Category: Women

Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila

St. Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle is a guide to the spiritual life. The book explains how a soul can journey through seven stages — shown as seven mansions — that end with total union with God.
Click here to read a pdf of St. Teresa of Avila’s book Interior Castle.
St. Catherine of Siena, who lived in 14th-century Italy, experienced mystical visions and dictated these revelations into the book now known as the The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. The book is thus a dialogue between St. Catherine and God the Father. Through this work, God reveals the spiritual life, emphasizing the need to pray constantly and develop virtue.
Click here to read a free pdf of the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. 

 

Excerpts from The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena

“I even give equally to the sinner and the righteous man, and often more to the sinner than to the righteous man, because the righteous man is able to endure privation, and I take from him the goods of the world that he may the more abundantly enjoy the goods of heaven.”

“Blessed she is through the union which she feels herself to have with Me, tasting the divine love; sorrowful through the offenses which she sees done to My goodness and greatness, for she has seen and tasted the bitterness of this in her self-knowledge, by which self-knowledge, together with her knowledge of Me, she arrived at the final stage.”