I just finished reading The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila and although it got a little too Roman Catholic for me in the sixth and seventh mansions I was still enriched by the experience. One of the things that I've found very edifying while reading The Interior Castle, The Imitation of Christ, and The Confessions has been the incredible humility that these books enjoin on the reader. Consider the 12th paragraph of the 3rd chapter in the fifth mansions:
Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him. He will give you more than you know how to desire if you constrain yourselves and strive with all your power to gain it, forcing your will as far as it is possible to comply in all things with your sisters' wishes although you may sometimes forfeit your own rights by so doing.
This is not un-biblical:
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
(Philippians 2:3)
I've found the repeated exhortations to humility very un-21st-century-American and it refreshes me, and I'm thankful for that.
Another passage in The Interior Castle that I found very useful was this one near the end of the seventh mansions:
I told you elsewhere how the devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.
This is one of those great nuggets of truth. I lived like this for so long - always "satisfying" myself "with wishing to perform impossibilities" so that I did nothing at all for God. It has only been in the past year that I decided that I could do so little but at least I could do that. This is the reason I blog - because it is one of the few things I find within my ability and will to do. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) it encourages me that there is somebody given only one talent (when the other two people in the parable are given 5 and 2 talents). It encourages me even though in the parable the poor fellow just buries his one talent in the ground and is clearly the example of what not to do. But that is just it, isn't it? See, I'm that one talent guy and I'm determined to make the most of it, not bury it in the ground happy with just wishing I was the five talent guy. Let's not rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities but rather put our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord.
