St. Teresa of Avila on Reaching the Seventh Dwelling Place

Spiritual Life, Summer 2006 by Zundel, Alan F

It will be good to avoid giving the impression that those, to whom the Lord doesn't give things that are so supernatural, are left without hope. True union can very well be reached, with God's help, if we make the effort to obtain it by keeping our wills fixed only on that which is God's will.48

Conclusion

I have argued that St. Teresa of Avila's attention to extraordinary spiritual experiences in The Interior Castle tends to overshadow her advice on reaching the final dwelling place, union of the soul with God. By highlighting some other important aspects of the book, I hope to have made this advice more accessible. In particular, three lessons stand out:

1. Contemplative prayer is not just for a spiritual elite; every person seriously committed to a spiritual life can aspire to it.

2. This prayer must be surrounded and supported by the ordinary practices of the Christian life, such as self-examination, humility, detachment, and love of neighbor.

3. As the soul progresses, trials and suffering can bear fruit in helping move one toward the final surrender to God's will.

As might be expected, these lessons are neither unusual nor exotic but rather reflect the timeless principles of the Christian life.

NOTES

1. Teresa of Avila, The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. E. Allison Peers (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1960) pp. 274-275.

2. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, The Classics of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1979) p. 35.

3. Ibid., p. 38.

4. Ibid., p. 57.

5. Ibid., p. 60.

6. Ibid., p. 65.

7. Ibid., p. 67.

8. Ibid., p. 78.

9. Ibid., p. 81.

10. Ibid., p. 86.

11. Ibid., p. 93.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 115.

14. Ibid., p. 162. She does say at one point that in the sixth dwelling place raptures are "very common" (ibid., p. 138), but I interpret her to be talking about her own experience rather than that of everyone who goes through this stage.

15. Ibid., pp. 76, 1-162.

16. Ibid., pp. 33-34, 64.

17. Ibid., p 64.

18. Ibid., pp. 89, 111-113, 122, 138, 151, 155, 159-160.

19. Ibid., pp. 83-84, 155.

20. St. John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), pp. 189-190.

21. Ibid., pp. 190-191.

22. Ibid., p. 115.

23. Ibid., p. 187.

24. Teresa, Interior Castle, p. 85.

25. Ibid., p. 86.

26. Ibid., p. 97.

27. Ibid., p. 99.

28. Ibid., p. 106.

29. Ibid., pp. 126-127.

30. Ibid., pp. 145-150.

31. Ibid., pp. 100-102.

32. Ibid., p. 102.

33. Ibid., p. 110.

34. Ibid., pp. 112.

35. Ibid., p. 113.

36. Ibid., pp. 103, 179.

37. Ibid., pp. 110-111.

38. Ibid., pp. 178-179.

39. Ibid., p. 177.

40. In our time, with a greater awareness of the mystic traditions of other religions and the common theme of the "death" of the self at a high point in the spiritual life, I must wonder if these specifically Christian features described by Teresa-the visions of Christ and the Trinity-are a necessary feature of union with God or only one way the mind interprets an ineffable experience by using culturally familiar categories. Perhaps her statement mentioned above, "with other persons the favor will be received in another form" (ibid., p. 177), could support this view.