Just when did Teresa of Ávila die?

Thanks to the Julian and Gregorian Calendars, it's a bit of a tricky question.

The night Teresa of Ávila died in 1582 was such a long night that it lasted for a good ten days!

Well, not really, even though it is true that before midnight on the night she died, it was October 4, 1582 — and after midnight it was October 15, 1582. That may seem quite a head-scratcher, so let me explain.

In Catholic Europe up until October 1582, the common calendar (the “Julian Calendar” named for Julius Caesar) had a slight inaccuracy in how it calculated leap years — but over time, this resulted in an increasing inaccuracy between the actual solar calendar (i.e., when the solstices and equinoxes occur) and the Julian Calendar. By the late sixteeenth century, this was about a 10-day discrepancy. So Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 instituted a calendar reform (which is why his calendar, still in use today, is the “Gregorian Calendar”), which required a recalibration of the days, now known as the “excision” of October 5-14, 1582. Those days simply did not exist!

Assuming she died before midnight (we may not be entirely sure — after all, accurate mechanical clocks were not widely used until the 17th century), she would have died on the 4th — but if she actually hung until until the wee hours of the morning, her date of passing would have been the 15th. Go figure. Once she became a saint, of course, she got her own feast day, which typically corresponds to the date of a saint’s death. As many saints as there are, dozens of saints might have to share the same feast day, but of course the most renowned saints typically are the ones most widely remembered. If Teresa’s day had been October 4, she would have shared it with another renowned saint (and mystic): Francis of Assisi. So it must have seemed prudent to the people at the Vatican, who are in charge of such things, to give her the “after midnight” date of her passing. Had it been any other year, that would have been October 5: but for a saint who died on the night of the excision, she gets October 15.

Sure, this is fun trivia, right up there with trying to figure out if Julian of Norwich had her visions on May 8 or 13. But for us who live more than 440 years later, it’s just a subtle reminder that seen from the perspective of eternity, this or that date (or this or that year) isn’t so important. We like to remember loved ones on special days, and that’s fine — my wife and I remember our daughter Rhiannon every year on the anniversary of her passing (August 30). But it’s helpful to remember that love, and memory, need no special date — for love pours out into eternity, and in eternity, everything is now.

We live now.

We love now.

We are one with God… now.