As we know, it is not only the Pharisees who are filled with plunder and evil; each one of us has to make this same painful discovery in the progress of our self-knowledge. Saint Teresa was no exception and her inward scrutiny of her heart and soul was especially thorough and unsparing. However, in the course of this difficult inward journey she discovered the Seven Mansions of her “Interior Castle.” And though she encountered evil and plunder in the outer mansions, as she entered more deeply within herself, she became aware of radiant light emanating from within, and concentrated in that seventh mansion of her soul. This light was the radiant and transforming presence of the One she like to call “His Majesty” and who would radically transform her into his own likeness. Unlike Teresa, encountering the plunder and evil in our outer mansions can make us retreat instead of pressing forward and deeper to the light that awaits us beyond the mess and squalor of our outer mansions. Let us therefore ask her intercession in imitating her courageousness and determination, so that we too can encounter, be transformed, and united eternally, to the Divine Majesty who dwells within us.
Charles Stevenson says
“Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
Thank you, Father Abbot Joseph! So, the question arises: How can each of us undertake the tour of our own “mansions”?
Fortunately we are living during a time of the recovery and reassertion of the Christian tradition and practice of contemplative prayer, pioneered by Father Thomas Merton and developed intentionally and widely by Fathers Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and William Menninger (who is still with us). Visit Contemplative Outreach on line for more on this path. There is also Father John Main and the Christian Meditation that he brought to us. Both of these lineages have local resources and practice.
There are numerous traditions, differing in method and form, but they all turn on just two things: God’s complete, perfect, ubiquitous, ultimately inescapable and totally active intention for our illumination and redemption, and our willingness to consent to that activity within ourselves. (And how I wish that the good fathers and brothers of Holy Cross taught such a path! Great thanks to them for sharing the supportive space of the chapel with us!)
Shall we go, and look into them for ourselves?