The “VII Mansions” exhibit a style of life that externally is a return to the ordinary. We begin with the goal (Part 1), since this reveals the way (Part 2), and we will conclude with some reflections on the process. This essay attempts to present a brief portrait of prayer as centering in Teresa’s teaching, especially as found in The Interior Castle. This quality of life depends on how thoroughly one has become centered in the divine Center. In other words progress is measured by the quality of one’s life, suggested but not exhausted by the experiences. Even so marvelous an experience as the infused prayer of union in the “V Mansions,” in which God’s presence is felt incontrovertibly, finds its greatest value in the fact that it proceeds from the conformity of the human will to God’s will. Teresa warns frequently that the experiences are not to be given exaggerated importance. This union becomes identification in full consciousness in the spiritual marriage. The “VII Mansions” describe the fullness, while preceding mansions depict the first steps or partial and intermittent experiences of divine union. The goal is the “Seventh Mansions,” which delineates life in and from the Center. According to Teresa’s final accounting in her masterpiece, The Interior Castle, there are seven such passages, which she calls las moradas, dwelling places or mansions. These reverberations are experiences or clusters of experiences that constitute the passages along the way to the center. We experience resonances of the divine Presence within from the beginning and all through our search for inner meaning and wholeness. Our center lives by the Center, and the result is fullness of life, perfect contemplation out of which flow community and ministry. Thus our true center is both in us and beyond us, and the transcendence we yearn for is filled by God’s self-communication. This contact deep within where we merge with God and are transformed into God-centered persons makes us the “new creation” of Pauline theology and the dwelling place of God of Johannine writings. Prayer means to be in touch with the Center of one’s life, who is “the Divine Majesty” dwelling in his own rooms in the depths of the interior castle, the figure for ourselves. Prayer is life before it is an exercise, a dimension of being before it is an experience. Prayer is the heart of Teresa of Avila’s life and teaching, her “way of perfection.” For her, prayer is the supreme meaning and value of human existence, since it is the inner life that animates the exterior, the journey within that is the journey into reality.
From: The Published Articles of Ernest E.
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