejudice coupled with the prevailing attitude toward women made the lives of these two strong-willed sisters in courage especially challenging, neither St. Teresa of Avila or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton doubted that God would provide the good counsel they needed. And that was because, as Teresa put it, Jesus never despised women, but always, \u201cwith great compassion, helped them.\u201d<\/p>\n PAULA HUSTON\u00a0es becaria del Fondo Nacional de las Artes y autora de dos novelas y ocho libros de no ficci\u00f3n espiritual. Sus ensayos y relatos han aparecido en Best American Short Stories y en la antolog\u00eda anual Best Spiritual Writing. Al igual que Elizabeth Ann Seton, Huston es una conversa al catolicismo. En 1999 se hizo benedictina oblata camaldulense y es miembro laico de la Nueva Ermita de Camaldoli.<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s en Big Sur, California. Ella<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s tambi\u00e9n ex presidente de la <\/em>Sociedad Cris\u00f3stomo<\/em><\/a>Organizaci\u00f3n nacional de escritores cristianos literarios.<\/em><\/p>\n