The Interior Castle (Exploring a Spiritual Classic as a Modern Reader)

Teresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun who was committed to a life of contemplative prayer. Beloved for both her deep spiritual insights and practical approach to life, her writings are considered spiritual classics, and The Interior Castle is widely recognized as her literary masterpiece. To read The Interior Castle is to put yourself in the hands of an extraordinarily qualified faith mentor who well understands our struggles to connect with God.

Teresa’s primary metaphor throughout this work is that the human soul is an “interior castle,” or a series of “dwelling places,” of great grandeur, beauty, and value. Her book is a tour of the different ways we relate to God through prayer, with varying intensity, awareness, and intimacy, culminating with spiritual unity with God.

Many books on prayer are about what we do to pray, or to pray better. But there are relatively few, like The Interior Castle, that focus on what God does in prayer—particularly the sometimes inexplicable ways God gives us experiences of love, healing, strength, insight, companionship, and knowledge of God’s presence in, and will for, our lives.

In this new edition of The Interior Castle, editor Laurel Mathewson, author of An Intimate Good: A Skeptical Christian Mystic in Conversation with Teresa of Avila, brings this renowned spiritual leader into clear focus for contemporary readers while modernizing the text to include shorter paragraphs, simpler sentence structure, and updated vocabulary. It features an introduction to St. Teresa and her work, chapter introductions and summaries, brief footnotes for additional information and clarity, and questions for reflection. Mathewson encourages us to be open to the ways in which Teresa’s “experiences and writings still shed light on things that happen in our world, so different from hers in so many ways but still filled with human beings struggling to be in relationship with one another and God.”