Reflecting and Responding
Teresa of Avila
Entering Christ’s Mansion
Consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal in which there are many rooms.
THE INTERIOR CASTLE
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY WAS ONE OF the most spectacular periods in the history of Christianity. It was filled with calamity on every front. The social cohesion of Europe was blowing apart. The long decline of the Roman Catholic Church was culminating in the Protestant Reformation, and monasteries all across Europe were closing. Political alliances never dreamed possible were forming. Some of the most profound prose and poetry in world literature surfaced in this period. Whole new economic industries developed, and entire social empires collapsed. And all of the tensions ravaging Europe were present in the church.
Luther, Calvin and Zwingli captivated the underclass and gave meaning and direction to the longings of many to be free of religious oppression. Ignatius of Loyola countered with some of the most profound global initiatives in modern Christian history. Together these countervailing forces created the fertile seedbed from which sprung fresh new advances in the spiritual life.
Eventually, the warring factions settled their differences and entire countries entered into new religious alliances. Sweden and Norway became Protestant, England became Anglican, while France and Spain remained staunchly Roman Catholic. In the midst of this uproar, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in 1515, just two years before Luther launched the Reformation. She would die in 1582 as Teresa of Avila after catapulting the threefold way onto the world stage and displaying her own religious genius.
Teresa’s work is best understood from three key texts. Her Life of St. Teresa is considered the finest spiritual autobiography written in the time period between Augustine’s Confessions and Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. Her second work, The Way of Perfection, deals with the life of prayer in the context of community and amplifies how we live out of the highest state of the spiritual life: the life of union or perfect communion with God. Her final major writing, The Interior Castle, plots our road map for the spiritual life. Its rare ability to explain the nature and destiny of our life with God makes it an especially important work.
The Genius of Teresa
The genius of Teresa’s writings is her ability to conceptualize the different phases of the spiritual journey. Her works define seven distinct stages or “dwelling places” in our life with God. As Teresa notes, the ultimate goal of this journey is spiritual intimacy with God.
The Interior Castle follows the threefold order of Dionysius, using the analogy of a castle—we enter the inner chamber of our soul to experience enduring intimacy with Jesus Christ. The first, second and third dwelling places focus on the elements of purgation or purification. The fourth dwelling place transitions to illumination. The fifth, sixth and seventh dwelling places focus on union and perfect communion with God. For Teresa, this union is not a matter of intellect but of a life committed to the love of God. As we progress through each mansion or dwelling place, we achieve unbroken momentum as our soul is united with Christ.
The First Dwelling Place: Entering In
Teresa begins by focusing on the beauty and possibility of every human soul. The destiny of each one of us is to live eternally with God. By effort, we can enter into this life and make great progress if we so desire. “There is nothing comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity,” Teresa writes. “Indeed our intellects, however keen, can hardly comprehend it just as they cannot comprehend God.”
As we enter into this life, we begin to see the radiant majesty of God’s invitation and our glorious opportunity. “Let us consider that this castle has many dwelling places; some up above, others down below, others to the sides; and in the center and middle is the main dwelling place where the very secret exchanges between God and the soul take place.” To arrive at the center room requires that we enter the castle and the doorway to this whole remarkable adventure through prayer. In fact, every level requires a different type of prayer as we move deeper in our life with God.
But the main point initially is to decide to enter. To leave the world behind is to choose to embrace life with God. It is to turn away from external preoccupation. Eventually we will see the proper place of the external life, but for now it is an impediment to our life with God.
Teresa wants us to understand this perspective. “There are souls so ill,” she observes, “and so accustomed to being involved in external matters, that there is no remedy. They are now so used to dealing with the insects and vermin that are in this wall surrounding the castle that they have become almost like them.”
It is in the first dwelling place that we entrust our soul to God. We realize we are created in his image and must recover our fallen nature. This requires that we turn our back on seeking happiness and contentment in the ways of the world and seek to find it in God. As a first step, we cultivate virtue.
Unfortunately, not everyone who enters the castle continues their journey with God. Many start, but few finish. Teresa tells us why. “During the period of a month they will sometimes pray, but their minds are then filled with business matters that ordinarily occupy them. They are so attracted to these things that they are not able to proceed correctly.” But those who persevere experience enough of the presence of God to be drawn toward the second dwelling place.
The Second Dwelling Place: Continuing On
Our entry into the second dwelling place comes through perseverance. Even after we begin the spiritual journey, we can still succumb to the temptation of believing that the world provides the contentment we seek. In this case we are like the seed sown on hard soil that sprouts but quickly withers because it cannot take root (Mt 13).
In the second dwelling place, external aids to God’s grace increase our power to resist the ways and distractions of the world. Sermons, edifying conversations with other Christians, spiritual disciplines and verbal prayer are only a few of the aids that strengthen our resolve and ground our life in God. These aids fill our mind with thoughts of God and help us obey and follow him.
To remain in the second dwelling place requires determination. Having discerned the correct path, we have to decide to continue in it. Our natural faculties war within us. Reason persuades us that the pleasures of this life will satisfy our eternal longings. We must remain strong in our choice to progress forward and upward in the spiritual life.
We are assisted in this process in the second dwelling place when we realize both the strengths and limitations of our natural faculties of memory, intelligence and will. Memory helps us remember the great saints of the past who lived this life and give us confidence that it ends as we hope. Our will is motivated to love as we experience love, and as we enter into the communion of saints, we choose to enjoy fellowship with them. Finally, our intellect helps us see that we will not find a more hopeful destination. This convinces us that the upward path will lead to enduring intimacy with God. It is here that we conclude that our highest goal in life is to bring our will into perfect conformity with the will of God.
The Third Dwelling Place: Learning Respect
When we enter the third dwelling place, we learn to fear and respect God. It is here that we practice love of neighbor as an act of obedience to God.
Teresa is mindful that we are never free of venial sins—those sins that arise in our mind and cause normal disruptions. But she does believe we can move beyond the power they wield over us. The third dwelling place is where this process begins. We begin to recognize that forsaking the things of the world is not enough. We must develop humility. True humility awakens when we recognize how strong our desire is for God and yet how distant our goal and how often we are unable to attain it.
Humility also develops as a result of being in relationship with other people. At its core, humility is a recognition that for all the gifts God has given us, we still do not have them all. We are then able to recognize the gifts God has given to others. Humility is the recognition of our own limitations.
The Fourth Dwelling Place: The Majesty of God’s Love
Moving from purgation to illumination, we develop a new awareness of God as we enter into contemplative prayer and experience a deeper reality of God’s love. This is the point of God’s grand entry into our spiritual journey. Our longing and desire for God gives way as his power overwhelms us with the majesty of his love.
We desire to please God. The outward disciplines that have dominated our life yield to inward disciplines of prayer and devotion. In Teresa’s mind, it is at this point that we no longer need discursive reason. We have found enough reason to believe. Now we accept the truths of God as we discover them and begin to gain a deeper understanding of the ways of Christ.
As we seek God we begin to experience his presence in real and profound ways. Our spiritual experiences of God are now on a completely different order. They are like an underground stream that fills a bottomless well.
Teresa offers a wonderful analogy at this point. Our spiritual experiences come either from God’s aqueduct through elaborate disciplines and ardent effort, or from a spiritual reservoir deep within us that is directly supplied by God alone. Either way, water is always flowing from the stream of God’s eternal supply. Both water from the aqueduct (effort) and water from the reservoir (God alone) sustain us in our spiritual journey.
How then can we access this living water? We begin, as mentioned above, by cultivating true humility and recognizing all God has done for us that we do not deserve. Next, we move beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses and our faculties. This is not easy. We have become so accustomed to trusting our senses that moving beyond their power is nearly impossible. Think about how often we enjoy worship because it “ministers” to us. What we mean is that something has stimulated our senses in a way we enjoyed—a mark of a spiritual dilettante.
Still, it is genuinely difficult to move beyond reliance on our natural faculties. Our disposition to trust memory, intelligence and will is so strong that we can barely conceive of not relying on them. Yet we must throw off their power if we are to make progress in our life with God. Essentially, our senses and faculties have developed habits that keep us from loving God fully. Breaking these habits is necessary if we are to move into a deeper life with God.
Fortunately, God does not hold our wanderings against us. He invites us back and draws us close over and over again. Through prayer, we begin to experience God’s presence in new and profound ways. As our life with God deepens, we recognize the right use of all our natural capacities. We begin to recognize how God works.
The work God performs on our soul is easy and light (Mt 11:28-30). It is meant to lead us into greater understanding. It utilizes the intellect but moves beyond it, recognizing its natural limits. Ultimately, God draws us beyond the power of our own selves and into his loving embrace.
The Fifth Dwelling Place: The Prayer of Union
At this point a critical change occurs. The fifth dwelling place moves beyond our natural senses and faculties and relies on our spiritual understanding. Teresa emphasizes that at this level we are no longer capable of human understanding. We are entering the territory where our intuitions of God exceed the limits of our rational thoughts of him—where, as Pascal notes, “the heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.”
Here we glimpse our first tangible understanding of union with God, but we are not able to articulate it. We do, however, enter into a deeper life of prayer and contemplation, experiencing a closeness to God that manifests itself in a deeper love of our neighbor. None of our natural faculties—memory, intelligence or will—work any longer. We recognize that union with God will satisfy us in a way nothing else in this world can.
But how can we be sure we are in a deeper place? We know because God provides the inward testimony of his Spirit. As we move beyond our natural senses and faculties, our capacity for inward knowing illumines our life with God. Teresa shows how we move beyond the prayer of recollection and the prayer of quiet into the prayer of union. It is through the prayer of union that we develop a longing to be joined eternally with God. She borrows from the life of the silkworm to make her point.
Our soul grows from all the good work of the community of faith: by confession, reading good books, listening to provocative sermons and observing the lives of the great saints that have gone before us. But like the silkworm, our soul is destined for something more. Just as the silkworm must change into a butterfly, so our soul must change in order to be united with God. As this metamorphosis occurs, we prepare to make the last significant push in our spiritual journey.
The Sixth Dwelling Place: Inward Hearing
Next we realize that our ultimate goal is perpetual communion with God. We are so deeply touched by God’s love that we feel inward pain when we are not in his presence. We long for perfect union but are not yet able to sustain it. Teresa admits that it took her forty years to arrive at this place.
In the sixth dwelling place our soul experiences inward hearing—we recognize the voice of Christ speaking to us directly. What we are hearing is Christ calling to us from the seventh dwelling place, encouraging us to keep coming toward him so that we can fully embrace him.
We now begin to experience a longing that Teresa describes as a “loving pain.” As we hear Christ’s voice and experience this pain, we also become vulnerable to being led astray. How then do we tell when something is from God and when it is not? In one of the most fascinating sections of the entire work, Teresa offers clear guidance in how we can distinguish the voice of God from that of the devil or our imagination.
When the leading is from God, Teresa writes, it comes through words that are very different from our common speech. Leading from God comforts us and restores community. It lingers a long time and becomes an ever more weighty concern. When the leading is from God it also brings a sense of certitude, peace and inner delight. It produces a profound breakthrough and fresh new insight. Our Spirit-led, trusted friends confirm the leading, and our thoughts surrounding the leading dwell on God alone.
Ultimately, we know our leadings are from God when we experience a higher spiritual experience of ecstasy. Although most of our spiritual experiences occur over time, we occasionally have moments of instantaneous rapture. This is when God comes to us immediately and in ways that exceed all human thought or expression. And this instantaneous experience of rapture confirms our spiritual leadings.
The final result of a leading from God is expressed in several profound ways. First, we cease to esteem anything earthly as having lasting significance or value. Next, we develop a level of self-knowledge that leads to true humility. We are particularly mindful that a creature as low as us is being given attention by such a great God. Finally, we are able to see the real grandeur of God and are overwhelmed by it.
The Seventh Dwelling Place: Perfect Peace
Finally we enter into perfect union with God. We undergo complete transformation and experience a state of ultimate peace. Echoing earlier mystics who emphasized apatheia, Teresa sees complete peace as the right ordering of every thought, desire and action—a rare state realized only near death. At this point we experience complete release from all striving. All our faculties, all our senses and all our passions are satisfied. Teresa notes that she herself has experienced this state only once for four hours, but even this brief glimpse set off a perpetual longing that has never ceased.
The seventh dwelling place is also where we enter into a permanent relationship with Christ. Our commitment is now irrevocable. The soul experiences spiritual marriage with Christ that can never be undone. The Lord visits the center of our soul. We recognize that our entire existence is joined to him, and a radiant beam shines forth from the center of our soul where Christ dwells. Christ in us is a force so powerful that every sense and faculty is overwhelmed. The radiant beams shining forth casts a completely different light on our entire existence. It is at this point that we achieve a stability of purpose and a constancy of virtue that we enjoy at no other level. This new realization helps solidify our confidence in Christ and the Christian life.
Although the seven dwelling places distill an arduous process and years of spiritual growth, Teresa never envisions this life as happening apart from the people of God. When we love both God and neighbor, we live with an awareness of the necessity of balancing the active and contemplative life. After all, Mary and Martha must walk together. The union we enjoy with Christ keeps us focused on what is essential in our life day by day.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
Teresa was an astonishing woman, and her book, The Interior Castle, even more so. This book is one of the premier writings on prayer from the Christian tradition, and it grew out of what Teresa called a “second conversion” experience.
For twenty years Teresa had faithfully lived out God’s call on her life. But they were years of spiritual dryness. A Sahara of the heart, if you please. Then one day upon entering the church her eyes fell on a statue of Jesus that had been brought to the convent in preparation for a celebration. It depicted Jesus covered with wounds from the crucifixion. As she gazed on the statue, something moved within the deepest part of her spirit. She could do nothing but fall at Jesus’ feet as she contemplated how much he had suffered and how ungrateful she had been toward his love. While lying at the feet of the statue, she begged Christ to give her the strength never to offend him again.
This “second conversion” had dramatic results. After her encounter with the absolute holiness of God, Teresa began to experience a deep and abiding pain associated with her own sense of distance from God. Teresa experienced the holiness of God in such a profound way that she was propelled to commit every ounce of her being into becoming more holy herself, into becoming more like Jesus, into drawing nearer and nearer to the heart of God. The Interior Castle ultimately became an autobiographical description of her deepening experiences of entering into the inmost regions of the “palace where the king lives.”
The Interior Castle positively dances with metaphor, an extended metaphor really, picturing the soul as a crystal or a diamond castle. Nothing quite compares to its galvanizing, almost erotic description of communion with God. The soul is a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight. The body is the outer walls of the castle. Self-knowledge is a room in that castle. In the final dwelling places, we come to the ultimate arrival of spiritual intimacy between God and ourselves—union. Here Teresa turns, as if inevitably, to the metaphor of marriage. Not marriage as a modest, domestic arrangement. Oh, no. This is marriage as the passionate union of the beloveds where “God carries off for Himself the entire soul, and, as to someone who is His own and His spouse.”
There are three supreme values to The Interior Castle that I want to mention. First, it fills us with an almost overwhelming appreciation for the splendor, nobility and vast reality of the human soul. Teresa urges us to “visualize your soul as vast, spacious, and plentiful.” What a refreshing corrective this is to the modern trivializing of the soul. We today so easily shrink the person down to a consumer—or even a commodity. How much better to attend to Teresa and her sense of the enormous value of the person: “I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity.” Clearly, Teresa’s vision is far closer to the divine estimation.
Second, Teresa does better than just about anyone I know at showing us a clear progression forward in the spiritual life. And she does so without the deadly legalism that characterizes most efforts in this direction. Utilizing the threefold scheme of Dionysius she carefully and beautifully invites us through the purifying fires of God’s forgiveness and the illuminating graces of God’s wisdom into the perfecting union of God’s immense love. The journey simply takes our breath away.
Finally, Teresa’s description of union is as good as we will find anywhere. This is no small trick. She is confined to human language, which can give only an abbreviated approximation of an experiential reality that extends beyond words. Also, she is trying to describe to us a life in God that most of us can see only from a distant shore.
I believe her success here is due to her multiple use of metaphors, piling one on top of the other. In doing so she gives us something understandable to hang on to as we try to grasp things we do not fully understand. One example: “Let us say that . . . union is like the joining of two wax candles to such an extent that the flame coming from them is but one, or that the wick, the flame, and the wax are all one. But afterward one candle can be easily separated from the other and there are two candles.” The whole of The Interior Castle is worth Teresa’s efforts to describe for us the landscape of union, even if we are visiting this landscape only as foreigners and sojourners.
Frankly, I am at a loss to give you practical handles for entering the experiences Teresa describes in The Interior Castle. More often than not I feel like I’m wandering through some of the side halls that are above and below. Teresa also describes “lovely gardens and fountains and labyrinths, such delightful things that you would want to be dissolved in praises of the great God who created the soul in His own image and likeness.” Maybe that is where I am, delighting in sun and sky, trees and flowers.
Perhaps the best guidance I can give is to encourage you to read this book for yourself. Begin with a weekend when you can read it from beginning to end nonstop, seeing the work as a whole and capturing its basic themes. Then you can spend the next year or so reading meditatively, dwelling on key passages and phrases. All the time, request “His Majesty” to bring you into the life for which you are ready, just as he did for Teresa. If you will do this faithfully and quietly you will, I am sure, find that the crystal castle of your own soul will begin to glow with divine love.
Teresa was a lover of God and a lover of souls. Perhaps it would be good to end with what is often called Teresa’s bookmark. It received that name because it was inserted into the prayer book she was using at the time of her death. Listen:
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing alarm you.
While all things are passing;
God is unchanging.
Be patient and you will gain everything.
With God in your heart nothing is lacking.
Lord Jesus, Teresa is certainly a wise guide in the life of prayer. We need this so much because so many today utterly trivialize prayer. Or turn it into a mechanical exercise that deadens the spirit. We really do need someone who has gone beyond the superficialities of our modern culture. Thank you that Teresa is one such person.
Many of us, Lord, feel like we are only at the beginning stages of prayer: perhaps room one or two, if that. Some of us even feel like we are still out on the front porch! Help us, Lord. Draw us in gently. May we see what a good thing it is to enter into a conversational life with you. May Teresa’s life and writings be a source of inspiration for us. And more than inspiration—life-giving action. Teresa is clearly a leader in the life of prayer. Teach us, Lord, to follow her lead. Amen.