Book 1
St. Teresa of Avila Book by Marcelle Auclair (Available on Internet, price variable)
Copyright date: 1953
Genre: Biography
St. Bede's Publications, 1953 - Biography & Autobiography - 457 pages
Marcelle Auclair, the author, a delightful, sparkling woman of many achievements, strikes one as being nearly as versatile and enterprising as her favorite saint. Though born in France, she grew up in Chile, where Spanish ways of life and thought became second-nature to her. On her return to France, at the age of twenty, she married the novelist Jean Prevost, brought up three children, traveled extensively, published several novels herself, and founded and edited Marie-Claire, an outstandingly successful woman's journal.
All through her life Marcelle Auclair assiduously studied the writings of Teresa of Avila. She admired in her an essentially "modern" woman: inventive, practical, gallant and intrepid, with tremendous organizational capacities, whose genius permitted her to break through the restrictions of her time. Madame Auclair decided to retranslate the saint's writings and to write her life. With characteristic determination, she attempted to obtain the seemingly impossible (it had never been done before) - an authorization from the Holy See to enter the Carmelite cloisters in Spain and to gather authentic background material for her projected work. The permission was granted. On her return to Paris she gave up all her professional obligations and for two years virtually went into retreat, devoting her entire time to the accomplishment of what is no doubt the most vivid existing biography of this great saint.
Book 2
It is the basis of the course The Path to Union with God ( Pryr Recoll. Option 4)
(Send an Email to request a copy translation)
The path to union with God is attained through interior prayer. It is the characteristic way of prayer of Saint Teresa of Avila’s reformed Carmel and is practiced two hours daily by all Discalced Carmelites.
Interior prayer introduces us into the halls of the palace of the Divine King found within ourselves and from where His loving presence is communicated. This way of prayer welcomes God who wants to give Himself to us without reserve. He wants to give us thirst for the living water gushing with eternal life and promised by Jesus to the Samaritan woman in a Gospel scene particularly dear to Saint Teresa of Avila.
Emmanuel Renault and Jean Abiven, both Carmelites, present for us the major stages of Teresian prayer, the soul’s role throughout these stages and God’s response in contemplative prayer.
For many, mystical life is reduced to extraordinary phenomena which are accidental and unnecessary. In reality this life is none other than the fulfillment of Baptismal graces and an increase in the virtues of faith, hope and charity in the heart of him who believes that the Kingdom of God is found within (see Luke 17: 20-21). For Teresa of Jesus, all who are baptized are invited to a mystical life for which interior prayer is the vital nourishment.
It is from this intimate conviction that this book came to be-- interior prayer is not reserved for a few elite souls; it is offered to all who thirst to love and make loved the One who loved them all so much.
