The Interior Castle
This is a brief description of Teresa of Avila’s classic
The Interior Castle reflects the image of the human being. Teresa uses the image of a castle to address the relationship between God and the individual. She is talking of her own experience as a guide for all. Teresa understood well that every human heart hungers for happiness. The journey is to the center where God dwells. In the end, all human wisdom and ingenuity is challenged by this fact: true happiness will be found in our center where God dwells. The heart will realize its true and lasting fulfillment only in God. Teresa gathered her long and rich life experience as the source for this book. It was written five year before she died.
As one approaches this four hundred year old book, one has to ask: why is something written for a small number of cloistered nuns over four centuries ago of any interest to today’s reader? The answer is that it is a spiritual classic. It was an important factor in Teresa, along with St. Catherine of Sienna, being named the first women Doctors of the Church in 1970. As a classic, this text speaks to the human heart in a profound and meaningful way free of the limiting bondage of culture and history. It has been translated into dozens of languages.
Teresa’s text calls us beyond the mind and imagination to the heart. We are lured into a unique experience of God. She describes her life as a story of God’s mercy. Teresa shows how the experience of God is rooted in a continual struggle of the flesh and the spirit. It involves a series of conversions. These deep personal alterations are always moving away from self-interest and control to surrender to God. Teresa emerged from the deepening encounter with God recognizing her gifts and addressing her brokenness. In the end, her expanding self-knowledge diminished her independence. She saw the utter importance of God’s mercy and her need to embrace it.
The saintly Carmelite describes the experience in the seven stages or dwelling places leading to the center. This description becomes a manual for our own Pilgrimage to God. She says the soul is like a castle “made entirely of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places.” (IC 1.1) Each human being can find the path to God in this beautiful map of the seven dwelling places. The spiritual life of the individual in the castle is complex. It involves the talents, commitment and individuality of the person as they are manifested in a growing spiritual evolution. All growth and progress is measured by movement to the center where God dwells.
The Interior Castle highlights several important points in the growing search for God:
- Prayer is our point of entry into the Castle. Hesitant and sporadic in the beginning, it increasingly grows in maturity as it travels through the Castle.
- The first three dwelling places are about our beginnings. They show the effects of our effort in prayer. The last four dwelling places are about God’s initiative and God’s special activity in our prayer. This is contemplation.
- Teresa constantly calls us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. He is the model. He is our companion at all times.
- Teresa treats the first three dwelling places as if she were anxious to move on to the final four stages of growth. Her special gift is her teachings on the mystical experiences in the final four dwelling places. This is one of her greatest contributions to Christian spirituality.
- The goal is union with God. This will take place in this life by purification and transformation in one’s journey to the center, where God dwells. Failing that, we will pass through purgatory after this life has ended. Either way, we end up united with God. However, the method and time are our choice.
- The journey to the center, where God awaits, unfolds in our ever-deeper awareness and acceptance of God’s love and mercy.
- The way forward in the experience of God is a process of letting go of our selfishness. In that process there is a relentless exposure of the depth and breadth of our self-absorption. Teresa is clear that only God can both expose and transform the deeper levels of self-love.
- One enters the Castle by casting off the spiritual blindness and paralysis that characterizes life in isolation from God. Then one can begin the long passage to the center and union with God. Every step of the way is all about love.
- She presents a vision for our journey to the center but little is said about methods of prayer emphasizing the unique and constant call to be open to the Spirit on the journey.
- In the end, it is all about love and service for our sisters and brothers which we embrace by participating in the coming of God’s kingdom of justice and peace and the integrity of creation.
