A Year with St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle
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Introduction
1.) Ask yourself this question: “Do I have an interior life?”
2.) Buy your copy of the Interior Castle and begin reading! Read Mansion 1 by March 15th
Mansion One
1.) Have you finished reading Mansion One?
2.) Listen to the podcast and consider what your discipline of prayer is like.
3.) Join us for our in-person discussion! Join our Intellectual Society email list for more details.
Mansion Two
Three Key words:
Interiority, struggle and communion
Questions for Reflection
What is it like when I hear God’s voice?
What has He been saying lately?
Do you have a written plan of love or rule of life that outline how you will intentionally give your time weekly and daily to prayer and the sacraments?
Do you have time set aside each day for mental prayer?
Do you have someone in your life you can be accountable to in prayer?
By moving to the Second Dwelling Places, we see we must leave our old life behind? How is this a struggle?
When you fall, do you trust in the mercy of God? Even out of your fall, God will bring good
Mansion Three
Here St. Teresa describes the last doorway before we enter into the mansions of the Lord's work as opposed to our own.
Questions for reflection
Have I built in practices based on order in my life and prayer routine?
Where can I make room for Holy spirit as opposed to my own plan?
Mansion Four
Mansion Four is packed with three chapters and might be the most important mansion of all. Saint Teresa says this is the mansion where we move from the active form of prayer to the beginnings of passive recollection and we are getting closer to the Seventh Dwelling! (The change is so subtle we might miss it.)
Questions for Reflection
What is a good way to dispose oneself for this new type of prayer?
Teresa uses the analogy of the water trough. Can you think of another one for explaining the difference in prayer?
What is going well in your prayer life right now? What isn't?
Is the Lord doing something new in your relationship with Him?
Right now, is the Lord telling you to run or slow down?
Do you struggle with distractions in prayer? If so, how can you apply St. Teresa's wisdom on how to deal with these distractions?
Have any of the devil's tactics the saint mentions come against you in your prayer life?
Where is there a lack of self-knowledge in your life and how might that be preventing you from going deeper in the mystical ladder?
Mansion Five
Join us for a discussion of mansion five where Saint Theresa talks about the changes in prayer that occur in the soul moving out of mansion four. In this video we will highlight the Saints famous image of the the silk worm, and the butterfly that tell us so much about moving into union with our bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
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