TERESA  of AVILA

Summary of her Doctrine
 

 Teresa of Avila

Adapted from Urban Holmes,
 A History of Christian Spirituality, An Analytical Introduction (Seabury, 1981)

 

 

PROGRESS in PRAYER: THE ANALOGY
of the WATERED GARDEN
 

 

from the Life

1. Discursive meditation (the use of reason-watering bucket by bucket, carried by hand from the well).

2. Recollection (affective prayer)-the water wheel.

3. Quiet - springs of water.

4. Union - drenching rain.

 

SEVEN ROOMS
of the INTERIOR MANSION
 

 

1. A state of grace in which we are still very much in love with the world.

2. An openness to the practice of prayer and edifying books, sermons, and conversations, while still in the world.

3. A life of high virtue, still susceptible to lapses.

4. The experience of spiritual consolations, as in the prayer of quiet.

5. A kind of incipient union.

6. A growth in intimacy with God.

7. Spiritual marriage.

Rooms four to seven are the degrees of mystical experience. The last three rooms correspond to the prayer of union which Teresa describes as the drenching rain. The sign of advance in the prayer of union is a death-like experience that moves us beyond seeing, hearing, and understanding. [...] In the sixth room we find a sense of power, tranquillity, and awareness of God's word in our life as signs of the authenticity of the experience.

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