The Springs Are Very Deep

Teresa of Avila on the Heart of the Heart

The Secret of the Heart: The Beginnings of a Theology of the Deep Heart

1. The Kinde Yerning of the Soule: Simone Weil and Julian of Norwich on the Secret of the Heart

2. The Hidden Man of the Heart: Silouan the Athonite and Sophrony of Essex on the Deep Heart as Battlefield and Burning Bush

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In her exploration of the fourth interior castle, Teresa finds her mind returning to a line from Psalm 118/119, which she has just referenced. She’s not sure the word “heart” means what she first took it to mean:

I was thinking just now, as I wrote this, that a verse which I have already quoted, Dilatasti cor meum, speaks of the heart's being enlarged. I do not think that this happiness has its source in the heart at all. It arises in a much more interior part, like something of which the springs are very deep; I think this must be the center of the soul, as I have since realized and as I will explain hereafter. I certainly find secret things in ourselves which often amaze me—and how many more there must be! O my Lord and my God! How wondrous is Thy greatness! And we creatures go about like silly little shepherd-boys, thinking we are learning to know something of Thee when the very most we can know amounts to nothing at all, for even in ourselves there are deep secrets which we cannot fathom.¹

As Jean-Louis Chrétien explains, Teresa is, in effect, correcting this line of the Psalm. Or at least she’s correcting the standard reading of it, recognizing the need for a deeper understanding of the heart and its changes:

Let us recall that she compares the soul to a castle with various “mansions” or “apartments.” The aim, if grace permits, is to approach the most secret and central mansion, where the king himself dwells. As the mansions become progressively more interior, Teresa elaborates their description in greater and greater detail. In her view, dilation of the heart characterizes the fourth level of mansions in what distinguishes it essentially from the three preceding levels. Dilation, in other words, marks the passage to a higher order. It heralds the entrance into a higher economy than the one in which we previously stood. Hence its special importance: what is involved is not passing from a cramped space to an expanded space as though the same space (the same dimensions of our life) were narrow at first and then expanded. Rather, the passage to spaciousness marks the passage to another principle. There is a qualitative leap.