[4] At the age of fourteen, she met the great Carmelite reformer, Teresa of Ávila, after which she felt the calling to monastic life.

At this monastery, she joined two of her paternal aunts who were already professed nuns in the community which follow the more austere First Rule of Saint Clare.

Authorisation for the transfer to the Philippines was delayed by the inconveniences and difficulties posed by the Council of the Indies due to problems of finance and patronage.

Franciscan Pedro Matías mentioned the holy nun of Santa Isabel to a wealthy couple, who decided to become patrons of a convent, provided Jerónima was the abbess.

[4] Friar José de Santa María, was named Procurator to arrange the necessary royal travel permits and other financial matters for the venture, while Jerónima herself was appointed as foundress and first abbess of the Philippine monastery.

[1] Accompanied by two friars and two male servants, on Ash Wednesday of 1621, Jerónima and her group left Mexico by road to cross the mountains by mule to Acapulco.

Sor Jerónima's determination to maintain the purity of the rule in all its rigour, renouncing dowries and the presence of handmaids or servants of the nuns in the convent to preserve poverty, and her desire to admit mestizo or indigenous women along with the Spaniards, also brought her into conflict with the rectors of her own order, who in 1623 deprived her of her position as abbess.

Madre Jerónima had requested permission to establish a convent in Pandacan for native women, but had been overruled by higher authorities both in the church and government.

When the Franciscan superiors denied her request, the nuns at the Royal Monastery of Santa Clara decided to send her to their new house in Macao, which was outside the priests' jurisdiction.

Learning of this, the Franciscan guardian in the Philippines directed that she should receive the habit en route so that both superiors could disavow responsibility if questioned.

[1] Modern-day photographs and images of Jerónima de la Asunción are replicas of the depiction by the court painter Diego Velázquez.

These notes were partially collected in the biography dedicated to her by her confessor, Fray Ginés de Quesada, martyred in Japan in 1636, whose manuscript, dated 1634, remained unpublished until 1717 when it was issued in connection with efforts to promote her beatification.