Enkindling Love chronicles the journey toward a living partnership with God, as articulated by two of Christianity's great mystical teachers. Excerpts from the seven moradas (dwelling places) of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle are held together with selections from John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of Love, in order to show stages of growth and transformation as this partnership moves from its nascent potential through deepening friendship and intimacy to the full fruition of the mystical life. Moving through the process via textual passages and commentary, readers are invited to consider God’s desire for partnership with us and how the love of God actively invites us into deeper relationship not only with God but also with self and other. Because Teresa and John experienced God’s love as a transforming power, they teach that it is a participatory reality that shapes and remakes us, even as if invites us to collaborate with God in the remaking of our world.

This book tells about the mystical journey of the soul toward the union with God. This journey is made in darkness since we don't know anything of God, the Light, at the end of the trip. The journey comprises two critical phases of purgation: the purgation of senses and the purgation of spirit. These two phases make the first part of the spiritual journey. After the purgation, there comes illumination and then union.

This is the 16-century collection of spiritual, mystical works regarding the search for unity with the divine. The author wrote part of the works during his imprisonment. In those times, the author experienced bad health and spiritual condition, which inspired him for an inner spiritual search. The result of this search was the poem The Dark Night of the Soul, telling about the soul's journey to unity with God, which goes through three stages: purgation, illumination, and unity. Ascent of Mount Carmel is a treatise to the poem mentioned above, which gives practical advice on the ascetic life. Finally, the Spiritual Canticle is a metaphoric poem about the soul searching the unity with Christ, presented as a story of a wife seeking her beloved husband.

Collected in this Omnibus edition are three classic works exploring the mystical nature of God. Included are The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila, and Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. The Practice of the Presence of God is one of the most beautiful and touching stories of Christian devotion ever written. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite Brother known for his profound peace and deep relationship with God; many came to seek spiritual guidance from him. The wisdom that he passed on to them, in conversations and in letters, would later become the basis for the book. This edition has two translations of this book to help the reader find a more complete understanding of this wonderful and enduring story. This is the definitive edition of St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle: translated by E. Allison Peers. This mystic book is as inspirational and enlightening today as it was when it was first written. St. Teresa lays out the foundation for an ideal journey of faith. St. Teresa was a reformer of the Carmelite Order and is considered to be, along with Saint John of the Cross, a founder of the Discalced Carmelites. She became the first female to be named a Doctor of the Church, in 1970, and is one of only three females to be awarded that honor. St. John of the Cross was a Carmelite friar and priest; he is renowned for his cooperation with Saint Teresa of Ávila in the reformation of the Carmelite order, and for his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul. Dark Night of the Soul is considered one of the greatest religious poems ever written. This masterpiece of Mystic Christianity examines faith and how to keep faith when all seems lost. Think of it as guide to making it through the dark night of the soul to the brighter, happier, faith filled tomorrow that awaits.

All Christians experience dark nights times when everything seems to be going wrong with them. Some wallow in despair, others learn in darkness. St. John explains the four benefits of the dark night: 1. Delight of peace. 2. Habitual remembrance and thought of God. 3. Cleanness and purity of soul. Practice of the virtues. 4. Practice of the virtues

"In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God." —St. John of the Cross Why does God allow us to fall into this empty void? Does He not love us? Will He not help us? How do we deal with feeling abandoned in hopeless darkness? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? In sixteenth-century Spain, a poor monk became a spiritual giant. His life was devoted to prayer, poverty, solitude, and silence in pursuit of the beauty and goodness of God. When his intimacy with Jesus led to imprisonment, John used the time to compose a spiritual masterpiece in which he takes readers on a deeply spiritual journey through hardships and temptations to complete union with God. In a step-by-step process, he shows how God can use this "dark night" to eventually bring our human spirits into greater illumination, revealing heavenly wisdom and the passion of divine love. It is possible to walk securely through the darkness and experience the wonderful effects that are wrought in the believer as a result of the dark night.

To help celebrate the fourth centenary of the birth of St. John of the Cross in 1542, Edith Stein received the task of preparing a study of his writings. She uses her skill as a philosopher to enter into an illuminating reflection on the difference between the two symbols of cross and night. Pointing out how entering the night is synonymous with carrying the cross, she provides a condensed presentation of John's thought on the active and passive nights, as discussed in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. All of this leads Edith to speak of the glory of resurrection that the soul shares, through a unitive contemplation described chiefly in The Living Flame of Love. In the summer of 1942, the Nazis without warrant took Edith away. The nuns found the manuscript of this profound study lying open in her room.