Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
Blessed Maria Giuseppina of Jesus Crucified was beatified on 1 June 2008. A founding member of the Discalced Carmelite nuns at Ponti Rossi, Naples, she was known for her desire to suffer for love with Christ on the cross.
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St. Teresa of Avila always emphasized humility as the greatest virtue to be prized and practiced by her nuns, writing: "imitate in some way the great humility of the Blessed Virgin."
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Saint Teresa of the Andes entered the Carmel of the Holy Spirit in the township of Los Andes, some 90 kilometers from her home in Santiago de Chile on Wednesday, 7 May 1919. The Prioress said that when Teresa bade farewell to her oldest sister, she said, "Until heaven! Life is so short!"
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To prepare for the Theresian Anniversary Year, we offer three reflections based on the writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The Day 3 reflection focuses on the theme of humility.
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To prepare for the Theresian Anniversary Year, we offer three reflections based on the writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The Day 2 reflection focuses on the theme of mercy.
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To prepare for the Theresian Anniversary Year, we offer three reflections based on the writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The Day 1 reflection focuses on the symbolism of flowers.
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Discalced Carmelite scholars Kieran Kavanaugh and Iain Matthew help us to trace the origins and outcome of St. John of the Cross’s planned mission to Mexico, where the Discalced friars first arrived in 1585.
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St. Raphael Kalinowski received the Discalced Carmelite habit on 26 November 1877 and made his religious vows on the same date in 1878. Here is an excerpt from his conference for the Discalced Carmelite friars in Wadowice: “Mother of God, Hope of the World.”
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Raphael Kalinowski was born to Polish parents in the city of Vilnius in 1835. Following military service, he was condemned in 1864 to ten years of forced labor in Siberia. In 1877 he became a Carmelite and was ordained a priest in 1882. He contributed greatly to the restoration of the Discalced Carmelites in Poland. His life was distinguished by zeal for Church unity and by his unflagging devotion to his ministry as confessor and spiritual director. He died in Wadowice in 1907.
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In a letter to his parents written on this day in 1876 before entering the novitiate, St. Raphael Kalinowski says: “a year ago there came to me, like an echo, a voice from the grilles of Carmel.”
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St. Elizabeth of the Trinity began her ten-day retreat on this day in 1904, the first since her profession retreat in January 1903. She told her sister that the extra solitude and prayer “created a very enticing schedule” because “I'm going to lose myself in Him.”
In his homily for the beatification of the Martyrs of Rochefort, St. John Paul II quoted the apostle Paul: "they fought the good fight of faith." He continued: "They even went through a long ordeal for having remained faithful to their faith and to the Church. If they died, it was because they insisted to the end on affirming their close communion" with the Pope.
On 10 August 1567, Carmelite Prior General Giovanni Battista Rossi wrote from Barcelona giving St. Teresa permission to found two houses of "contemplative Carmelite friars" in Castile. Here is the story of how they met...
By the 6th of July 1591, St. John of the Cross had been relieved of responsibility in the governance of the Discalced Carmelite friars and among those who were disturbed by the news were two nuns in Segovia. On the 6th, St. John wrote from Madrid to assuage their fears and concerns. Those letters contain two of his most famous quotes.
On the 4th of July 1942, the Prioress of the Carmel of Le Pâquier, Switzerland proposed to the voting members of the monastic community that St. Edith Stein should transfer and be received as a member of the community. On July 5, the nuns gathered once again and held a secret vote...
Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew describes her experiences as Prioress in Paris in the year 1605. She tells us that four professed religious and two novices left Paris to found a new Discalced Carmelite monastery in Amiens on Pentecost. There was a Pontifical Mass and the Bishop had the head of St. John the Baptist carried in procession!
In June 1944, Mother Agnès of Jesus was ready to sacrifice the Carmel of Lisieux to God if he wanted it. The obituary circular notice written by her nuns for the other Carmels in France testified to her valiant spirit. The nuns were terrified, while she remained calm. Read an excerpt from this circular letter.
We recall the anniversary of the profession of the foundress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in the United States, Mother Clare Joseph Dickinson on 3 June 1773, with an excerpt from her journal of the voyage from Netherlands to America on the anniversary date.
The Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne were beatified on 27 May 1906. Now the Holy Father has granted the opening of the Process of Equipollent Canonization. We have the details from the Discalced Carmelite General Curia.
St. Thérèse explains that during her novitiate she had difficulty during her one-on-one sessions with her novice mistress: "I had never become accustomed to speaking about my soul and I didn’t know how to express what was going on within it."
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Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. ~ St. Teresa of Avila
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