September 16, 2026

The Diamond Within

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions.

Teresa wrote these opening lines in 1577, snatching hours by candlelight while exhausted from reforming the Carmelite order and fending off suspicion from Church authorities. She was ill and aging, yet she chose to begin her great treatise on prayer not with warnings or hardship but with an image of dazzling beauty. She wanted the nuns reading her words to understand that the soul is not a battlefield to be won but a jewel already finished, already glowing, waiting only to be entered and known. That same beauty is available this morning, before anything has been accomplished or proven.