The Slow Polishing of the Interior Mirror

In her Interior Castle, Teresa of Avila describes the soul as a crystal globe through which divine light longs to pass. But when the surface is smudged with distraction, ambition, and noise, the light scatters rather than shines. Holiness, she understood, is not something we manufacture. It is what emerges when we stop blocking what God is already doing.

When Peter writes, "Be holy, because I am holy," the invitation is not primarily moral striving. It is ontological — a call to become transparent to the One who dwells within. The contemplative tradition has always known this. Thomas Merton spoke of the "true self" hidden in God, buried beneath layers of false identity. Holiness is the slow, patient excavation of that buried treasure.

Consider the ancient practice of lectio divina. A monk reads the same passage forty times, not to extract information but to be read by it. Each repetition polishes the interior mirror until the Word passes through without obstruction. This is sanctification — not the frantic adding of virtues but the quiet subtraction of everything that is not God.

The desert mothers called it apatheia — not indifference, but freedom from the compulsions that keep us opaque.

Sit in silence today. Not to earn holiness, but to stop resisting it. The Holy One is not far off, issuing commands from heaven. He is closer than your next breath, already shaping you from within.