St. Teresa of Ávila

A spirited noblewoman of Ávila who entered Carmel at twenty, Teresa spent twenty years in tepid religious life before a deep conversion in her forties. Reading Augustine’s Confessions and gazing at a wounded image of Christ, she resolved to live wholly for God. From that crisis came one of the great reforms of Western Christianity.

She founded seventeen convents of "discalced" — barefoot — Carmelites, traveling Spain in covered wagons over rough roads, founding houses with no money and immense opposition. With her younger collaborator John of the Cross, she renewed the contemplative life and gave the Church its great map of the soul: The Interior Castle.

In 1970 Paul VI named her the first woman Doctor of the Church. Her motto on a bookmark — "Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. God alone suffices" — has steadied countless souls in the four centuries since.