Diana Dondo
I arrived in Avila on the last evening train. It was summer and the heat was unbearable. I left my little bags at an inn on the Paseo del Rastro and went for a walk along the twelfth-century walls, retracing the footsteps of Saint Teresa of Avila.
She was proclaimed the first female Doctor of the Church on 27 September 1970, but during her lifetime she was considered a rebellious soul and was criticized for it.
The Audacity of a Saint: Finding Inspiration in Avila
There, I began to adore her even more. As I walked, found myself repeating over and over her famous line: “Have a holy audacity, for God helps the strong“, and that has been the theme of my life.
It’s likely due to my upbringing. I was raised in a family of seven siblings with parents who, with a rare combination of authoritarian tenderness, would say every time they got the chance: “Do it“, “Go for it”, “You can do it,” “Come on”, “What you don’t do, someone else will… maybe not like you’d have done it, but he will have done it himself,no less, “Come on, don’t keep to the back with the faint of heart… push your way to the front, and there, trust in God and fight!”
Still barefoot, sandals in hand, I walked along the wall to St. Vincent’s Gate and thought: “Daring and audacity must be cousins….”
Following Teresa’s Footsteps: A Pilgrimage for the Soul
That word audacity, which for many is synonymous with inopportune boldness, derives from the Vulgar Latin ausare, which we get from the verb Audere, meaning “to dare” – that is, to do or endure something terrible or difficult.
This is what the saint herself did: “With the desire to serve the Church, and confronted by the serious problems of her time, she did not limit herself to being a spectator of the reality that surrounded her. As a woman with health problems, she decided — she says — “to do the little which lay in my power, viz. to follow the evangelical counsels with all the perfection I could, and to induce the few nuns who are here to do the same”(The Way of Perfection, 1, 2). Thus began the Teresian reform, in which she asked her sisters not to waste time praying to God about “things of little importance” while “the world is on fire” (ibid., 1, 5)”. (Vatican, March 28, 2015 – Pope Francis)
By midnight, the streets of San Segundo were emptying and the bars were closing down. I found myself thirsty and tired, so I found a place with a few tables along the sidewalk to have some wine and tapas while I read from the lightest book I’d brought along on this trip. I opened it up, looking for something I had read a while back that fit that moment:
“What has to be done, is done… without hesitation, without more worrying. Otherwise, Teresa of Avila would not have been Saint Teresa: nor Iñigo of Loyola, Saint Ignatius. God and daring! ‘We want Christ to reign!’ “ (St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 11)
I downed the rest of my wine, as the tables were already being put away for the night. When I paid my bill, the waiter apologized for interrupting my reading. To make him complicit in my delay, I said: “Excuse me, I was so caught up in my reading that I didn’t notice the hour. But I am going to tell you the reason for my delay….”
Leaving a Mark: Sharing the Spirit of Saint Teresa
Along with my tip, I left him the bookmark I had brought with me, with a quote from St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer that said: “God owns the world, but he rents it out to the brave.”
But it’s not just the saints who have written about this much-discussed virtue. Among others, Winston Churchill lectured his soldiers saying: “The first quality that is needed is audacity,” and Virgil affirmed: “Fortune favors the bold.“
I walked back slowly, barefoot and ecstatic, humming a Castilian lullaby. I wished that night would never end.
When I arrived at the inn, the night watchman opened the door and told me:
– “You’ve taken quite a long walk! I see by your sandals in hand that you
walked it all…”
And I answered him:
– “It’s because I daringly walked to have tapas with your saint…!”
