Interior life (Catholic theology)

Interior life is a life which seeks God in everything, a life of prayer and the practice of living in the presence of God. It connotes intimate, friendly conversation with Him, and a determined focus on internal prayer versus external actions, while these latter are transformed into means of prayer.

According to John Paul II, Jesus' statement "without me you can do nothing" (cf. Jn 15:5) is a truth that "constantly reminds us of the primacy of Christ and, in union with him, the primacy of the interior life and of holiness."

In his first encyclical Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI emphasized that man "cannot always give, he must also receive," and pointed to the urgency and importance of experiencing in prayer that God is Love. He taught the Christian's dialogue with God "allows God to work" for God is "the only One who can make the world both good and happy."

This doctrine in Catholic theology is usually based on the Jesus's commendation of Mary of Bethany's contemplation over the anxious external worries of her sister Martha. Jesus told Martha that "one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part" (Luke 10:42).

Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and considered as the greatest of all saints in the Catholic Church, is mentioned in the Bible that she "pondered these things in her heart," an expression of intense prayer and contemplation of the events that happened to her.

The idea of "life" is present in the biblical distinction between two Greek terms for life: bios (biological life) and zoe (divine, supernatural life). Zoe is used in the bible in passages such as "That you may have life, and have it more abundantly". In Catholic theology, this life has been understood as a participation in divine, intratrinitarian life introduced in the life of a Christian at baptism (Cf. "partakers of the divine nature" in 2 Pt 1:4), and which grows through further reception of the sacraments, channels of grace which in its essence is "divine life." This divine life also grows through constant communication with God.

This doctrine is based on the writings of many Catholic spiritual writers through the centuries, of which the best known is the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, one of the most widely read Christian spiritual books in existence. The book taught:

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