Planting for Prayer: Teresa's Second Mansion

Entering into the practice of prayer quickly brings me face to face with sin in my life.  Ignoring sin inevitably leaves my prayer life disabled and dark.  My understanding of God will be confused  at best because of the shroud that covers my mind.   "Although the Sun Himself, Who has given it all its splendour and beauty, is still there in the centre of the soul, it is as if He were not there for any participation which the soul has in Him, though it is as capable of enjoying Him as is the crystal of reflecting the sun."  (Teresa of Avila, St.; Peers, E. Allison (2010-10-07). Interior Castle (Kindle Locations 441-443). Wilder Publications. Kindle Edition.)  Denial of sin is one of the great diseases of the soul.  It is cured through a living knowledge of what we are, who we are, and what we fight.

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People are beautiful and well-built.  "In speaking of the soul we must always think of it as spacious, ample and lofty; and this can be done without the least exaggeration, for the soul's capacity is much greater than we can realize, and this Sun, Which is in the palace, reaches every part of it." We are built as a home for God.   The beauty and usefulness of each person as a dwelling for God cannot be overemphasized.  People are like trees planted by water.  We draw our life from outside of ourselves.  We are not self-sufficient.  We are made to work in cooperation with God.  As we move into prayer, we need to be drawing from God and his grace, a "spring of life. . . .  On the other hand, through its own fault, leaves this spring and becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil-smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth."  Because of this condition, people need pity.  God gives us pity.  Without pity, we cannot find grace.  Without God's grace, we cannot find prayer.  We are well-made.  We draw our life from outside ourselves.  We need pity to grow.  This is what we are.

Self-knowledge governed by God grows into humility.  We can never have enough humility.  We always need to return to the work of humility, taming the desires of the body, the desires for recognition, and pride in what I do.  We can only be lifted to the heights of prayer from the stable foundation of humility.  We must not take this task on ourselves.   "Although. . . it is through the abundant mercy of God that the soul studies to know itself, yet one can have too much of a good thing, as the saying goes, and believe me, we shall reach much greater heights of virtue by thinking upon the virtue of God than if we stay in our own little plot of ground and tie ourselves down to it completely."  Self-knowledge can only be found in knowing God.  Each person will only find who they are through humility.  We must return to the work of humility frequently.  The best place to find humility is in knowing God more and more.

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Pride blinds us to what and who are are.  Pride causes us to think that we are the center of the universe.  We are god.  We forget Who dwells in us, where we draw our life from, and our need for pity.  "What a state the poor rooms of [this soul] are in! How distracted are the senses which inhabit them! And the faculties, which are their governors and butlers and stewards -- how blind they are and how ill-controlled! And yet, after all, what kind of fruit can one expect to be borne by a tree rooted in the devil?"  Pride makes us into mere consumers needing to be entertained.

This seems to me to be the condition of a soul which, though not in a bad state, is so completely absorbed in things of the world and so deeply immersed, as I have said, in possessions or honours or business, that, although as a matter of fact it would like to gaze at the castle and enjoy its beauty, it is prevented from doing so, and seems quite unable to free itself from all these impediments.

 Finally, in our blindness, our love for God and other people grows cold.  We do not see our true neediness.  We do not see how knowing God will help us understand ourselves.  Pride is what we fight.

The beginning work of prayer lies in understanding how wonderful we are and yet how each person needs pity to grow.  Such understanding draws us into humility before God, the only place where we can truly know who God is and who we are.  Humility arms us against pride which destroys our life and soul through isolation from God and other people and blind self-destruction.  Praying to God begins this work and continues far beyond it.  Lord, open our eyes to you so that we might open our lives to you and dig deeply into conversation with you and real love for you.  Amen.