Thus, in a first phase (the ascetical one, which includes the first three mansions of the interior castle), God offers the soul His ordinary grace and general help, and the initiative of advancing in the spiritual life belongs mostly to the soul, for God leaves the faculties their full independence.245 One engages in a quest for God in which meditation and attention to prayer is predominant, and one undertakes an ascetical effort, aiming to acquire recollection in prayer and to correct his exterior faults. This cooperation takes different forms throughout one's progress towards the kingdom of God, which is within (cf. As we have seen, according to the Carmelite Doctors this deification is the end of a long, difficult but in the same time beautiful journey, in which the soul answers step by step God's loving call for union and cooperates with His grace, being thus transformed “from glory to glory” (II Cor 3: 18). Thus, all Christian faithful are called to become perfect, Christ-like, deified. The word “mature” is the translation of the Greek teleios, which means perfect, accomplished. to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4: 13). A sub-chapter of my doctoral thesis According to Saint Paul, “we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph 4: 15), “until we all attain.
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