The Third Dwelling Places of The Interior Castle
St. Teresa of Avila wrote her classic, The Interior Castle, to explain how we experience God in life and, more specifically, on the spiritual journey. The first woman Doctor of the Church explains seven steps on this pilgrimage to God. The final goal is to be one with God in total surrender.
In the first two dwelling places, she points out how we have an initial encounter with the transcendent that opens us to the divine reality. There is a moral conversion that brings us to the third dwelling places. This is a location for most who are serious about the Christian calling.
The third dwelling places are the fount of great wisdom in pastoral ministry and in life. Most individuals of good will have difficulty in this stage of spiritual development. Teresa is insistent about the importance of this rite of passage. The temptation is to settle down and enjoy the peace. The first two dwelling places ultimately produce great progress but at the cost of much struggle and change.
In the third dwelling places, we experience relief from the consuming moral struggle of the second dwelling places. It is a very good place. The deception is to sink roots. Yet, the conflict of good and evil is never far from the surface.God’s agenda is in stark conflict with our desire to settle down. God desires the journey to proceed with all due haste. Teresa is clear that final destiny is the seventh dwelling places and union with God. The tension is between God inviting us to move on and our sense of accomplishment which draws us to put down roots. The drama of the third dwelling places takes place in the struggle to resolve this conflict.
Self-Knowledge: The Lifesaver
Self-knowledge along with humility are the foundation of all growth in Teresa’s spiritual structure. In the third dwelling places our selfishness becomes secretive, often taking on the mask of virtue. It hides behind good works and a multitude of good intentions. The work of the third dwelling places is to identify this self-deception with the help of a new depth of self-knowledge and humility.
Teresa declares two critical issues for progress in the third dwelling places. We need to persevere in our determination to move forward. We need to contrast the selfishness of our sinfulness with God’s love revealed in Christ crucified. Prayer is the major source of clarifying these concerns in our search.
“Those who live in this third dwelling place have to recognize that they need not only to offer themselves generously to the Lord but to recover from their failings. They have to become engaged in a more difficult task: accepting that God has plans that go far beyond one’s present project, generous though it may be, and letting him take the initiative, especially when it is a surprise and upsets one’s own strategies.” (IC. III.1.4)
This spiritual growth comes from Teresa’s staples of humility, detachment, and charity that support faithfulness to regular prayer. This commitment to change and growth needs to be over a long period of time. Teresa was in this struggle of the third dwelling places for almost two decades. There is usually a repeating pattern of progress and withdrawal. However, most of us fail to make the sacrifice to advance. The price of not moving forward to the fourth dwelling places is mediocrity wrapped up in self-righteousness.
Teresa says, “Believe me, the whole affair doesn’t lie in whether or not we wear the religious habit but in striving to practice virtues, in surrendering our will to God in everything, in bringing our life into accordance with what His Majesty ordains for it and in desiring that his will, not ours, be done. Since we may not have reached this stage – humility, as I have said! Humility is the ointment for our wounds.” (IC III 2.6)
Settling for Less
Having arrived in the third dwelling places we have decided to live a serious and responsible moral life. Our prayer grows in importance as it becomes deeper and more personal. Most often, we are committed to a community of support. For many, the participation in the liturgy and the life of the church is a prime part of their way of life.
However, self-deception plays a major role in the third dwelling places. We learn slowly that selfishness has not been conquered by our great progress in leaving the second dwelling places.
We tend to create an image of God under our management. We begin to act as if we have a better plan than God. The temptation to water down the Jesus of the Gospels to a more comfortable model seldom is resisted.
Settling for less is the heavy pull in the third dwelling places. God’s call for more is gentle but relentless. We want to sink roots, to create a world where we set the direction. Desire for control dominates. The instinct to avoid further struggle dictates the program.
The great temptation of this crisis is that of compromise. We display a sincere exterior but within, there is a growing diminishment of the dynamism of discipleship and love. We tend to introduce into our lives derivatives of and substitutions for the Gospel. There is a great attraction to conform to worldly standards. A desire for a career and to transform Christian radicalism into more a cautious approach slowly surface.. We seek positions, exterior prestige, with no consideration as to whether this corresponds to the demands that Jesus makes upon our lives.
Self-righteousness becomes a fact of life in the third dwelling places. It is quite difficult to deal with persons so wrapped in smugness. We convince ourselves that we are the victims but in fact our selfish patterns hurt others. Teresa has one recommendation for dealing with people caught in this bind: compassion. Most often we are not ready for correction, so we need to receive patience and kind acceptance.
The attitude of “my way or the highway” is a common temptation in the third dwelling places. We do it in a religiously sophisticated style, but the reality is the same. The tendency to rigidity towards new ideas and often new persons prevails.
The Rich Young Man
The story of the rich young man is quite helpful. “From the time I began to speak of these dwelling places I have had this young man in mind. For we are literally like him….”. (Interior Castle. 3.1.6)
Teresa says that the residents share some of the burden of the young man who walked away from Jesus’ invitation. “When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad because he had many possessions.” (Mt 18:16-23)
We all say that we want this to follow Jesus. But since there is need of much more sacrifice to possess the Lord completely, words are insufficient. Action is the answer. The back and forth of the third dwelling places is the love of God and the love of the world pulling at the heart. Ultimately, we need to discover through experience our deep a need for God’s loving mercy.
When we reflect on the contrast between the young man who walked away and the disciples we have a good insight into the choices of the third dwelling places. The twelve walked the road to Jerusalem in fear and confusion. Their dreams of power, privilege, and prestige were slipping away by the hour. Their reluctant faithfulness to Jesus slowly destroyed not only their dreams but their control. Nevertheless, in the end, they did not walk away. They eventually remained faithful. These options of life and death are the stuff of the third dwelling places.
When we decide to resist the call to move on to the demands of the fourth dwelling places we pay a price: self-righteousness, the plague of most religious institutions. This happens when there is not enough love and we capitulate to human prudence. Teresa says in this dwelling place reason still holds sway over love. Only a deep-seated love will carry us ahead to the new life of contemplation that beckons in the fourth dwelling places.
“With humility present, this stage is a most excellent one. If humility is lacking, we will remain here our whole life – and with a thousand afflictions and miseries. For since we will not have abandoned ourselves, this state will be very laborious and burdensome. We shall be walking while weighted down with the mud of our human misery, which is not so with those who ascend to the remaining rooms.” (Interior Castle. 3.2.9)
The fourth dwelling places await. They are the bridge. They are the beginning of contemplation which purifies and transforms on the way to union with God in the seventh dwelling places.
