[NOTE: St. Teresa of Avila was from a family of Jewish converts to the
Catholic Church. Her classic work of mysticism, "The Interior Castle,"
reflects the influence of Jewish mysticism on her thinking. What follows
is by Mr. James Dobbins, moderator of the Catholic Spirituality
discussion list. -- Yakov Leib]

Teresa of Avila: Commentary on Interior Castle

Ref:  Vol 2, The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus

Reflections on First Mansions, Chapter 2

Teresa begins Chapter 2 with a description of a soul falling into mortal
sin.  Even though God is still there in the center of the soul, the sin
is such an affront and rejection of God, all external evidence of His
presence in the soul is extinguished, and the soul can gain no spiritual
profit.  The soul has wilfully separated itself from God, and is, to
recall a phrase common a few years ago, left swinging in the breeze.  It
has chosen to reject God, so by what right can it expect God to
participate in its acts or recognize any goodness therein?  The soul in
the process of committing mortal sin has the intent, not to please our
loving God, but to please satan, to, in effect, make satan its God,
proving by our actions that we prefer him over God.  What greater
affront could we give God?  The soul takes on the likeness of satan
instead of the likeness of God,  it mimics the Prince of Darkness, and
thus becomes one with darkness.  St. Teresa, having been shown a soul in
darkness, and actually referring to herself as the one to whom a vision
of the soul has been shown, tells us that if a person could understand
this, understand to what they are giving their loyalty and the
implications of this, perhaps they would not sin.

Question:  If this is so, why would God not show this vision to all, and
thus
prevent the countless number of souls He so dearly loves from plunging
into
the depths of Hell?  Why would a loving Father not give His children
this
grace and thus thwart satan?

Teresa then asks that we pray earnestly for souls in darkness, just as
we have been taught through the Divine Mercy counsels received by
Blessed Faustina.  Although Teresa does not address this point
specifically, I could not help but imagine the pain it causes our dear
Lord to live in the center of a soul in mortal sin, when His very Divine
radiance has been impeded by the willful rejection of Him by that soul,
that soul He loves with an infinite  Love.  The power of free will is
the power to completely obscure the infinite Love of God, an awesome
power with dreadful consequences.

She then cries for the soul so situated.  "How miserable is the state of
those poor rooms within the castle!  How disturbed the senses are, that
is, the people who live in the rooms!  And in the faculties, that is,
among the custodians, the stewards, and the chief waiters, what
blindness, what bad management!  In sum, since the tree is planted where
the devil is, what fruit can it bear?"

As I read this last part, I could not help but think of the Spiritual
Canticle of John of the Cross as he tells us we can not even begin our
quest for God unless we have stilled our house, until we have gained
control over our faculties and appetites.  How sad the soul which never
begins the quest.

The next point Teresa makes is interesting.  She references a spiritual
man who was "not surprised at the things done by a person in mortal sin,
but at what was not done".  This is an intriguing observation.  We often
think of a soul in mortal sin engaged in all sorts of evil activities
like running drugs or committing murder or engaging in pornographic
activities of all sorts.  But the things not done are, I would propose,
those which are in accord with the two commandments of our Lord.  We do
not love God, and  therefore do not do those things which exemplify a
love of God, like adoration, prayer and proper reception of the
sacraments which give life saving grace.  Likewise, we do not love our
neighbor, and thus do not do those myriad of things which we could do to
exemplify that brotherly and sisterly love.  How very easy it is to
ignore one in need, to turn one's back.
Teresa teaches another lesson, one of fear of God.  Respectful fear of
God was a recurrent theme in the Hebrew Testament, and is less evident
in the New Testament.  And yet she teaches us what proper fear of God
is, a great fear of offending Him, both for the consequences to
ourselves as a result of our fall from grace, and because of the
rejection of His infinite love, a rejection which injures Him so.  And
so she admonishes us to pray continually for the strength not to fall.
She also begs us to recognize the need for humility, to recognize the
true Source of any good that we do, and to immediately give praise to
God alone for any good we do or see done by another.

Teresa then teaches us something which is very subtle (at least I
thought so) and which caught my attention, but I could not at first
fathom why.  I think I may have finally discerned it, and had several
discussions in our prayer group about this, so I offer this observation
to you for your comment.  It may be very elementary for most you, but it
was not for us.  She says, in speaking of the Constitutions that tell
the community about the obligation to pray, "...little is explained
about what the Lord does in a soul, I mean about the supernatural."  How
often do we pray and in doing so enter a dialogue with our Lord, or beg
His favor, or ask His pardon, but all the while think of our soul as
unchanged by the experience, as being the same before and after our
prayer?  Yet in every prayer we should have an encounter with God, and
at every prayer time God has an objective - something He wishes to
accomplish in our soul.  We should never emerge from prayer unchanged,
for if we do we have not truly prayed.

God is always drawing us to Himself, always bringing us closer, if we
will but cooperate.  Imagine how frustrating it is to Him when we think
we come to prayer, and then do not give Him our minds and hearts to work
with, but send them elsewhere, focused on things of this world.  Imagine
the spiritual treasures we lose, the graces we could have received but
do not.  Prayer is an encounter with God.  We approach God, and He
approaches us.  We work in His heart by our attitude, and He works in
us, sanctifying us, drawing us closer and closer to Him, into His
heart.  These prayer times are treasures of grace we may never be able
to recapture, for God never does the same thing exactly the same way
twice.  He does each thing perfectly,  and once.

I also wondered at one time, as I considered the activity of God in our
souls during prayer, if our soul can grow, so to speak, depending on the
degree of grace received. As we explore the castle, does each new grace
add a new facet, as in a diamond, so that more of God may be reflected
throughout the entire castle, and in effect allow Him to grow in us as
we diminish, as we see less and less of the crystal and more and more of
the brilliant Light streaming forth from the center room?  Do we use
prayer and meditation to both enter and navigate through the castle, and
in the process increase in  grace with each new room we visit?

Teresa tells us that we need to have some unconventional thinking in
terms of our soul.  We always think of ourselves in terms of limits.  I
am so tall, so heavy, so white or brown or black or whatever, so bald or
hairy, so young or old, always placing differentiating boundaries with
which we can be identified.  She teaches us that we need to remove such
limitations when thinking of the soul.  The identification of the soul
is in terms of grace and the degree to which it has been identified with
Christ, the degree  to which it has been transformed in Him.  She makes
some very important points, pivotal really, in her whole dialogue
beginning in what is labeled section number 8 in Kavanaugh.  In
Kavanaugh this is on page 291 and in Peers it begins at the bottom of
page 207.  She places great emphasis on self knowledge as she tells us
to roam through the castle to explore the rooms. There are two rooms of
central importance in the castle, the rooms of humility and
self-knowledge.  The room of self-knowledge is an exception among the
rooms, an exception not shared by any other, even the room in which our
Lord resides.

In my spiritual journal I had a question: Do I have to know myself, does
it matter whether I know myself or not, if I am going to be transformed
in God and become that which I am now not, and thus become someone I
know not yet?  Teresa shows us that  self-knowledge is very important.
She does connect humility and self-knowledge.  She also makes the point
that in self-knowledge we see how base we are and how we are still
associates of the reptiles and vermin that came into these rooms with
us, and that through this ever-increasing recognition we gain humility,
especially as we soar out from this room to meditate on God and then see
how base we are in comparison.  We never lose the need to revisit this
room where humility is gained and maintained.

She also tells us that "In my opinion we shall never completely know
ourselves if we don*t strive to know God". The emphasis Teresa places on
self-knowledge is seen in her assessment of how the devil uses so many
tricks to keep us from gaining the advantages of humility and
self-knowledge.  She speaks of fear, and fear coming from our lack of
self-understanding.   She tells us to *set our eyes on Christ, our Good,
and on His saints. There we shall learn true humility, the intellect
will be enhanced, as I have said, and self-knowledge will not make one
base and cowardly.  Even though this is the first dwelling place, it is
very rich and so precious that if the soul slips away from the vermin
within it, nothing will be left to do but advance.*

It may be difficult to grasp the full meaning of what Teresa is getting
at here unless one has been through the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius Loyola.  In the book of her life, Teresa says she was greatly
impressed and influenced by the writings of Ignatius, and sought out
Jesuits as her confessors.  Let*s look for a moment at Ignatius* concept
of self-knowledge.  Self-knowledge is not our activity of trying to
understand ourselves.  We cannot trust ourselves enough to do that.  The
dynamic is letting God reveal us to ourselves.  It is gaining an
understanding of those attachments we have which must be discarded so we
can place God first in our lives.  Thus, to gain self-knowledge, we must
encounter God through prayer.  We trust that God is acting in us to
bring about this personal relationship.  God is inviting us into the
relational life of the Trinity, not in some kind of sporadic or episodic
way, but continually, at every moment of our life.  He reveals Himself
to us, and reveals us to us, helping us see ourselves through His eyes.
Thus, the link between self-knowledge and humility.  They are
inseparable. God calls us to recognize the religious dimension of all of
our earthly experiences, to feel His touch in our lives.  In our quest
for self-knowledge, we do not need to know everything.  We need to know
what God wants us to know, so He has to lead us there.
Another important point made by Ignatius, in what he calls The Principle
and Foundation, is that since we are made to praise, reverence and serve
God, and thus save our soul, all of our experience has this as an
objective.  We eventually find within us the experience of knowing we
have been desired into existence by God, and because God loves what He
desires, we are desirable, not only to other persons, but to God.  This
is continuous and underlies all of our relationship with God.  It is how
we experience the presence of God.  In gaining self-knowledge, we work
to discard our fears so that the absolute deepest desire of our being,
of our heart, is God Himself.  We desire this absolute Mystery who is
God, and everything else is seen relative to this objective.  Since we
do not yet know God well, our desire is for *I know not what*, a
recurrent theme also found in the writing of St. John of the Cross.

One thing I found very interesting is Teresa's description of the many
rooms in these first mansions, entered into in many ways by the soul,
each room having things that try to block the souls progress, although
the closer we get to the King*s rooms the less of this we find.  Up to
this point in the book, I had assumed that once inside the castle I was
safe, and from that point on was tasked with growing in grace.  But
Teresa warns us that we are tasked to grow in grace, for that is how we
approach the King's mansion, but that we must also, like knights of old,
slay the reptiles and dragons of sin as we make our way toward this
abode of safety.  Even though the environment is one of crystal beauty,
it is not without its dangers for portions of the journey within,
including the danger of satan appearing to us as an angel of light to
deceive us and draw us away from our objective.  We must keep working
through the first dark rooms, clouded with our attractions for the world
and our tendency toward sin, and navigate our way toward that place
where we can begin to see the Light, where we have a beacon to guide us
to the vessel which will take us in safety the rest of the way to the
center.  This vessel is commanded by God Himself, and thus He must
decide when to send us this craft.

She tells us that if we have any intention at all to move on to the
second mansions, that  "...it is important that he strive to give up
unnecessary things and business affairs.  Each one should do this in
conformity with his state in life".  God must be our primary, and
hopefully our one, objective.

Question: In what ways can one leading a secular life, with a family to
care
for, honor this advise she gives?  What would constitute unnecessary
affairs
and business?  Would striving for a promotion fall into this category?

Subject:
       [DONMEH] "The Interior Castle" of St. Teresa of Avila (con't)
  Date:
       Wed, 10 Feb 1999 09:35:46 -0700 (MST)
  From:
       James.Dobbins@salmon.esosoft.net,
       Catholic.Spirituality.List@salmon.esosoft.net
    To:
       donmeh@List-Server.net

[NOTE: St. Teresa of Avila, the great Catholic mystic, was Jewish by
birth. Her book, "The Interior Castle" shows the influence of Jewish
mysticism on her thinking and life. -- Yakov Leib]

Reflections on Second Mansions.  There is only one chapter in Second
Mansions

       Having told us about the Castle entry, and the reptiles and
vermin which snuck in with us and will accompany us through much of the
Castle, and the apparent dimness of the Light within due to our clouded
vision, Teresa now begins to take us further into the Castle.  What are
the criteria, or conditions, for a soul to enter the second mansions?

       First, she says that those entering the second Mansions are
those who have begun the practice of prayer.  Her definition of prayer
is mental prayer, not vocal prayer.  In the book of her Life, which is
in Vol 1 of the Collected Works, she said that mental prayer is an
intimate friendship, a frequent heart-to-heart conversation with Him by
whom we know ourselves to be loved. They are also those who understand
the necessity of moving forward, but who might not be as resolute in
this as they ought.  They have not yet reached the condition where they
will avoid occasions of sin.  The key, for Teresa, seems to be their
desire to escape the reptiles, their desire to move forward, even for
short periods of time.  Once they begin trying, they have a harder time
breaking the chains of the world, but "it now seems that souls in them
recognize the dangers, and there is great hope they will enter further
into the castle."  The desire these souls have comes from their
recognition of the voice of the Lord calling them, and their desire to
respond to that still small voice.  Before, in the first Mansions, they
were as if deaf and dumb to the Lord.

       This call of the Lord comes to the soul continuously, and the
soul, in its struggle to respond, falls into sin many times, tripping
over the reptiles repeatedly, for it has not yet gained the strength to
avoid occasions of sin.  The soul suffers from its lack of immediate
response to God, but it still continues to respond to the call.  This
call comes to the soul in many ways; sermons, books, good people, and
any variety of means the good Lord chooses to place before the soul.
(For us, one of these means is this on-going discussion of Interior
Castle).  It may come through sickness or other trials, or may come
through prayer; but come it will, for our Lord loves the soul and
reaches out to those who seek Him, having promised "seek and you will
find".  He did not say, "Seek, and maybe, if you are lucky, I'll let you
find Me".

       The thing we have to be ever aware of is the need for our
perseverance, and the infinite patience of God.  Teresa says that having
perseverance and good desires is very necessary here, and through them
the soul gains greatly.  Many have, for example, said they intend to
persevere in this study, something we know Satan would not want us to
do.  Because of this progress, the assault of the devil is ever more
powerful, for he is losing his grip on a soul he thought was his.
Suffering will increase, but so will the grace from God to persevere.
Here the devils play on pride, showing the soul the great esteem in
which it is held by the world.  Impediments of all kinds will be
presented as obstacles to prayer.

       In the midst of this confusion, the lessons learned in the rooms
of self-knowledge and humility begin to bear fruit.  The soul,
recognizing itself and its weaknesses, will throw itself upon the mercy
of God and beg His help to go forward, trusting in His mercy, goodness
and love.  The soul is able to develop an understanding of the perpetual
presence of God, and calls upon this eternal companion to come to its
aid in times of weakness, for it knows God is motivated by love for this
soul which seeks Him.  Much of what Teresa tells us here is also found
in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which greatly
influenced her.

       The soul realizes the enticements thrown toward it by the devil,
all temptations being designed to retain the soul in the first Mansions
or to draw the soul back out of the castle and into the environs beyond
the walls where there is nothing but spiritual misery and worldly
pleasure.  The soul realizes that only in the castle will it find peace
and security.  The soul is in a position where it can leave, like the
Prodigal son, or remain and move forward.  It must do one or the other.
It cannot do both.  If the soul rejects the Prodigal call, it if chooses
not to "eat the food of swine", it will be greatly rewarded by our
loving God.  It is the soul who must decide to seek, but it is Jesus who
will provide all necessary grace to do so.  The soul must be ever
vigilant against "vain habits" to which it can fall prey, and must
follow the call of faith.  *If the devil, especially, realizes that it
has all it needs in its temperament and habits to advance far, he will
gather all hell together to make the soul go back outside.*

       Teresa then expresses the importance of companionship, like what
we have here in the List or in a community environment.  "It is a
wonderful thing for a person to talk to those who speak about this
interior castle, to draw near not only to those seen to be in these
rooms where he is but to those to have entered the ones closer to the
center.", ... for "he can converse so much with them that they will
bring him to where they are."
[This last point is, it seems to me, very important, and I would like to
see
us discuss this idea to some reasonable extent, and not just pass over
it.]
1.  How does one go about recognizing what rooms others are in or have
been
   in?
2.  How does one tag along, or get close enough to have them take us
along?
   What is the mechanism or process?  Is there one that is describable?

       Teresa then cautions us about looking for or expecting spiritual
favors in this Mansion, for*These are not the dwelling places where it
rains manna; those lie further ahead, where a soul finds in the manna
every taste it desires; for it wants only what God wants."  Here, Teresa
exhorts us to embrace the Cross God sends us, for those who can suffer
the most will have the most perfect freedom.  She is insistent in her
advise: "The whole aim of any person who is beginning prayer - and don*t
forget this, because it is very important - should be that he work and
prepare himself with determination and every possible effort to bring
his will into conformity with God*s will."
1. How do we, if we are married laity, know the will of God in our
  unstructured every day life?

       Teresa asks, "Now then, if we err in the beginning, desiring
that the Lord do our will at once and lead us according to what we
imagine, what kind of stability will this edifice have?"

       Relying again on what was learned in the first Mansions, Teresa
cautions us to "Let them trust in the mercy of God and not at all in
themselves, and they will see how His majesty brings them from the
dwelling places of one stage to those of another and settles them in a
land where these wild animals cannot touch or tire them, ... ."
Recalling again the key to entry into the castle - prayer - Teresa then
says "Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without
entering into ourselves, coming to know ourselves, reflecting on our
misery and what we owe God, and begging Him often for mercy."
1. Does this strike anyone as a rather strict view, one which equates
lack
  of entry into the soul with mortal sin?
2. If Teresa is right, it would seem that a high percentage of those we
know
  in the world will not make it to Heaven.  What can we do about that?

Jim Dobbins