Spiritual Reading on St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle
The Spiritual Reading Group is devoted to a closed reading of St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. Ten sessions of reading and reflecting together, three hours has been allotted per session and provided with a guide which can be used for personal studies. Fr. Sheldon Tabile, O.Carm. was the guide/facilitator for these reading sessions.
Participants were initiated into a spiritual reading that specifically looks at the spiritual processes and relations in the text with its continuing process and relationship in our present lives. Each session started with a prayerful reading of the text or an excerpt for longer text. Then as a group, they discerned into the divine-human relation and processes that surface in the spiritual text. The guide roots the sharing and reflections to Scriptures and the rich tradition of spirituality and mysticism. The session continues with how each participant sees the text as an on-going life event in their varying perspectives and contexts. This communal reflection and sharing were provided for the opportunity of a group spiritual direction. The session ended with a communal prayer. At the completion of the program, a certificate of completion (30 hours) were given to the participants.
The reading session were designed for face-to-face sessions but because of the pandemic the second to tenth sessions were done via zoom. The face-to-face session was on February 15, 2020 and nine webinar sessions were done on Saturdays from July to September 2020.