Originally published in The Cross and Lotus Journal; 2003 Vol. 4 No. 2 by John Durkin
This article is composed of three parts: a short biography, and a synopsis of her last and best known work, The Interior Castle, and an introduction to St. Teresa’s concepts of prayer.
Part A: Biography
Mother Teresa of Jesus, now known as St. Teresa of Avila, was born Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada in Avila, Spain on March 28, 1515. She died in Alba on October 4, 1582. In historical context, she was born less than 20 years after Columbus discovered America, lived during a time when Spain was at the height of its power and wealth, and died six years before the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the British navy in 1588. Indeed one of her brothers died fighting for Spain in Chile.
Great religious forces were rumbling throughout Europe. Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg castle church in 1517, an important marker in the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563 with its Index of Prohibited Books (not removed until 1966) and the increased efforts of the Spanish Inquisition which had started in 1478 to suppress other heresies (stopped in 1834) represented components of the Counter-Reformation. Actually the Reformation, Counter Reformation and Inquisition were complex processes that brought out both the best and worst in people; they are mentioned only to give a picture of the times. We still have our official and unofficial inquisitions and lists of prohibited books.
Interest in spirituality was high; the Illuminists were talking and writing about methods of contemplation (meditation in non-Christian terms). Their writings would fit right in with spiritual writings today although we would have to develop an understanding of some of the terminology used and translate them into terms that would have meaning in our particular approach.
Teresa’s grandfather was a forced convert from Judaism who succeeded in having his children married into families of nobility. As a result, Teresa was raised in relative wealth and privilege. Most biographies of her use the clichés of a supposedly strict and pious father and a religious mother who kept a stash of hidden romance novels. In reality her mother married at 15, had 7 children of her own and 2 from her husband’s previous marriage, and died at 33. Her father was constantly concerned with the protection of a large and vulnerable family in a climate where support was fickle and life very cheap.
Much is made of Teresa’s early interest in stories about religious heroes and martyrs. When she was five she convinced her brother to run away with her to the land of the Moors where they could be martyred and become famous saints. Their uncle found them a short distance from home and brought them home. Later she was involved in building a type of cave in the family backyard so she would be a hermit. This could be the early signs of a saint or the normal behavior of a child with an active imagination.
This interest in romantic views of religion declined when she discovered boys and parties. The spiritual tendencies soon returned but the attraction to and skill in dealing with social situations were very pronounced for the rest of her life. Teresa was beautiful, charming, and adventuresome. Not a happy combination for sixteenth century Spanish parents. The tragedy of her mother’s death when Teresa was 15 resulted in a crisis of indecision related to her future life. Possibilities seemed to be the unattractive option of marrying or the slightly more acceptable option of joining a convent.
At the age of 20 she entered the Carmelite monastery in Avila against the wishes of her father, although he soon relented. Her first 25 years in convents were a combination of serious illnesses and conflicts between her interest in spirituality and the social life around her. This conflict was made much worse by inept confessors who attributed her mystical experiences to the devil, delusions, mental illness, or the work of an overactive imagination. It was only when someone with both spiritual experience and theological expertise reassured her that her “consolations” were indications of the work of the spirit and that she should continue her spiritual practices that she was able to start to resolve these conflicts.
About 1560, at the age of 45, Teresa expanded her own spiritual development to include the return of the Carmelite Order to the stricter rule of its beginnings. A small group of sisters formed around her at that time and in 1562 she opened her first reformed convent, St. Joseph of Avila. Other convents and monasteries soon followed, always with difficulty and considerable resistance. In 1567 she convinced St. John of the Cross to join her movement.
Although usually tired and in poor health, Teresa traveled back and forth in very primitive conditions among these various institutions. One of her most famous lines comes from a time when she was traveling and her wagon was swept away by a river. Teresa is supposed to have said, “God, if this is how you treat your friends, not much wonder you have so few.” The line probably came from another context but why ruin a good story.
Teresa commented frequently on her lack of education. Actually her education was poor even for women of her time and her writings lack the formal theological knowledge and grammatical structures that would characterize a theologian of her time. Her images and metaphors are all the more easily understood however because little previous academic knowledge is required. Claiming lack of knowledge and poor understanding also was a good ruse for dealing with church authorities and the Inquisition in particular. I love the fact that when the Inquisition was examining one of her books, she wrote another repeating much of the same information and still claiming her lack of qualifications. Moreover all of her works are still in print 400 years later and are available in almost all of the languages of the world; most of those who regarded themselves as superior are long forgotten.
Today some writers focus on St. Teresa’s being a woman as the most important feature of her work. I’m sure she would want both men and women to keep their attention on her message rather than her sex. Besides she maintained intense life-long relationships with a number of men such as St. John of the Cross and Jerome Gracian who were her principal supporters and who paid dearly for their defense of her. Some of her most vicious enemies were women both inside and outside the convents. The church authorities all were male however and she constantly had to find ways over, under, and around them. Her writing has an especial appeal for women though, as it is addressed to her sisters.
Part B: The Interior Castle
The Interior Castle is St. Teresa’s final and most mature book. In it she describes a person’s spiritual development in terms of a series of seven mansions within a large castle. These mansions are not stacked on top of each other but rather above, below, in front and behind each other in a beautiful crystal globe. This means that progress toward the central or seventh mansion is not the same for everyone.
As the spirit moves from outer mansions to more central ones, distractions and hindrances become more subtle, approaches to prayer become deeper and more mystical and the experience of God becomes more unitive. In the central or “Seventh Mansion” is the Divine Being in the greatest splendor, illuminating and beautifying all the other mansions, with the illumination increasing as the spirit approaches the center.
Part C: Approaches to Prayer
St. Teresa extolled the virtues of all approaches to prayer including adoration, intercession, and reflection on events in Christ’s life and the lives of the saints. However it is her degrees of mystical prayer that are of most interest. A prerequisite for all mystical prayer involves recollection, a repeated act of the will and grace from God where the attention is brought back to our practice. This process ceases only when God grants us the gift of mystical or contemplative prayer.
Contemplative or mystical prayer (similar to meditation in other traditions) has three principal degrees: prayer of the quiet, prayer of (promised) union, and prayer of spiritual marriage. The principal characteristic of prayer of the quiet is the temporary cessation of thoughts and sensations. There is a feeling that God is close by and we experience peace and deep satisfaction even though we know we have not reached our goal. Sometimes tears come to our eyes and we have no wish to leave this blessed state.
In the prayer of (promised) union we usually are unable to sense, think, or remember in the usual manner. We have no sense of ourselves but still experience incredibly deep spiritual feelings. These feelings often are difficult to describe to others. While the body and mind are asleep to the things of the world, the interior senses of the soul are intensely awake. Even the breath is or seems to be suspended and we experience what St. Teresa called a “death full of delight”. The mind may in some sense want to try and understand what is going on but just doesn’t have the energy. In the “Fifth and Sixth Mansions of the Interior Castle”, this prayer gradually deepens as God prepares the individual for the final stage of prayer.
St. Teresa warns about attempting to create these states and images through the imagination. These efforts will mislead us and cause us to detour on a trail that leads further and further from the true path. On the other hand Teresa also warns of the dangers of allowing the “devil” or those that do not understand to convince us that we are suffering delusions. Mental balance and discussions with others who have shared such experiences are to be sought. In addition we must understand that these states are not the final goal or the “Seventh Mansion” and the spirit must push on.
St. Teresa called her final degree of mystical prayer the “Prayer of Spiritual Marriage”. This is a continuous state of feeling one in the spirit with God. There is a constant experience of God’s presence within even when external events are difficult and outward distress is felt. The spirit is in the “Seventh Mansion,” in direct and continuous union with the Divine. All feelings of separation disappear; indeed there is the feeling that God would pursue us if there were any thoughts or actions of division. Individuals at this degree of prayer development experience continuous feelings of love for other people regardless of the responses they receive in return. While they often are very active in the world, these enlightened individuals experience a sense of merely following what God requires next without effort or worry.
Jesus was central to St. Teresa’s concepts and experiences of mystical prayer. Her approach was theistic rather than monistic, involving an intense relationship with a personal deity as opposed to absorption in an undifferentiated Absolute. She knew the difference between the two and had tried monistic approaches but felt that making Jesus central to her prayer life was the basis of her spiritual development. In India she would have been recognized as a bhakti mystic.
A brief summary of St. Teresa’s insights fails to convey either the subtlety or the energy of her writings. Most libraries contain at least her Interior Castle and many will have a complete collection of her works; these are easy to read and convey great benefit. Following is a translation of her most famous poem found on a bookmark she was using in her breviary at the time of her death.
Let nothing upset you,
Nothing frighten you,
All things pass,
God alone endures.
Patience Yields everything of value.
Who has God Lacks nothing;
God alone satisfies.