St. Teresa of Ávila
Teresa of Ávila was a sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite nun, reformer, writer, and one of the most luminous guides to prayer in the Christian tradition. She lived in a turbulent time of political upheaval and religious reform, yet her greatest revolution was interior: she dared to describe the soul itself as a vast and beautiful dwelling, an “interior castle” with many rooms. Prayer, she taught, is the journey inward—moving from the outer rooms of distraction and surface living, through chambers of growing intimacy, until we reach the innermost chamber where God dwells at the center of the soul.
“The soul is like a castle, made entirely of diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions.”
Teresa was no dry theoretician. She was earthy, witty, and very human. She suffered from poor health all her life, endured misunderstandings, and carried the weight of leadership as she reformed the Carmelite order. Yet her writings sparkle with humor: “God deliver me from sullen saints!” she once quipped. She joked about her struggles, once telling God after a fall from her donkey, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!”
But beneath the playfulness burned a passionate love. For Teresa, prayer was not a duty or a formula—it was a living relationship with Christ. “Prayer is nothing else,” she wrote, “but a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”
She longed for the presence of God with an intensity that swept her into mystical ecstasy. In one famous passage she exclaims: “I saw in His hands a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart … and left me all on fire with a great love of God.” This “transverberation,” though dramatic, was only the flowering of what she described elsewhere as a steady companionship: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.”
Teresa was also deeply practical. She counseled her sisters not to mistake visions or consolations for the heart of prayer. What matters, she said, is love: “The Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our works as at the love with which they are done.” She knew how easily spiritual striving could become harsh and joyless, and so she reminded them: “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.”
When I first encountered Teresa, what struck me was her playfulness. I had thought of prayer mostly as a duty—something to do right or wrong. Teresa’s image of the interior castle invited me to see prayer as exploration, as friendship, as joy. The journey inward was not about being perfect; it was about being real, about letting God love me in the hidden places I had kept locked.
I imagine her, leaning on her walking stick, smiling with both mischief and tenderness, urging us on: “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you; all things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.”