Lectio et Oratio

Why does St Teresa say that she has never quite explained this supernatural kind of prayer as she explains it here? She is explaining in a new way the transition from a good form of prayer (meditation = thinking, imagining God within the soul) to another kind of prayer (supernatural prayer or contemplation).  Meditation = anyone with the help of God can practice this kind of awareness of God withi...

Can the grace of contemplation be achieved by human effort alone? Can we fatigue ourselves sufficiently to produce contemplation? No. Human effort and meditation does not produce contemplation on its own. This living water can only be given by God when and where He wills. Does effort matter then? Yes. Strive to be humble. Strive to suffer and imitate Jesus. Strive to love God without self-interest...

Is this Prayer of Quiet, this supernatural way of prayer, able to be striven after or is it a gift? Both. The prayer itself is the gift of Jesus, the gift of living water (John 4), that enlarges our heart from within. St Teresa says: "however hard we strive, can we acquire it." This early form of contemplation is not the highest form of union, but it is "the purest gold of Divine Wisdom." If we ca...

How can a basin of water be filled? Two ways. 1) The noisy one, with great effort, bringing the water from a distance by conduits. 2) Having a fountain right in the basin, filing it without effort and noise. Way 1 = meditation = gaining God's love by way of thoughts (images), the work of understanding, our own fatiguing effort, leading to sweetness and satisfaction and loving movements of the will...

How should we react to the weakness of our human nature, especially our weak imagination? St Teresa says: react with gentleness. Our imagination (= "thought") bears the effects of original sin. Instead of being perfectly docile to reason (= "understanding"), our imagination often goes off "on its own" in many directions, confused and excited. This (almost) independent imagination is part of the la...

St Teresa begins to talk about another grace than the prayer of meditation. Meditation seeks to think much about God, to use the understanding, in order to awaken the will to devotion. But what happens when love begins to dominate prayer? What happens when a loving knowledge enters the soul without long processes of thinking? The Fourth Mansions are dealing with this supernatural prayer, the infus...

Can we pray to the Holy Spirit? Yes. And St Teresa begins these Fourth Mansions by invoking the Holy Spirit. The Lord sends the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. The Holy Spirit helps us make sense of all the Lord revealed. The Holy Spirit also helps the Church understand and explain the stages of prayer. In this first short paragraph of the Fourth Mansions, St Teresa shows herself to be a th...

So far, St Teresa has stressed the need for humility in order to become perfect in love. But now she turns to the importance of obedience. Obedience does the will of one's superior. Obedience surrenders my will to the command of another. Why is this so crucial? If we want to open ourselves to God'a activity in the fourth mansions, we must let go of always doing things according to our own will and...

What is spiritual perfection for the Christian? Having consolations? Doing moderate amount of penances? Taking great care of our bodies? No. Christian perfection consists in the increase of love. St Teresa wants us to fix our minds on this target, this goal. We must surrender ourselves to God, not focus so much on calculating our own perfection. The journey we are on is towards Love, towards becom...

St Teresa gives several examples from the world of business to help her friends see what failing to resign oneself to God's will looks like. She wants us to pray for the grace of healing, healing for our wounded souls. So often we want things just according to our taste. We so often fail to surrender to God's plans. We can even get discouraged at the lack of progress we have made. In all these mat...

Jesus said: "I am gentle and humble in heart." St Paul says: "He humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant." Our Lord tells us to take his yoke upon ourselves and to learn from him.  Humility undermines pride, the great enemy of the spiritual life. In the third mansions, because of our successes and progress, we can become blind to our own limitations and imperfections. We can secretly thin...

St Teresa gives us a famous description of the regularity of a certain soul that has entered the third mansions. One sign of God's activity is how he fills us with a desire not to commit even a venial sin. Another sign of this stage is aridity in prayer. Our faithfulness and success is doing good work can lead us to be impatient with God's new activity. The careful self regulation of this stage ca...

St Teresa explains why it is a great thing to experience God's action in the third mansions. But her treatment begins with a confession of her own past mistakes. She wants us to apply what she says about herself to ourselves. We are progressing, but we have not reached the summit just yet. One marker of God's new activity in these third mansions is our conscious desire to imitate Mary.

We must consult others in the face of temptations, above all, Our Lord. How do we look to Jesus? Prayer! She explains why we must never to give up on prayer. If we fall, we must begin again. Prayer is the way to heaven. Prayer requires us to enter into ourselves. Prayer puts us into vital contact with Jesus, the Way to the Father. Prayer is the door to enter this interior castle. Our Lord is not f...