When we wrote on the life of St. Teresa in our book Saints and other Powerful Women in the Church, little did we think that we would, some day, be using her visions of heaven, hell, and purgatory to affirm these important truths of our Catholic faith.

As we have said so many times, the lives of the saints are not about old bones, long gone and forgotten, but alive in the lives they led, in their living examples of holiness and virtue for us to follow, in the path they have paved by the teachings they have left behind, as alive in a smaller degree as the word of God found in holy Scripture.

As we delved into the many books on heaven, hell, and purgatory and combed holy Scripture trying to discern what the Lord wanted in this book, we felt a haunting urgency to forge on, despite many obstacles placed in our way, the kind of attacks mentioned by St. Teresa in her book Vida (Life), often good things or good people with good intentions.

But as we discover, day after day, in our walk with the Lord and his Mother, when the Lord wants something done, he will do anything and everything to have it come to pass, not excluding using our guardian angels to persistently plant his thoughts and will in our minds. And so here we are, and we are, once again, writing about one of our most loved and precious saints and doctors of the Church.

At the time of writing this book, there are only two women doctors of the Church - St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena (both of whom Bob and Penny have written about in their book Saints and Other Powerful Women in the Church).