Spiritual Reality Check: St. Teresa of Avila Found To Be Still Incorrupt

As a child, I loved clouds.

I would spend lazy summer afternoons on my back in the grass in my parents’ front yard under a massive maple tree watching the clouds float by and my siblings and I would tell one another stories based on their shapes.

We had active imaginations.

The spiritual world was very real to us. I remember, at one point, telling my younger sisters that the rays of sun streaming down to earth between the folds of a massive front of clouds were the ladders angels used to visit us — as far as I remember, I fully believed it. (RELATED: Living Crucifixes: The Phenomenon of Stigmata)

No one knows the exact moment we lose our childlike belief in the otherworldly. Perhaps it is when we learn that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, or maybe we develop our skepticism in high school and college when we come to suspect that we know everything there is to know and have experienced everything there is to experience.

I’ve never lost my faith but at some point, when I wasn’t paying attention, my beliefs became rooted in the tangible things I could experience. Sure, God and the angels exist, but thunderstorms aren’t the result of God crying over lost sinners and angels aren’t climbing down from heaven on sun-bathed ladders.

Women Are Fighting Against Spirits, Principalities, and Powers

We often don’t know how far we’ve moved from our childhood simplicity until we come across something — a claim, a person, an experience — that makes us react in a very different way than we might have in years past. For me, that thing was Carrie Gress’s book, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Feminity. 

Specifically, it was Gress’s assertion towards the very beginning of the book that feminism has demonic influences. Gress points to ancient demons — including those going under the names Jezebel and Lilith — as key players in the growth of feminism as an ideology that requires women to deny the intrinsic calling of motherhood. Further, she cites the growth of occult practices and “goddess circles” as evidence that women are actively inviting these demons into their lives. (READ MORE: Young Believers Are Fueling a Renaissance of Catholic Culture)

For those unfamiliar with Gress’s research, it’s worth taking into account — especially for young women as they try to figure out what their place in society ought to look like. If true, it makes the battle for the hearts and minds of modern women about more than just preference, it makes it a battle against spirits, principalities, and powers.

That consideration requires an openness to the idea that the spiritual world is very much involved in the physical world as we experience it. I’ll be perfectly honest, despite being raised in a large Catholic family reading the stories of the saints, that idea makes me uncomfortable. The trouble is, while skepticism is sometimes healthy, it can also be a fault.

St. Teresa Found to Be Still Incorrupt During Recent Investigation

Accounting for the reality and impact of demonic forces on our lives is one thing. But every once in a while, God gives us hard-hearted, skeptical adults something physical to chew on. This week, that thing was the discovery that the renowned mystic, reformer, and doctor of the Catholic Church, St. Teresa of Avila, is still incorrupt.

On Wednesday, Discalced Carmelites in Alba de Tormes processed from the Basilica de Sancta Teresa to a room specially reserved for studying her remains while singing the Te Deum. Once there, they opened the saint’s silver tomb for the first time in 110 years in the presence of scientists, ecclesiastical authorities, and the artisans necessary to get the tomb open. Her body appears to be in the same condition it was in 1914 — i.e., it is not dust. (READ MORE by Aubrey Gulick: A Clash of Sacred Sounds: Ancient Liturgical Music vs. Contemporary Praise and Worship)

The postulator general of the order, Father Marco Chiesa, confirmed that, while the images taken in 1914 are black-and-white, they clearly reveal that the exposed parts (St. Teresa’s face and foot), look the same as they did then. “There is no color,” he said. “There is no skin color, because the skin is mummified, but you can see it, especially the middle of the face … The expert doctors can see Teresa’s face almost clearly.”

So no, she doesn’t look like she fell asleep yesterday. But she’s looking miraculously well for a woman who died 442 years ago.

Events like this one — and the recent confirmation by the diocese of Kansas City-St. Louis that Sister Wilhelmina of Gower, Mo., also seems to be incorrupt — are, without a doubt, signs that the spiritual is not so far away from the physical.

A few days ago, I was driving on the highway when I happened to look up at the clouds above me. There was an afternoon thunderstorm rolling in from the West, and sun rays were poking through the edges of tall purple clouds. For some reason, the child in me woke up.

Perhaps, I thought, the angels are coming down their golden ladders. We certainly need them now more than ever.

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