← [[session-08-f1a|The Prayer of Quiet]] | [[formation-I-a-handbook|Table of Contents]] | [[session-10-f1a|Eucharist — Sacramental and Spiritual Communion]] → # Unitive Life — Contemplation And how from a soul that is already determined to love You and is abandoned into Your hands, You do not want anything but that it obey, that it inquire well into what is for Your greater service, and that it desire this! There’s no need for it to be seeking out paths or choosing them, for its will is Yours. …[You] go about disposing the soul and the things with which it is dealing in such a way that, without understanding how, we find in ourselves spiritual improvement, so great that we are afterward left amazed.” — St Teresa of Avila “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Required Reading: The Way of Perfection ch. 32. Additional Reading: WP Study Edition Glossary: Contemplation – Contemplatives, pgs. 502-503; Fount (of Living Water), pg. 506; Union (Prayer of), pg. 515; Water (Living), pg. 516. Explanatory note: “Chapter 32 is one of the most important chapters in the Way of Perfection. Commenting on the Our Father, St Teresa speaks of various degrees of prayer; here she begins to discuss the perfect life in relation to the highest states of prayer. This chapter completes Teresa’s commentary on the first part of the Our Father and the exposition of degrees of prayer.” (taken from The Way of Prayer: A Commentary on St Teresa’s Way of Perfection) Essential Points to Discuss: • “Don’t fear that it means He will give you riches, or delights, or honors, or all these earthly things. His love for you is not small…He wants to repay you well, for He gives you His kingdom (unitive life) while you are still alive” (32:6). • “And He gives according to the courage He sees in each and the love each has for His Majesty” (32:7). • “…everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our wills to His…” (32:9). • “Your will, Lord, be done in me in every way and manner that You, my Lord, want. If You want it to be done with trials, strengthen me and let them come; if with persecutions, illness, dishonors, and lack of life’s necessities, here I am; I will not turn away, my Father … grant me the favor of Your Kingdom that I may do Your will... and use me as You would Your own possession, in conformity with Your will” (32:10). Assigned Meditative Reading: • Philippians 4:11-13 – detachment: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. … I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.” • Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love – John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 26-28 (Appendix I) 21 • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, stanza 28 – “Now I occupy my soul and all my energy in His service; I no longer tend the herd, nor have I any other work now that my every act is love.” • Song of Songs 2:10-17 – “Arise my darling … I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine.” --- **Source:** Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, *Formation I Year A: The Way of Perfection* (US National Formation Program, 2024).