St Teresa of Avila

There are times when I just want to weep when Hollywood misses the greater story altogether.
In Ron Howard's film, Angels and Demons, based on the book by Dan Brown, of the Da Vinci Code fame, one of the items in the great hunt is Bernini's magnificent sculpture, Ecstasy of St Teresa.
In the film, the marble statue holds a clue to the Illuminati mystery. In real life, the statue depicts an event that is far more incredible than any Hollywood script writer could dream up.
Bernini's sculpture depicts the transverberation event of St. Teresa.
Transverberation is a church mystic term for a Seraph's assault. Where St. Teresa's heart is pierced with a dart of love by a Seraph angel.
"It will happen that while the soul is inflamed with the Love of God, it will feel that a seraph is assailing it by means of an arrow or dart which is all afire with love. And the seraph pierces and in an instant cauterizes this soul, which, like a red-hot coal, or better a flame, is already enkindled. The soul is converted into an immense fire of Love. Few persons have reached these heights." - St. John of the Cross
St. Teresa died in 1582. Her body was buried in a wooden coffin. After nine months it was exhumed and to everyone's amazement, though her clothes were decaying, her body was incorrupt. While the Carmelite nuns reclothed her a delightful perfume spread throughout the monastery. Later, her heart was removed to be enclosed in a crystal vessel and placed in a jeweled silver reliquary. When this was being done they beheld a glorious and wonderful sight: a wound from the angel's dart was visible! It can still be seen today at the Carmelite Monastery of Alba de Tormes in Spain. Her heart has kept it's color and since the nineteenth century three sharp thorns are visible at the base of the heart.
In 1970 Pope Paul VI named Teresa of Avila as the first woman Doctor of the Church. Padre Pio was the latest mystic to experience transverberation. He also experienced the stigmata as well as intense demonic attacks. Padre Pio passed away in the late 1960s.