top of page
MOUNT CARMEL
CLOISTERED CONVENT
St. Teresa of Los Andes
Teresa of the Andes was born at 1352 Rosas Street in Santiyago, Chile, on July 13, 1900. Her parents were Miguel Fernandez Jarequemada and Lucia Solar Armstrong. Two days later, on the vigil of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the little girl was baptized in the Church of St. Ann and given the name Juana Enriqueta Josephina de los Sagrados Corazones. But in her family and among her friends she was always affectionately called Juanita.
Juanita was the fourth child in the family. Lucia, the oldest, was Juanita's senior by 7 years. Her brother Miguel was 4 years older; her brother Luis 2 years older. A sister, Juana, died just a few hours after birth. Rebecca, her other sister, was born a year and 8 months after Juanita. Ignacio was the youngest.
The family was a wealthy farming family and could afford every possible comfort. Juanita wrote in her Diary, "Jesus did not desire me to be born poor like himself; I was born in the midst of riches, spoiled by all." Her family surrounded her with human as well as religious love and affection. They possessed a deep spirit of faith. Her home environment was Christian in every way, offering the help she needed to acquire authentic religious feelings and sentiments that were to remain with her throughout life.
Describing her own life in a journal she called her Intimate Diary, she writes:
My life is divided into two periods: (the first is) more or less from the time I attained the age of reason until my first Communion. Jesus filled me with favor both in the first period as well as in the second, from my first Communion till now. Or better still, till my soul enters the harbor of Carmel.
From the time Juanita was 6 years old, her mother and her aunt Juana took her to daily Mass. From there on she began to plead with her mother and aunt to approach the altar rail, but each time she was given the same reply: "You are too young." In 1907 she became a day student at the school of the Religious of the Sacred Heart located at Alameda, the most famous street in Santiago. Juanita displayed fits of anger in her early years when she didn't get her own way. From the time, she prepared for her first holy Communion, the young girl tried even harder to overcome her faults.
The long-awaited day of her First Communion was one of the most glorious of her life. On September 11, 1910 Juanita received the sacrament of Eucharist together with 29 other girls. She wrote in her diary "It was a cloudless day","the happiest of my life." Words are quite naturally powerless to express adequately what transpired in the depths oof her soul "when she heard His(Jesus') sweet voice for the first time." From that day till the end of her life the Eucharist remained her preferred devotion, for in the Eucharist Jesus showed her that He took her to be His own. She wrote to Father Falgueras SJ that:
From the time I made my first Communion, Our Lord spoke to me after Communion. He told me things that I never dreamed of, and even when I asked Him, He told me things that were to happen and they actually happened.
After Juanita's death, her older brother Luis wrote in a published biography of his sister that "after her first Communion all noticed changes in Juanita's conduct.
"My life is composed of two things;
suffering and love."
Juanita was the fourth child in the family. Lucia, the oldest, was Juanita's senior by 7 years. Her brother Miguel was 4 years older; her brother Luis 2 years older. A sister, Juana, died just a few hours after birth. Rebecca, her other sister, was born a year and 8 months after Juanita. Ignacio was the youngest.
The family was a wealthy farming family and could afford every possible comfort. Juanita wrote in her Diary, "Jesus did not desire me to be born poor like himself; I was born in the midst of riches, spoiled by all." Her family surrounded her with human as well as religious love and affection. They possessed a deep spirit of faith. Her home environment was Christian in every way, offering the help she needed to acquire authentic religious feelings and sentiments that were to remain with her throughout life.
Describing her own life in a journal she called her Intimate Diary, she writes:
My life is divided into two periods: (the first is) more or less from the time I attained the age of reason until my first Communion. Jesus filled me with favor both in the first period as well as in the second, from my first Communion till now. Or better still, till my soul enters the harbor of Carmel.
bottom of page