Juanita
Fernandez Solar was born at Santiago, Chile, on July 13, 1900. From her
adolescence she was devoted to Christ. She entered the Monastery of the
Discalced Carmelite Nuns at Los Andes on May 7, 1919 where she was given the
name of Teresa of Jesus. She died on April 12 of the following year having made
her profession. She was beatified by John Paul II on April 3, 1987 at Santiago,
Chile, and proposed as a model for young people. She is the first Chilean and
first member of the Teresian Carmel in Latin America to be canonized.
“….Are you
perhaps afraid that the abyss of greatness of God and that of your nothingness
cannot be united? There is love in him. His passionate love made him take flesh
in order that by seeing a Man-God we would not be afraid to draw near him. This
passionate love made him become bread in order to assimilate our nothingness
and make it disappear into his infinite being. This passionate love made him
give his life by dying on the Cross. ….” Fragment taken of the spiritual writing
of St Teresa of Jesus of Los Andes (Diario y cartas, Los Andes, 1983). After ‘Discalced
Carmelite proper offices’.
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