Letter (number unidentified). To Doña Isabel de Jimena at Segovia', Convent of the Incarnation, Avila, beginning of 1572

Congratulations on her vocation and thanks for the large dowry she was to bring.

JESUS!

MAY the Holy Spirit ever be with you and grant you grace to realise how much you owe to God, for in the midst of such great dangers as youth, wealth, and liberty. He has given you light to wish to relinquish them, so that penance, enclosure, and poverty, which terrify other souls, have shown you the value of the religious life and the illusion and loss that might have ensued from living in the world. May God be blessed and praised for all things! This has made it easy for you to convince me that you have a charaóler which fits you for becoming a daughter of our Lady by entering this holy Order of hers. God grant you may so progress in holy desires and deeds that I may never have reason to blame Father Juan de Leon who gave such a satisfactory report of you that I ask no more. My joy at your being likely to become a great saint would make me willing to receive you with nothing but yourself.

God repay you for the generous gift you have resolved to bestow upon the convent you enter! You may well feel happy at following our Lord's counsel to give yourself to Him, and your property to the poor for love of Him. Yet, after the grace you have received from Him, I think you could do no less. To have done all you could is no small thing, nor will your reward be niggardly.

As you have read our Constitutions and Rule, I will only say that, if you persevere in your determination, you may enter whichever convent you choose and prefer, as I wish to please my Father, Juan de Leon, by leaving the decision to you. To tell the truth, I should like you to take the habit in whichever convent I am staying at, as I

Jesus. St. Teresa made her Sub- Prioress at the new foundation at Sego-via and subsequently Prioress of Palencia. While a novice at Salamanca, she sang the song which threw St. Teresa into the ecstasy after which the Saint wrote her well-known poem with the refrain: I die because I do not die!' {Minor ¡Vorks, poems 2, 3, and 36).

very much wish to know you. May our Lord dired: all things as may be most for His service and glory ! Amen.

Your unworthy servant,

Teresa de Jesus, Carmelite.