God Is Love: Saint Teresa Margaret - Her Life

This 18th-century Italian Carmelite has often been called “the Little Flower of Florence.” Like her French counterpart a century later, Teresa Margaret Redi entered the convent as a teenager (17) and died young (22). But her short life, like that of St. Thérèse, was filled with small acts of kindness for her sisters and all those with whom she came in contact, and with a burning love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.


If you haven’t discovered her before, this is an ideal time to read St. Teresa Margaret’s inspiring life.


St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart was born into a large devout family in Arezzo, Italy in 1747. From the earliest days of her childhood, Anna Maria was filled with a deep love of God, questioning the adults around her as to “Who is God?” Even then she was dissatisfied with answers given her. Only the contemplative life of a Carmelite nun could begin to quench her thirst to know and give herself completely to God. Her entire life was driven be the desire to “return love for love.” She entered the Carmelite convent in Florence at the age of seventeen, advanced rapidly in holiness, and died an extraordinary death at twenty-two. Reflecting on her death, her spiritual director remarked, “She could not have lived very much longer, so great was the strength of the love of God in her.”


The cornerstone of St. Teresa Margaret’s spirituality was to remain hidden, to appear just like everyone else in spite of her heroic virtue. To our loss, she has remained very much hidden even after her death. Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen commented, “This is an odd fact, for we do not hesitate to rank her among the primary figures who represent the glory of Carmel— among Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of the Child Jesus.”