Teresa suffered various health scares, read some seminal works on mental prayer, had mystical experiences, and slowly became convinced that her convent was too lax. The Church and Christ demanded more. She had developed the practice in examining her conscience to not just weigh her virtues and vices but to consider all the graces, all the good, and all the holiness God desired of her which she had impeded. Inspired by the great reformers of her century, many of them fellow Spaniards, Teresa decided to found a new Carmelite convent. There was fierce opposition from within her own convent and from the Carmelite Order more generally. Her odyssey of reform, begun in the mid-1550s, bore fruit when her first convent opened in Ávila in 1562. Her sisters wore no shoes (the meaning of the word “Discalced”), were limited to thirteen per convent, and would accept neither dowries nor endowments. The Discalced Carmelites were to be utterly poor, to fast, to mortify, and to pray intensely. But Teresa also wanted no gloomy saints. She practiced, and expected her nuns to emulate, being ever more sociable as she progressed in holiness. Everyone liked Teresa, and she liked to be liked.
Teresa spent her last twenty years founding new convents as she traveled throughout Spain, all the while living in the most primitive conditions. By middle age she had earned a reputation for holiness, for legitimate mysticism, for affability, and for total obedience to the Church. She lived what she demanded of others. She led by example. And she did it all with a cheerful disposition and a rich personality that overcame deep-seated opposition. The Discalced Carmelites were given their own Spanish province in 1580 and were recognized as a distinct Order in 1594, twelve years after Teresa’s death. On a banner day in 1622, Teresa was canonized with Saints Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francis Xavier. Teresa was the first female non-martyr to have her feast day extended to the universal Church, and due to the profundity of her mystical writings, she was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Saint Paul VI in 1970.
