 Welcome to The Commentaries, a podcast series from Tan in which you'll learn how to read and understand history's greatest Catholic works from today's greatest Catholic scholars. In every series of The Commentaries, your expert host will be your personal guide to not just read the book, but to live the book, shining the light of its eternal truths into our modern darkness. Tan commentaries.com to get your copy of the book and to subscribe for access to all the great reading plans, new episodes, bonus content, and exclusive deals for listeners of The Commentaries. Welcome back to The Commentaries series on St. Teresa of Avalos Interior Castle. I'm Father Timothy Reid from Charlotte, North Carolina, and today is day 19 in our series. Now that we have finished going through each of the seven mansions of the interior castle, it's time for us to do just a little bit of review and wrap up. Now this masterpiece by St. Teresa concludes with an epilogue, which was really a letter for its readers that she attached to the manuscript and which was dated November 29, 1577, about five years before her death. In it, she reminds her readers that one cannot enter the castle or any of its mansions by force. While our effort is required to move through the interior castle, we may do so only with the Lord's permission, and he desires that we wait upon him humbly. St. Teresa also states that while only seven mansions were discussed, there are many more, as the soul is so beautifully created in God's image and likeness. And in concluding, she asks for prayers and humbly submits this work to the scrutiny of the church. And now roughly 450 years after this book was published, I'd say, Holy Mother Church heartily endorses this magnificent work as one of her greatest spiritual treasures. Now that being said, the interior castle is not the easiest book to understand, and throughout the course of this book, St. Teresa distinguishes various types of prayer and some of these distinctions can be confusing as she doesn't always use the same terminology between her various writings. So I'd like to look over some of the distinctive forms of prayer she mentions with their various stages and manifestations and review them with the hope of helping you sort out all that we've learned from St. Teresa. And to help with this, I'm pulling a few notes from a book edited by Father Kiran Kavanaugh, a great Carmelite priest. And this book is called Teresa of Avila, The Way of Prayer, and it's a very helpful resource if you're interested in really studying Teresa of Avila a little bit more. Now, as we know, St. Teresa conceives of one's prayer life as this lifelong spiritual journey, one that she likens to a journey through an interior castle, the center of which is where God himself dwells within a soul. You make your way through this interior castle by means of prayer, especially contemplation, which is really the heart of prayer for St. Teresa. Now that term contemplation for St. Teresa encompasses a broad range of meaning, including infused or supernatural contemplation, as well as the entire spectrum of passive infused or mystical prayer that's bestowed by God upon a soul. In her primary works on prayer, which would be her autobiography known as The Book of Her Life, The Way of Perfection, and the Interior Castle, Teresa speaks of prayer, of contemplation, and journeying through the interior castle through the lens of her own experience. So each one of these books is an autobiographical work that really tells the tale of her own conversion. So St. Teresa's prayer life is necessarily tied up in her own conversion and her gradual movement toward a life of holiness and virtue. And while her prayer life transcended the vicissitudes and struggles of her life, you cannot properly appreciate Teresa's life of prayer without understanding all that happened to her. The fact that St. Teresa of Avila was able to enjoy and maintain such a beautiful, fruitful, and frankly extraordinary prayer life in the midst of terrible sufferings and struggles is a testament to God's grace and to her own determination to do God's will. So keep in mind as well that St. Teresa did not have any training in mystical theology or contemplative prayer experiences before she entered upon it in her prayer life. And to her great frustration, it seemed that many of the confessors that she dealt with had very little knowledge of it either. So Teresa's writings were meant as a way to help others who would follow her in the path of contemplation. And this is exactly why she is a doctoress of the Church. Now, Father Kiran Kavanaugh distinguishes three major periods in St. Teresa's life. The first period is from 1515 to 1535 and it comprises her childhood and adolescence until the point she enters the convent at age 20. The second period is her early years as a carmelite from 1535 to 1554, which includes her terrible sickness and near-death experiences as well as her return to practicing prayer after abandoning it for several years, as well as her journey through the first stages of the interior castle until her conversion, which she marks in 1554. The third stage is her advancement through the final three stages of the interior castle up to her death in 1582. Now, it was during the second stage that Teresa began to experience true recollection and the prayer of quiet and even some real moments of union with our Lord. The hallmarks of contemplation were just beginning to be visited upon her during this time and it was also during this period that she had this vision of Christ looking at her sternly while she was visiting with a man in the parlor and that look, that vision she had of Christ is what led her to a deeper conversion. Now, once St. Teresa had her conversion experience in 1554, contemplative prayer became habitual for her and we can see from her writings that there was this gradual growth in contemplative prayer as well as in holiness for St. Teresa until her death as her intimacy with our Lord became deeper and deeper and deeper and this reminds us of a very important principle in the spiritual life namely that our growth in virtue and our faithfulness to prayer are corollaries. So the more we pray, the more we will grow in virtue and the more we grow in virtue, the more we will want to pray. Now, of course, the opposite is also true. The less we pray, the less we will grow in virtue and the more we grow in vice, the less we will want to pray. As for St. Teresa, another thing that helped her along her path of prayer were the intense sufferings that she endured, especially her physical illnesses because these trials helped form and confirm her in the virtue of humility and in her reliance upon God's grace. St. Teresa wrote in her life that when it comes to praying, bodily strength is not necessary but only love and a habit and the Lord always provides the opportunity if we desire and she says and even in sickness itself and these other occasions, the prayer is genuine when it comes from a soul that loves to offer the sickness up and accept what is happening and be conformed to it into the other thousand things that happen. She says prayer is an exercise of love and it would be incorrect to think that if there is no time for solitude, there is no prayer at all. Now, St. Teresa also spent a great amount of time reflecting upon the humanity of Jesus in her prayer, envisioning him as he appears in gospel stories. Meditating upon Christ in this way helped the saint to come to know him and it also helped her deepen her intimacy with him. And St. Teresa is very clear in her writings that if one wants to proceed along a life of prayer and grow in intimacy with our Lord, then the first thing that is needed is what she calls in the way of perfection a very determined determination to persevere until reaching the end come what may. Now she also mentions in the way of perfection three other qualities that are essential to advancing in prayer. First, love for one another. Second, detachment from all created things. And third, true humility, which is the main practice and embraces the others. As concerns living other people, we should be willing to put up with a great deal of annoyance with those whom we love and doing so will make the world a better place. That's not always easy though, is it? But patience with others is key for growing in holiness. With regard to detachment from created things, St. Teresa teaches us that we have to remind ourselves constantly that everything in this world is vanity and quickly comes to an end. So in other words, Teresa counsels us to call to mind ultimate realities as a means of putting created things into their proper perspective and of calling ourselves to focus on what will endure for eternity. But this type of detachment requires humility. In fact, Teresa refers to humility and detachment as inseparable sisters. As she says in the way of perfection, these are not the relatives I advise you to withdraw from. Rather you should embrace them and love them and never be seen without them. Those who have them can easily go out and fight all held together and against the whole world and all its occasions of sin. Now let's talk about mental prayer. This is the first distinction of prayer that Father Kavanaugh makes in his book about St. Teresa. And he says that her best definition comes from the book of her life, where Teresa writes, for mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us. Now, Father Kavanaugh points out that Teresa positively begs her readers to practice mental prayer and not to stop, even if it seems that one is not making much progress. At the very least, the person who practices mental prayer will be shown the path to heaven. And moreover, God will see that person as a friend and repay him. So to Teresa, the practice of mental prayer is how we grow in friendship with our Lord and it helps us to align our will with God's holy will. And over time, we will see how much it benefits us to possess God's friendship. In fact, for the friendship to grow and endure, we must learn to align our wills with his will. His will must become our own will. And over time, we will come to depend on him so much that we will not want to be without him. In fact, Teresa teaches us that in the measure we desire God, we will find him. The next distinction that Father Kavanaugh parses out is the prayer of recollection, which we discussed at length on day nine with the fourth mansions. Now, Father Kavanaugh says that this refers to the soul collecting its faculties together and entering within itself to be with God. And God in return comes quickly to be with the soul, to teach it and give it the prayer of quiet. So it's a matter of the soul placing itself in Christ's presence and being accustomed to being inflamed with love for his sacred humanity. Now, there are greater and lesser degrees of recollection and as the soul practices recollection and makes progress in prayer, the recollection comes more easily and becomes deeper. Now, you'll remember that when we discussed this on day nine, I mentioned how the prayer of recollection generally prepares the soul for divine consolations. And ultimately, recollection is a matter of striving to be in our Lord's presence in prayer so that one can converse with Him. Moreover, practicing the prayer of recollection is a sure and safe way to advance to the various dwelling places of the interior castle. Truly, it is a very valuable gift that Teresa says we should thank God for if we receive it. Now, that completes our podcast for day 19. Stay tuned next time as we review the various stages of contemplation and finish up this podcast series. Until then, let us pray with St. Teresa. Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices. Amen. May God bless you and may St. Teresa intercede for you. Thank you.