St Teresa of Avila Parish is an esoteric, Gnostic, Christian spiritual community of the Apostolic Johannite Church seeking to help all walk the path to the discovery of the Divine both within themselves and within the world around them.
Centred in Brisbane the Parish serves the southern part of Queensland with meetings being held throughout the year in Brisbane, Maryborough and Toowoomba.
We fully embrace the beauty and mystery of the living Christian tradition: candles and incense, ancient rites such as baptism and the eucharist and robed male and female priests. We also delight in the freedoms to choose how we understand our tradition and to explore other paths that are among the particular gifts of our modern world.
Your journey to come to personal knowledge of the Divine is yours alone but it is our experience that we all benefit from companions on the road, good books to read, educated conversation and a place to gather with others to share the fruits of our journey in prayer, praise and blessing.
We draw inspiration from many sources: the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, the Corpus Hermeticum, and Gnostic Scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Book of John. We understand these texts as inspiration, poetry and symbolism, rather than making a literal reading of them as books of rules.
St Teresa’s is a welcoming community that embraces all and rejects all forms of discrimination. No matter where your journey has taken you be sure you’ll be welcomed at our meetings as a fellow traveller on the journey of life