St. Teresa of Avila was a Carmalite nun who lived in the 16th century, and she worked for much of her life to reform the Carmilite order. Among her writings is the spiritual classic, The Interior Castle. This book outlines the journey of the soul from a place of darkness, loneliness and sin to a place of light, love and communion with God. This communion takes place deep within our souls.
St. Teresa splits up her castle into seven rooms or mansions, and she describes the journey of the soul into each one. The first three are concerned with good works, and training the soul to be ordered toward love of others through charitable works and avoiding sin. The other four are states of receiving interior gifts of love given to us by God usually during periods of meditation.
St. Theresa tells us that most Christians often do not go beyond the third mansions in this life. These are people who live good and wholesome lives, but for whatever reason, do not enter into deep meditation with God, or God does not will to give them the graces that they are seemingly not prepared to receive. God allows them to live the mediocre spiritual life so that they will not be lost to him in the end.
The rich young man in the synoptic gospels falls into this category. He goes to Jesus, presumably as a soul residing in the 3rd mansions. He has done everything he can to please God. He followed all the commandments from his youth, but he still did not know what was missing. Unknown to him, the commandments had been prepping his soul to desire the mansions further within the soul (four – seven).
Jesus, knowing this, calls him deeper and closer to Him. You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Jesus gives the young man the formula for his continued journey in holiness. The thing that was stopping him from falling deeper in love with God was his attachment to material things, and he went away sad because he loved those things. He had to make a choice as to who he loved more: God or mammon.
We do not get a definitive answer as to what happened to the rich young man. We can assume that he never came back to Jesus to follow Him in the way Jesus asked, but there is always the possibility that after wrestling with the call, he does return. Regardless, the ending of the story is not really the point. The point is that now the question turns to us: Have we come to the third mansions? Have we struggled through the grace of God to not only eliminate mortal sin from our life, but much of our venial sins as well? And then when we have reached this plateau in climbing the mountain of God, are we willing to give up the good things of this world to receive the greater ones of the next? These questions are ones that we must take seriously, and we should not despair if we do not answer them in the way that we would want. But we must take courage and ask God to give us the strength to continue to draw closer to Him.
By asking these questions, we will find out the answer to the most important question in our eternal salvation: Who do we love? Do we love God, or our own personal pursuits? The journey of the soul is to find who and what it was created for: a loving relationship with our Creator and every thing/one He created. And we fall deeper into that love when we move beyond doing the things that we can control, to allowing ourselves to be in God’s control. This is hard, but the reward is great. The ecstasies of a life with God await us, but are we willing to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Him?
