Teresa of Ávila

The teaching

Taught from her own books, above all The Book of Her Life, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle.

The castle and the waters, in brief

Teresa pictures the soul as a castle of clear crystal with seven dwelling places, God in the innermost and prayer the door, and in her Life she teaches the growth of prayer as four ways of watering a garden, from drawing water by hand to the rain that God sends. Both are taught in full on The Christian contemplatives. What follows is her plainer teaching, the counsel she gave her nuns for the daily practice of prayer.

Prayer is friendship

Mental prayer, she says, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends: taking time often to be alone with the one we know loves us. It needs no learning and no special gifts. Whoever has begun it should never give it up, however badly they think they are living, for it is the way back; and she begs whoever has not begun it, for the love of God, not to go without so great a good.

Three things needed

For those who pray together she asks three things above all: love for one another, detachment from every created thing, and true humility, which, though she names it last, is the chief of them and holds the others in it. Without these, she warns, long hours of meditation lead nowhere.

A determined determination

Those who would walk this road must begin with a great and very determined determination not to stop until they reach the end, come what may, whatever it costs, whoever complains, even if they die on the way or the whole world sinks. She asks for the resolve once, at the start, and then for patience, since God leads souls by different roads and in his own time.

Recollection

Her own way into prayer is recollection. The soul gathers its powers and goes within itself, where the King dwells in his palace. There is no need to go up to heaven to speak with him, or to raise the voice: he is near, and he hears. She does not ask her nuns to think much or to make long and subtle reflections; she asks only that they look at him, as one looks at a friend. A picture of Christ, or a good book, helps the beginner to gather the mind, and she herself could not begin to pray without a book for many years.

Vocal prayer said well leads to the same place. The Way of Perfection ends with the Our Father, phrase by phrase, and teaches that one who says it slowly, knowing to whom she is speaking, may find God raising her to contemplation through the very words.

Never leave the humanity of Christ

She came to see as a mistake the counsel that, in high prayer, one should leave behind every bodily image, even of Christ. The humanity of Christ is the door and the companion; with so good a friend present, and so good a captain who went first into suffering, everything can be borne. Even in the highest dwelling places the soul keeps him in view.

Love, not thinking

The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever most awakens love. Love itself is not great delight but a firm resolve to please God in everything. The thoughts may run on like the clapper of a mill while the will rests in God; she counsels not to be troubled by them or to fight them, but to let them run and come back to love.

Among the pots and pans

Work and obedience do not take a soul away from God. If obedience keeps you busy with outward things, she tells her daughters, and it is in the kitchen, the Lord walks among the pots and pans, helping you within and without. The proof of prayer is in how one lives, and the surest sign that the love of God is real is the love of one's neighbour.

Judging favours by their fruit

She teaches her nuns not to desire visions, raptures or any special favour, and to judge whatever comes by its fruit: what comes from God leaves humility, peace, strength for virtue and a wish to serve, and what does not leaves unrest and self-regard. She wanted such things examined by learned confessors, and trusted learning more than piety without it.

She warns too against a weakness that passes for rapture. Some sisters, worn down by long prayer, vigils and penances, fall into a heavy absorption for hours and take it for a gift from God. It is weakness of the body, she says, and she ordered such sisters to sleep and eat well and to cut down their prayer and penance until their strength returned.

Humility is walking in truth

Humility is walking in truth: seeing ourselves as we are, with nothing good of our own and with all the good that God gives. The room of self-knowledge must never be left, yet no one should stay in it alone, for the soul learns its own lowliness best by looking at the greatness of God.

The lines found in her breviary give the whole in a few words: let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you; all things pass; God does not change; patience obtains everything; whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.