St. Teresa Margaret Redi, also known as Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart, is one of seven discalced Carmelite religious women who has been declared a saint. She was an intensely spiritual and private religious, who devoted her life to quiet prayer in service of the love of God.

Teresa was born in the Italian city of Arezzo in 1747, to a wealthy, noble family. Her baptismal name was Anna Maria Redi. At the age of nine, she was sent to a Benedictine boarding school in Florence. Her course was decided by the example of one of her older schoolmates. One of the girls who had graduated from the boarding school several years before approached one of Anna Maria’s teachers to thank her for the education and the Christian formation, as she was entering the Carmelites. Anna Maria saw the deep joy on this young woman’s face and instantly knew that she, too, desired to enter the Carmelites. Anna Maria, like many saints on fire with God, decided to pursue joy.

In the spring of 1764, Anna Maria returned home and began to live as a Carmelite in her own home, to practice the disciplines of the order. That September, she applied to the Monastery of St. Teresa in Florence. She was admitted that November. She took the name Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart and professed her vows in March of 1766.

Teresa was assigned the role of community nurse, and she tenderly cared for the suffering sisters in her care, particularly those experiencing mental illness. Teresa devoted herself to caring for her fellow sisters and cultivating her robust interior life. As a Carmelite sister, Teresa maintained the disposition of joy that drew her to the order, despite rebukes and harsh treatment. She continually repeated the phrase from 1 John 4:8: “God is love,” and received deep insight into it in prayer.

Teresa died at the age of twenty-three, on March 11, 1770, in the midst of an outbreak of a disease in the monastery. She continued caring for other ill nuns until she reached her deathbed. Teresa’s body, swollen from disease, at the time of her funeral, had miraculously been restored to its healthy form.

St. Teresa Margaret Redi, mystic and Carmelite, who fully embodied the truth that “God is love”—pray for us!