St. Teresa of Ávila was a Carmelite nun, mystic, author, and theologian. At the age of thirty-nine, she began experiencing mystical visions of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, receiving guidance concerning the reform of the Carmelite Order. She held a special devotion to St. Joseph, having received a miraculous healing from him after a period of paralysis earlier in her life, and she encouraged all the sisters in her convents to adopt him as their patron. Teresa was canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV and later became the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope St. Paul VI in 1970.

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In her autobiography, she recounts one of her ecstasies in which the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph clothe and adorn her with grace:

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“On the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady I was in the church of the monastery of the Order of the glorious St. Dominic, thinking of the events of my wretched life, and of the many sins which in times past I had confessed in that house. I fell into so profound a trance, that I was as it were beside myself.

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I sat down, and it seemed as if I could neither see the Elevation nor hear Mass. This afterwards became a scruple to me. I thought then, when I was in that state, that I saw myself clothed with a garment of excessive whiteness and splendour. At first, I did not see who was putting it on me. Afterwards I saw our Lady on my right hand, and my father St. Joseph on my left, clothing me with that garment. I was given to understand that I was then cleansed from my sins.

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When I had been thus covered – I was filled with the utmost delight and joy – Our Lady seemed at once to take me by both hands. She said that I pleased her very much by being devoted to the glorious St. Joseph; that I might rely on it my desires about the monastery were accomplished, and that our Lord and they too would be greatly honoured in it; that I was to be afraid of no failure whatever. … She then seemed to throw around my neck a most splendid necklace of gold, from which hung a cross of great value. The stones and gold were so different from any in this world, that there is nothing wherewith to compare them. The beauty of them is such as can be conceived by no imagination, and no understanding can find out the materials of the robe.

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When they had been with me for a while, I in the greatest delight and joy, greater than I had ever had before, saw them, so it seemed, ascend to Heaven, attended by a great multitude of angels.”