Teresa continues the fifth mansions with her silkworm and butterfly comparison. Though we can take no active part in God's interior work, we prepare by confession, sermons, meditation, and obedience until the soul, kindled by the Holy Spirit, lives like a silkworm feeding on mulberry leaves. The cocoon is Christ: renouncing self-love and self-will, doing penance, and dying as the silkworm does when it fulfills its office, the soul is enveloped in God's greatness.
After union it comes forth like a lovely little white butterfly, unrecognizable to itself, longing to praise, suffer, and bring all men to know God while grieving offenses against Him. Former crawling labor now seems contemptible; wings bring flight and holy restlessness, disgust for earth after tasting divine wine, detachment from relations once cherished, and strength for penance once feared. Yet trials follow sublime grace: we must carry the cross all our lives, and constant peace without sorrow would prove union false or merely physical sweetness from the devil.
Longing to quit exile remains until higher surrender comes; prayer pours tears over lost souls with zeal meditation could never manufacture. God imprints His seal like wax under the signet, giving the soul something of Christ's own hunger that sinners be saved, a sorrow Teresa believes pained our Lord even more than His Passion.
Coming Up in Chapter 10
Next Teresa warns that butterflies who grow careless may die after laying eggs, and shows how union with God's will through love of neighbor opens a path available to every soul Teresa returns to the transformed dove, warning that souls who receive union then grow careless resemble the butterfly that comes from the silkworm, which lays some eggs that produce more of its kind.
