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<\/a><\/p>\nTo build castles in Spain is an 800-year-old idiom meaning to daydream, to indulge in idle fancies. But we spent a day with Teresa of Avila, who built an interior castle in Spain as solid and lasting a fortification as the walls that circle the city of her birth.<\/p>\n
Pilgrimage 2012, Day 5: Salamanca to Madrid, via Alba de Tormes, Avila, and Segovia<\/strong><\/p>\n Spain\u2019s an odd place. It looks golden and sunny, with yellow plains stretching out under bright blue skies as far as the eye can see, but the soul of Spain is dark and twisty.<\/strong> I like that, but it got just a little too dark and twisty for some of our group.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, after coming to terms with our own inability to contemplate the realities of sin and death that are so much a part of the pilgrim way, we left Salamanca for Madrid. Our journey led us through the heart of the country associated with two of Spain\u2019s greatest gifts to the Church and to the world, St Teresa of Avila and her protege St John of the Cross. We were off to visit more Carmelite foundations: the place where she died, at Alba de Tormes; the convent she entered as a girl and where she experienced her mystical rebirth, as well as the Cathedral in Avila, city of her birth and of the birth of the Carmelite reform; and Segovia, where St John of the Cross brought his gifts for mystical poetry to that reform.<\/p>\n We celebrated Mass at the Carmelite Monastery of the Annunciation in Alba de Tormes<\/strong>, a town associated with one of Spain\u2019s oldest noble families. (The present Duchess of Alba<\/strong><\/a>, who showed up in the gossip columns recently, is acknowledged to be among the world\u2019s richest women.) After Mass, in a small convent museum, we saw evidence of Teresa\u2019s life that was, for many, disturbing. As the site of her death, Alba de Torres holds pride of place among keepers of the saint\u2019s relics. A good portion of her body is contained in a a marble sarcophagus. Her incorrupt heart and right arm are on display, contained in ornate reliquaries, next to the cell where she died. I found these most corporeal objects of a most spiritual veneration\u2014the heart like a piece of Spanish leather, the arm so tiny and frail to have turned the Church upside down\u2014very moving, but some others of our group were, quite simply, grossed out. \u201cIt\u2019s abuse of a corpse!\u201d one man argued. \u201cIf this happened in the United States someone would go to jail. And I don\u2019t imagine Jesus will be too pleased about it at the Second Coming, either!\u201d I didn\u2019t dare explain that Teresa has other bits (hands, left eye, part of her jaw, her right foot) on view in Rome, Lisbon, and other places. Poor Avila, her birthplace, has to settle for a finger enshrined in a corner of a convent gift shop.<\/p>\n Like the frog-topped skull we couldn\u2019t see<\/strong><\/a> in Salamanca, the relics of Teresa invite us to enter into a mindset of devotion so utterly foreign to us that some of us just can\u2019t make the leap. It\u2019s OK.\u00a0Teresa, who literally went to pieces for the Lord and the Church she loved, understands that what is important is not in a reliquary but in the tabernacle, not in a convent cloister but in the interior castle where the King waits to welcome each of us.<\/strong><\/p>\n As recently as a few years ago, a bishop of Avila attempted to sway the pope into pressuring Alba de Tormes to send Teresa\u2019s body home. \u201cThey have her body,\u201d the pope replied. \u201cAvila has her spirit.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n We found that spirit outside the ancient walled city of Avila, at the Convent of the Incarnation. When Teresa, herself a nobleman\u2019s daughter, entered the Carmelites, a strict caste system operated in the convent. Nuns who came from wealth, like Teresa, had richly furnished rooms with brass stoves for heat, and were waited on by poor nuns. This inequality, plus the lax enforcement of the Carmelite rule, weighed on Teresa until, at the age of 39, she became severely depressed.<\/p>\n \u201cShe had lost her way,\u201d our local guide, Jose, told us in a voice as mournful and evocative as that of the beggar who had sung a cry for pity to us in the doorway of the Salamanca Cathedral the night before. \u201cAnd then she looked at an image of the suffering Christ, when he is being scourged at a pillar.\u00a0And her way came back to her.<\/strong>\u00a0She had been dead inside, and she was born again that day.\u201d The rich girl from Avila tossed away her fine robes and leather shoes, and began to go barefoot or wear sandals with a rough homespun habit. Eventually, she formed a new Carmelite order of strict observance.\u00a0They were known as the Discalced\u2014the Shoeless Ones.<\/strong><\/p>\n Teresa was born again by falling in love with Mary\u2019s Son, Jesus.<\/strong>\u00a0She discarded her noble names (Teresa al Fatim Corella Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada\u2014note the Moorish influence in some of those! Teresa and her brother ran off as children to try to convert the Moors, and her grandfather was a converso<\/em>, a Jew who became a Christian but was accused of relapsing) and became\u00a0Teresa de Jesus<\/em>, Teresa of Jesus. She entered into a relationship with the Lord that was both deeply mystical and hugely practical, theology seasoned with sharp humor and the occasional break for dancing, accompanying herself and the sisters with castanets. In the forecourt of convent (which joined the reform during Teresa\u2019s lifetime) there is a kind of labyrinthine diagram of\u00a0The Interior Castle<\/em>, Teresa\u2019s classic work on contemplative prayer, in which the soul travels through seven concentric \u201crooms\u201d before reaching the chamber of the King\u2014Christ the King\u2014found deep in one\u2019s own heart.<\/p>\n In the stairwell of the nun\u2019s cloister, statues recall an encounter between Teresa and her Beloved. One day, she met a small boy on the staircase. Startled, she asked \u201cWho are you?\u201d \u201cWho are\u00a0you<\/em>?\u201d the child responded. \u201cI am Teresa of Jesus,\u201d she said. \u201cAh,\u201d said the Child, smiling, \u201cso then I must be Jesus of Teresa.\u201d And he vanished.<\/p>\n Our lugubrious and slightly antipapal guide Jose also walked us around the Cathedral of Avila, where he mostly wanted to talk about ancient heresies, the legend that Mary came from a family of 11 (at least two others of whom were also named Mary), and using the belfry of the Cathedral to bounce stones off to fashion projectiles before gunpowder was invented. Then we went on to Segovia, where the group heard about St John of the Cross (who suffered greatly for joining Teresa\u2019s reform\u2014including being imprisoned by his own Carmelite community in hopes of starving him out of his revisionist zeal) from a new guide. I stayed on the bus, having my own Dark Night of the Aching Joints, gladly daydreaming of my knees in silver reliquaries. Just when I got to the point where Teresa of Avila would have shouted the Castilian equivalent of \u201cSNAP OUT OF IT!\u201d a thunderstorm rolled down the hill over the old Roman aqueduct, turning the air molten silver with rain. And there was the biggest, brightest rainbow any of us had ever seen.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>