{"id":326738,"date":"2014-10-15T03:02:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T01:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/teresa-of-avila-and-the-charism-of-unity\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:58:13","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:58:13","slug":"teresa-of-avila-and-the-charism-of-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/teresa-of-avila-and-the-charism-of-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"Teresa of Avila and the Charism of Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20141015-02\"“In explaining the meaning of the spirituality of unity<\/a> to the Bishops of the Focolari Movement<\/a> during their meeting on 10 February 1984, Chiara Lubich<\/a> made a few remarks: \u201cIt is a journey undertaken together, in which we strive to help the others to reach sanctity in the same way as we try to sanctify ourselves, since what matters before all else, is to glorify God. And what gives a decisive impulse to the personal effort to reach sanctity is Christ\u2019s presence in an increasingly intense manner among Christians which affects each person in an ever deeper way.\u201d \u00a0And here, once again, Chiara Lubich underpinned the novelty of this type of sanctity and pathway: the term, \u201cAn interior castle<\/i>,\u201d in the same way as St. Teresa called the reality of the soul inhabited by His Majesty, is a very suitable term which we have to discover and highlight. It is the height of sanctity in an individual path. However, the time has come to discover, enlighten, and edify for God, also his exterior castle<\/i>, so to say, with His presence among us. \u00a0This \u2013 on a deeper reflection \u2013 is nothing else but the fact that the Church in which we live, through this spirituality, can more and more fulfill this calling, and grow in beauty and splendour as the mystical spouse of Christ, the foretaste of the Heavenly Jerusalem, which was described in the words: \u201cBehold! The dwelling place of God is with man! And He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.\u201d (Revelation 21,3). [\u2026] When visiting Spain <\/a>in the first days of December 2003, Chiara wanted to go to Avila, St Theresa\u2019s birthplace, to visit the monastery of the Incarnation where Teresa had lived for more than 27 years [\u2026] She signed the monastery\u2019s Golden Book with this testimonial of her \u201cspiritual friendship\u201d with the Saint of Avila: \u201cThank you, St. Teresa, for all you have done for us, for our journey. Thanks! But we will express our deepest thanks to you in Paradise. Continue to watch over all of us, over \u201cour exterior castle\u201d which the divine Spouse established on earth, as a completion of your \u201cinterior castle,\u201d to embellish the Church as you desired. See you soon, St. Teresa. A big hug, Chiara.\u201d I have always considered Teresa of Avila\u2019s interior castle as a proposed evangelical lifestyle for all Christians who wish to live their own universal vocation of sanctity, union with God in the Trinitarian and ecclesiastic experience. But what I consider the even bigger grace, and more exciting adventure, is that of participating with the charisma of unity, in the discovery of this particular design of God, the possibility to live together the adventure of community and ecclesiastic sanctity, in building a splendid, shining exterior castle, personified in the Work of Mary, for the Church and humanity.” Further reading:<\/b> \u201cTwo women and two castles<\/a>\u201d Excerpt from<\/strong> \u201cThe exterior castle, the novelty of the spirituality of Chiara Lubich,\u201d (“<\/i>Il castello esteriore<\/em><\/a>, il nuovo nella spiritualit\u00e0 di Chiara Lubic<\/em>h”), by Jes\u00fas Castellano Cervera (1941-2006), pp. 63-67\/68. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Carmelite theologian, Jes\u00fas Castellano, in the volume, \u201cThe exterior castle, the novelty of the spirituality of Chiara Lubich,\u201d compares the spirituality of the two women. On the feast of the Spanish saint, we are proposing an excerpt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}