After reading this book for the second time, I think it is impossible not to love St Teresa of Avila as a spiritual master. What I love about this book is that her description of the Christian life as an entering into our “interior castle” is a creative way of describing what it looks like to develop intimacy with Jesus in our individual hearts. An honest look into this book should dismantle any assumption that liturgical/classical Christianity is merely ritualistic or unconcerned with a “personal relationship with Jesus.” In fact, this book is filled with some of the best wisdom you can get when it comes to developing intimacy with Christ.

In our relationship with God now and at the final judgment, we are measured by the degree that we love.

“…the Lord does not look so much at the magnitude of anything we do as at the love with which we do it. If we accomplish what we can, His Majesty will see to it that we become able to do more each day. We must not begin by growing weary; but during the whole of this short life, which for any one of you may be shorter than you think, we must offer the Lord whatever interior and exterior sacrifice we are able to give Him, and His Majesty will unite it with that which He offered to the Father for us upon the Cross, so that it may have the value won for it by our will, even though our actions in themselves may be trivial” (7th Mansion, Ch 4).

Thus, as Mother Teresa famously said, do small things with great love.