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St. Teresa of Avila
Interior Castle
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With regard to what I have just said about our incapability, I recall that, as you have heard, the Bride in the Songs says: "The King brought me" (or "put me", I think the words are) "into the cellar of wine."125 It does not say that she went. It also says that she was wandering about in all directions seeking her Beloved.126 This, as I understand it, is the cellar where the Lord is pleased to put us, when He wills and as He wills. But we cannot enter by any efforts of our own; His Majesty must put us right into the centre127 of our soul, and must enter there Himself; and, in order that He may the better show us His wonders, it is His pleasure that our will, which has entirely surrendered itself to Him, should have no part in this. Nor does He desire the door of the faculties and senses, which are all asleep, to be opened to Him; He will come into the centre of the soul without using a door, as He did when He came in to His disciples, and said Pax vobis,128 and when He left the sepulchre without removing the stone. Later on you will see how it is His Majesty's will that the soul should have fruition of Him in its very centre, but you will be able to realize that in the last Mansion much better than here.



125 Canticles i, 3; ii, 4. Gracián deletes the bracketed phrase but writes "put" above "brought".


126 Canticles iii, 2.


127 Here and just below Gracián has crossed out the word "centre".


128 St. John xx, 19.




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