Many women throughout salvation history have represented signs of holiness, love, and service to God. But only four of them hold the distinct title of Doctor of the Church. The Church gives this title to those who have advanced the Church’s knowledge of our faith through their research, study, and writing.
Each of these women lived in times of tribulation for the church. These were times of the Avignon Papacy, the Spanish Inquisition, the Black Plague (Bubonic Plaque), Jansenism and at different times utterly corrupt clergy. Despite it all, each persevered through years of adversity, sickness, and ridicule both from inside and outside of the Church. And most importantly, these courageous women never lost hope!
St. Hildegard of Bingen is probably the least well-known in this list. She was a Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, and a fount of knowledge in many areas. She was proficient in philosophy, musical composition, herbology, medieval literature, cosmology, medicine, biology, theology, and natural history.
From a young age, she experienced ecstatic visions of light and sound, which she interpreted as messages from God. These visions were authenticated by ecclesiastical authorities, who encouraged her to write her experiences down. She would become famous in her own lifetime for her visions, wisdom, writings, and musical compositions, and her counsel was sought by nobility throughout Europe. She refused to be defined by the patriarchal hierarchy of the Church and, although she abided by its strict constraints, pushed the established boundaries for women.
St. Hildegard was known for her many visions (a magnificent fusion of divine inspiration and human intellect). And she recorded them in writing, creating a book called Scivias an illustrated work describing 26 religious visions she experienced. She died in 1179 and was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI. Later that year, he declared her a Doctor of the Church.
“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around Him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.” — Saint Hildegard
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St. Therese of Lisieux, perhaps the most well-known, had a simple yet powerful message that still resonates in the hearts of millions today. Her “Little Way” of allowing God to work through her life has become a guiding light for the faithful. Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin was born on January 2, 1873. According to her mother, little Therese was blond, blue-eyed, affectionate, stubborn, and alarmingly precocious. She could throw a giant-sized tantrum and yet her bubbling laughter could make a gargoyle smile. She was a nervous child, but she was very good, very intelligent, and remembered everything.
Through it all, however, Therese thrived on the love which surrounded her in her Christian home. It was there, where prayer, the liturgy, and practical good works formed the basis of her own ardent love of Jesus – her desire to please Him and the Virgin Mary.
At the age of 15, she became a French Carmelite nun. St. Theresa is remembered for her “Little Way” of doing small things with great love. She was called the “Little Flower” because she always thought of herself as a little flower in God’s Garden. Her autobiography, Story of a Soul, is considered a classic and it shows us how to increase our trust in God and live in simplicity and humility.
She died in 1897 believing that her life was really just beginning for God, promising to spend her heaven doing good on earth. Her final words were, “Oh, my God, I love you!”
Within months, the Carmelites at Lisieux began to receive reports of “favors and graces” attributed to Therese. “Story of a Soul” had been published in October 1898 and pilgrims began to visit her gravesite at Carmel.
The cause for beatification and canonization grew at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thousands of letters poured into the Carmel monastery in Lisieux. Her canonization took place on May 17, 1925, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome with 500,000 crowding St. Peter’s Square.
In 1997, St. Therese was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II, making her the second Carmelite nun to receive that distinction after St. Teresa of Avila. Pope John Paul II stated, ” Theresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is the youngest of all the “Doctors of the Church” but her ardent spiritual journey shows such maturity, and the insights of faith expressed in her writings are so vast and profound that they deserve a place among the great spiritual masters.”
“For me, prayer is a burst from my heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy.” — Saint. Theresa of Lisieux
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St. Teresa of Avila was born in the Castilian city of Avila during the year 1515, the third child in a family descended from Jewish merchants who had converted to Christianity during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Her father Alphonsus had become an ardent Catholic, with a collection of spiritual books of the type his daughter would later compose herself.
When Teresa was 14, her mother died, causing the girl a profound grief that prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother. Along with this good resolution, however, she also developed immoderate interests in reading popular fiction (consisting, at that time, mostly of medieval tales of knighthood) and she was quite vain and spent much time on her appearance trying to look pretty. Alphonsus decided his teenage daughter needed a change of environment and sent her to be educated in a convent of Augustinian nuns. Teresa found their life dull at first, but soon came to some understanding of its spiritual advantages.
Illness forced her to leave the convent during her second year. But the influence of her devout uncle Peter, along with her reading of the letters of the Church Father St. Jerome, convinced Teresa that the surest road to salvation lay in forsaking marriage, property, and worldly pleasures completely. Against the will of her father, who wanted her to postpone the decision, she joined the Carmelite Order. Teresa became a professed member of the order at age 20, but soon developed a serious illness that forced her to return home
As her health returned, however, Teresa lapsed into a more routine prayer life. While she remained an obedient Carmelite, she would not re-establish her close personal connection to God for almost twenty years. When she was nearly 40, however, Teresa found herself dramatically called back to the practice of contemplative mental prayer. She experienced profound changes within her own soul, and remarkable visions that seemed to come from God. Under the direction of her confessors, Teresa wrote about some of these experiences in an autobiography (The Way of Perfection), that she completed in 1565. This revolution in her spiritual life enabled Teresa to play a significant role in the renewal of the Church that followed the Council of Trent. She proposed a return of the Carmelites to their original rule of life, a simple and austere form of monasticism – founded on silence and solitude – that had received papal approval in the 12th century and was believed to date back to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.
Together with her close collaborator, the priest and writer (later canonized as Saint John of the Cross), she founded what is known today as the Order of Discalced Carmelites – “discalced,” meaning barefoot, symbolizing the simplicity to which they chose to return the order after a period of corruption. The reform met with fierce opposition but resulted in the founding of 30 monasteries during her life.
St. Teresa of Avila died on Oct. 15, 1582. She was canonized on March 22, 1622, along with three of her greatest contemporaries: St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Philip Neri. In 1970, Pope St. Paul VI proclaimed St. Teresa as one of the first two-woman Doctors of the Church, along with 14th century Dominican St. Catherine of Siena.
“Christ has no body now, but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion into the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses the world.” – Saint Teresa of Avila
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St. Catherine of Siena, born in Siena, Italy, was the 24th of 25 children. From her earliest years, Catherine was blessed with visions. She assumed austere sacrificial penances and consecrated her virginity to God at the age of 7. When she was 12, her parents wished to marry her off. She, however, wanted to enter the religious life and did everything she could to impress upon them that her only interests were prayer, sacrifices, and the things of God. She was treated horribly in return. Her parents saddled her with the hardest labor and chores at home. She was the subject of humiliations, contempt, and insults from her sisters. She withstood these adversities with a joy and sweetness that showed she had heroic patience and love of crosses.
Catherine became a Third Order Dominican at the age of 18. She continued to receive mystical experiences or “spiritual espousals,” as they were called. She was incredibly compassionate towards those in need of mercy: the poor, those suffering the worst diseases, and those in need of conversion.
Catherine was a prolific letter writer. At least 400 of her letters have survived. Leaders of church and state regularly sought out her wisdom, even though she was never formally educated and only learned to read and write as an adult. She wrote only one book, Dialogue, which is an ongoing account of her intimate conversational relationship with the Lord whom she loved so intimately. She considered herself espoused to Him.
St. Catherine wrote to popes, kings, and other notable persons, lecturing them on their moral and religious duties in the midst of the confusion and strife of the 14th century. In particular, she insisted that Pope Gregory abandon the papal residence in Avignon, France, and return the headquarters of the Holy See to Rome, the city of St. Peter. The respect she gained, from the heads of republics to the pope, helped guide the Church during an era of crisis.
Companions of Catherine regularly noted how she maintained her joy, even in suffering, and her femininity, even in her dogged and courageous contending with Church leaders! Her witness of life and her extraordinary letters became a great influence on another woman hero of the faith, Teresa of Avila. Teresa of Avila credited her own call to spiritual progress (in addition to the influence of the Lord Himself) to the prayers and example of Catherine.
At the age of thirty-three, the same age at which Jesus offered Himself on the altar of the Cross, Catherine was called home to the Father. She was canonized a saint by Pope Pius II in 1461. Pius IX declared her, along with Francis of Assisi, the second patron of Italy. In 1970, Pope Paul VI proclaimed Giacomo and Lapa Benincasa’s twenty-fifth child, never formally educated, a “Doctor of the Church.”
“Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” — Saint Catherine of Siena
Pope Paul VI was the innovator in recognizing the teaching authority of these women. In 1970 he declared Catherine of Siena a Doctor of the Church, representing all laywomen, and Teresa of Avila a Doctor of the Church, representing all religious women. St. Thérèse followed in 1997, and Hildegard in 2012.
These brilliant women, each different in her own right, share remarkable qualities and contributions. They were all holy, heroic, and determined women who significantly advanced the Church’s understanding of faith. Their stories have a universal meaning that speaks to our own time. They each took the initiative, based on their relationship with God, to launch themselves into the life of the Church. All were called and loved by God. and it was love that was at the center of their lives.
These remarkable Women of Hope inspire us with their wisdom, devotion and intellectual contributions that show us how to live in dark and troubled times—not unlike our own—without losing hope in God and his goodness.
