This gothic garth is an ideal place for recollection. Shrouded in stillness, two nuns are absorbed in their thoughts and readings. Catholicism reaches sublime heights of contemplation in the mysticism of the Carmelite order.

Therese of Avila describes in The Interior Castle – an image of the soul in state of grace – the various steps of contemplation leading the soul to the ultimate union with God. After the first stages of purification, the soul surrenders to God’s action and thus ascends through a series of Mansions, or Dwellings, i.e. through different steps of prayer, until it reaches the third stage of contemplation (7th Mansion), where the inner union with God takes place, an unification that is metaphorically called “spiritual marriage”. There, in the soul’s innermost core, the bridal room where the soul meets the heavenly Spouse, the soul unites with God, who is pure spirit, and desires only what He desires, thus becoming “like rain that falls on a river from the sky , like a brook that merges with the sea, like a light that floods a room through two windows: it enters divided, and inside it becomes one” (7th Mansion, chapter 2).