📚Interior Castle - First Mansions📚

Intro:

My first thoughts are that God has such perfect timing again, as always! In Teresa’s intro I feel like she knows exactly what I’m going through right now – the struggles, the suffering, the ‘weaknesses in the head.’

Yet as my spiritual director reminded me today (27th June), prayer is not about the feeling you get from it, but the desire and intention of your heart when you pray. That’s what matters! It seems to me like Teresa has the same approach to writing this book – that while she does not feel like doing it at all, she trusts that there is a purpose and a plan for this writing, and she will do it regardless 😊   

“…As I know that strength arising from obedience has a way of simplifying things which seem impossible…”

I love how apologetic and sincere Teresa is – she feels so incapable of writing this book, and in doing so is totally reliant on the Lord to guide her through it and make this mean something!

“And if I am successful in anything that I may say, they will of course understand that it does not come from me…”

Overview:

(For a quick read, just check the Main Takeaways and my thoughts 😊)

• Main takeaways
• Key points and supporting quotes
• My thoughts

 

First Mansions:

Self-Knowledge and Humility

Three Main Takeaways:

1. The soul is like a castle with many rooms, all arranged around a central, chiefest mansion. It is indescribably beautiful because it is a dwelling place fit for The King.
2. We enter the castle through prayer – leaving behind all worldly distractions and focusing on God.
3.  The First Mansions are of self-knowledge and humility. Not simply reflecting on our shortcomings and miseries, because we can easily get trapped in that. But every so often focusing on the majesty and perfection of God, and allowing ourselves to be defined by Him.

To enter: Pray!

A soul residing here: Has good intentions, but still clings to the things of the world, and is easily distracted.

To progress: Put aside all unnecessary worldly affairs and distractions.

Chapter 1

1)      The soul is like a castle with many rooms (a bit like Heaven) – God’s dwelling place. If we are made in His image, and He is comfortable dwelling in us, the soul must be indescribably beautiful! Yet we care more about our bodies than the beauty of our soul.

·         We are made in God’s image – God is ‘A King so mighty, so wise, so pure and so full of all that is good’ – and He comes to dwell in us (Proverbs 13:31). Therefore we shouldn’t try and even start to comprehend the beauty that is our soul, His dwelling place!

·         “…the very fact that His Majesty says it is made in His image means that we can hardly form any conception of the souls great dignity and beauty.”

·         “…we trouble little about carefully preserving the souls beauty. All our interest is centered on the rough setting of the diamond, and in the outer walls of the castle – that is to say, in these bodies of ours.”

 

2)      It is in/through the soul (particularly in the central most mansion) that God grants us little favours - displays of His great power, love and mercy etc...These favours aren’t granted based on how holy we are, but how He can best display his greatness! (e.g. St Paul, killing Christians, experienced God’s boundless merciful love, converted and started powerfully spreading the Gospel!).

·         The souls mansions are all arranged around a central, “chiefest mansion, where the most secret things [favours] pass between God and the soul.”

·         Some examples of ‘favours’ (although we can never comprehend/understand all of them!)

o   A display/greater understanding of God’s greatness

o   Boundless mercy

o   Great love

o   Manifestation of God’s power

·         “…it will do us no harm to find that it is possible in this our exile for so great a God to commune with such malodorous worms, and to love Him for His great goodness and boundless mercy.”

·         Even if we don’t experience these ‘favours,’ we can still be happy for those that do! Because they are all for the building up of the Kingdom, all to point us to the joys of Heaven.

·         “He grants these favours, then, not because those who receive them are holier than those who do not, but in order that His greatness may be made known, as we see in the case of Saint Paul and the Magdalen…”  

·         “For God’s will is that no bounds should be set to His works”

 

3)      The door to enter the castle of our soul is prayer. We need to put aside our worldly distractions long enough to really pray – to realise what a mess we are in, and to acknowledge the greatness of our God. Then we have entered the castle – in the first rooms on the lowest floor. There are still many distractions, but at least we have entered 🙂

·         How do we enter the castle? If the castle is the soul, and we are the castle than we have already entered??

·         The soul needs to ‘enter within itself.’ “…souls without prayer are like people who’s bodies or limbs are paralysed: they possess feet or hands but they cannot control them.”

·         We enter the castle through the door of prayer and meditation.

·         Prayer is not “Speaking to God’s Majesty as he would speak to his slave” or mindless repetition. Prayer must involve:

o   Remembering Who we are addressing

o   Knowing what we are asking for

o   Remembering who we are

o   Knowing Who we are asking it of

·         Most souls stay in the courtyard of the castle and never try to go further. “…there are souls so infirm and so accustomed to busying themselves with outside affairs that nothing can be done for them…although by nature they are so richly endowed as to have the power of holding converse with none other than God Himself…”

·         But even if we are as above - “absorbed in worldly affairs,” preoccupations and attached to worldly treasures - we can eventually enter the First Mansions by occasionally:

o   Having good desires

o   Commending ourselves to the Lord

o   Thinking about the state of our souls

o   Praying a few times a month

o   Shaking free of our preoccupations enough to recognise that we are not heading towards the ‘castle door.’

·         Then, we are in the first rooms, on the ground floor, but lots of courtyard reptiles and creatures get in and keep distracting us.

 

Chapter 2

1)      We should strive to never sin, as in sinning, we allow our soul to become rooted in darkness, in the devil, and that is not what the castle was made for!

·         The soul in a state of mortal sin:

o   Any good works won’t be rooted in God

o   Has separated itself from God

o   Has tried to please the devil, allowing itself to become darkness

o   Can’t be pleasing in God’s eyes

o   Gives no shade and yields no fruit – produces only misery and filth

o   “No thicker darkness exists….although the Sun Himself…is still there in the center of the soul…it is as capable of enjoying Him as is the crystal or reflecting the sun.”

o   “…If a thick black cloth be placed over a crystal in the sunshine however, it is clear that, although the sun may be shining upon it, it’s brightness will have no effect upon the crystal.”

·         The soul in a state of grace:

o   “For, just as the streamlets that flow from a clear spring are as clear as the spring itself, so the works of a soul in grace are pleasing in the eyes of both God and of  men, since they proceed from this spring of life, in which the soul is as a tree planted.”

o   Produces good fruit

 

2)      Remembering this helps us to fear offending the Lord, and to stay humble, knowing that any good thing we do is not rooted in ourselves but in the Lord.

·         “Without His help we are powerless.”

·         “For we continually hear what a good thing prayer is…yet they tell us nothing beyond what we ourselves have to do and say very little about the work done by the Lord in the soul – I mean supernatural work.”

 

3)      Self-knowledge and humility are very important. But at the same time we can’t get too caught up on our own misery because we will get trapped in it. It is good to forget ourselves for a bit and focus in on ‘the greatness and majesty’ of God. Only than can we truly know ourselves.

[This section strikes a chord with me…I could write out the whole thing – but just read it yourself!]

·         “Still, we should remember that the bee is constantly flying about from flower to flower, and in the same way…the soul, must sometimes emerge from self-knowledge and soar aloft in meditation upon the greatness and the majesty of its God. “

·         …we shall reach much greater heights of virtue by thinking upon the virtue of God than if we stay in our own little plot of ground and tie ourselves down to it completely

·         We shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God. Let us think of His greatness, and then come back to our own baseness...

·         “They think that all these misgivings…arise from humility, whereas they really come from a lack of self-knowledge.

 

4)      There ‘a million’ of these first mansions, and lots of ways to enter. But the evil one lies in wait to deceive us and stop as progressing further (as he does in most of the mansions). We must ask forgiveness, and turn to Our Lady and the Saints to fight for us.

·         “at this early stage, as the soul is still absorbed in worldly affairs, engulfed in worldly pleasure and puffed up with worldly honours and ambitions…

·         True perfection consists in the love of God and love of neighbour

 

5)      The castle is like a palmito (many layers that need to be peeled away, surrounding the central savoury part). The Sun in the center reaches every part of it. But in the first mansions it’s rays are dimmer because of all the bad things distracting us. To progress on we must “put aside all unnecessary worldly affairs and businesses.”

·         It is as if one was to enter a place flooded by sunlight with his eyes so full of dust that he could hardly open them.

 

A few thoughts on the First Mansions:

I reflected on chapter one and two about a week apart from each other, and again God’s timing is perfect!

When I read the intro/first chapter, my life was a bit all over the place and I was struggling to pause and contemplate the majesty of God, or even spend some time in prayer with Him – I kept pushing on like I could do it all myself. I was just like someone on the outskirts of the mansion, too distracted by worldly things.

I am reflecting on the second chapter while sitting by the fireplace/in my room at the Tyburn Monastery, where I have escaped for a bit of a break. The part in this chapter about self-knowledge is very relatable as I often get caught up in my own faults and miseries, thinking I am growing in awareness of myself, but I forget to focus in on God who helps me recognise the truth.

Here at Tyburn I have truly been able to forget myself and focus in on the greatness of God, through the beautiful surroundings, peacefulness, and regular prayer, Mass and Adoration. I can’t help but center myself on the Lord when I’m so surrounded by beauty, with the pinnacle being a love of the Eucharist.

This morning (8^th July) while I knelt in Adoration, I was actually reminded of this book. I pictured myself in the inner most part of the mansion of my soul, right there with Jesus, and it was so peaceful and safe and perfect. I could hear the rain bucketing down outside, but I was totally safe in His presence. And just thinking about it now, my soul is truly like that, and that inner sanctuary is always there no matter what! I hope and pray that I am able to tap into it more, to really dwell in the innermost part of my soul.