Book of the Foundations
Running Time:8:31:58 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Essentially the sequel to The Life of St. Teresa, Teresa recounts the foundations of the Discalced Carmelite monasteries in Spain, both for men and women. This book tells of all the triumphs and troubles, and about the many people who helped her.
Conceptions of Divine Love
Running Time:0:59:13 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Conceptions of Divine Love was written in 1577. St. Teresa wrote this with the idea of explaining certain words found in the Book of Canticles. When her confessor read the title of her work, he ordered her to immediately burn it, which, of course, she did. But one of her nuns had copied the first seven chapters, which was then published in 1612. Here, Father John Dalton has translated only four of those chapters in 1852.
The Interior Castle
Running Time:7:10:21 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
El Castillo Interior or Las Moradas (trans.:The Interior Castle or The Mansions) was written by Saint Teresa of Ávila in 1577. After being ordered to write her autobiographical La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús (The Life of S. Teresa of Jesus), Teresa was hesitant to begin writing again on her views of the perfection found in internal prayer. In the hands of the Inquisition at that time, her Life was commonly believed to be the weight in the scale of whether to call her experiences heretical or not. Her humility and claims that, “I am not meant for writing; I have neither the health nor the wits for it,” almost prevented Teresa from composing The Interior Castle. However, according to a letter written by Fray Diego, one of Teresa’s former confessors, Teresa was finally convinced to write her book after a she received a vision from God. Diego wrote that God revealed to Teresa,
"...a most beautiful crystal globe, made in the shape of a castle, and containing seven mansions, in the seventh and innermost of which was the King of Glory, in the greatest splendour, illumining and beautifying them all. The nearer one got to the center, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits everything was foul, dark and infested with toads, vipers and other venomous creatures."
With that, Interior Castle was born. It contained the basis for what she felt should be the ideal journey of faith, comparing the contemplative soul to a castle with seven successive interior courts, or chambers, analogous to the seven heavens. Teresa's consumption of chivalric romances as a child subsequently influenced such imagery, which is prevalent in many of her mystical works. It is also not unduly speculative that living in a walled city like Ávila must have influenced her thinking. The concept of an "interior" life is still important in Spanish thinking in the twenty-first century.
The Life of St. Teresa
Running Time:13:31:33 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, (March 28, 1515, at Gotarrendura (Ávila), Old Castile, Spain – October 4, 1582, at Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain) was a prominent Spanish mystic, Carmelite nun, and writer of the Counter Reformation. She was a reformer of the Carmelite Order and is considered to be, along with John of the Cross, a founder of the Discalced Carmelites. In 1970 she was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI.
The Minor Works of St Teresa of Avila
Running Time:00:55:44 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
The prayer and Exclamations, or Meditations, of St Teresa of Avila, recorded in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Saint's birth (March 28, 2015).
The Poetry of St Teresa of Avila
Running Time:01:10:55 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
The poetry of St Teresa of Avila, recorded in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Saint's birth (March 28, 2015)
1 - Self Oblation
2 - The Soul's Desire
3 - The Soul's Desire, Second Version
4 - The Soul's Exile
5 - Self-Surrender
6 - Divine Beauty
7 - The Compact
8 - On the Transverberation of the Saint's Heart
9 - Aspirations
10 - 'Soul, Thou Must Seek Thyself in Me, and Seek for Me in Thee'
11 - The Dying Saint to Her Crucifix
12 - Nuns of Carmel
13 - The Wise Virgin
14 - The Refrain of a Song for a Clothing
15 - The Holocaust
16 - The Bride of Christ
17 - The Shepherd's Bridals
18 - The Cloister
19 - The Standard of the Holy Cross
20 - Greeting to the Cross
21 - Processional for the Feast of the Holy Cross
22 - The Lamb of God
23 - The Angels' Summonds to the Shepherds
24 - The Shepherds at the Crib
25 - Christmas Day
26 - The Shepherds' Carol for the Circumcision
27 - The Shepherds' Carol for the Circumcision, Version 2
28 - The Shepherd and the Three Kings
29 - Poem to St. Andrew
30 - To Saint Catherine the Martyr
31 - Saint Hilarion
32 - Rhymed Maxims
33 - Saint Teresa's Bookmark
34 - The Soul's Detachment
35 - Sonnet to Jesus Crucified
36 - Before the Crucifix
The Relations of Saint Teresa of Avila
Running Time:02:36:51 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
The Relations (in Spanish Relaciones) is an extension of St Teresa's Autobiography. In The Relations she tells of her inner and outer experiences in the form of letters
The Way of Perfection
Running Time:7:13:28 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
El Camino de Perfección (trans.: The Way of Perfection) is a method for making progress in the contemplative life written by St. Teresa of Ávila for the sisters of her reformed convent of the Carmelite Order (Discalced). St. Teresa was a major figure of the Catholic Reformation in 16th Century Spain.