Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
“I believe that the secret of peace and happiness is to forget oneself,” St. Elizabeth says. St. Paul explains: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed… persecuted, but not forsaken.”
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“God makes himself like us in order to love us,” Hermann Cohen preaches. “He has descended from the heavens because of his immense love and for our salvation. There is only one happiness—to love Jesus Christ and to be loved by him.”
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If the psalmist prayed “for God alone my soul waits,” then St. Thérèse repeated that heartfelt cry with greater fervor: “My only peace, my only happiness, my only love is you, Lord!”
Quote of the day, 10 September: Père Jacques devoted his Friday evening retreat conference at the Carmel of Pontoise to the Cross and suffering. Paraphrasing St Teresa, he said, “Life without suffering is a waste of time. Every hour not united to God's will is an hour squandered.”
In a tender letter to her mother, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity reassures her mother once again that her heroic sacrifice will be recorded "in the great book of life." But she also intimates that her health is failing: the prioress insists that Elizabeth should "spend time out in the fresh air."
The prophets called on God’s people to wait with hope. St. Edith wrote, “to suffer and to be happy although suffering […] this is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth.”
"Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5), were the instructions from the Mother of the Lord to the servants at the wedding banquet. Bishop Silvio José Báez reminds us that if we put his gospel into practice, our lives will be transformed in unexpected ways...
In his canticles "For the Love of Jesus Christ", which were published in 1851, the Servant of God Hermann Cohen wrote a summary of his vocation in the dedication pages of the book, closing with a hymn of praise to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament: "Throw yourselves at His Feet; give Him your heart, and He will bless you."
We recall the death of the "holy nuncio" Nicolás Ormaneto on this date, 18 June 1577 in Madrid. He was the nuncio who favored the Teresian reform and helped it to flourish in the first fifteen years of Teresa's tireless efforts to establish the discalced friars and nuns in Castile. When she mentions her first meeting with Fray Jerónimo Gracián in Beas, she writes that Ormaneto :sent to see him and then gave him authority over the discalced friars and nuns of Castile.:
St. Louis Martin wrote to his wife, St. Zélie Martin to describe his happiness when he was able to visit the shrine of Notre-Dame des Victoires on a business trip to Paris: it "is like a little heaven on earth."
For the birthday of a novice, Sr. Martha of Jesus, St. Thérèse wrote a poem on 16 July 1894. It reads, in part: "Close to you, O my loving Mother! I've found rest for my heart..."
Telling the story of a layman she knows, St. Teresa explains that we can practice obedience and the trials and distractions that result do not disturb our prayer because the Lord repays us well.
It was absolute solitude, that solitude in which God speaks to the heart
My joy is to love suffering, I gratefully accept the thorns mixed in with the flowers
Joy is in my heart... This joy isn't fleeting... I possess it without return
Yes, Mother, you are the celestial Madonna who guides us
Who will not find balm for his pains by considering the torments of Jesus and Mary?
They meet only a Mother who is gazing on them and smiling on them
Love is the name of this ineffable Tree
We must always keep our eyes on God
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Antonio Mas Arrondo
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
Monasterio de las Batuecas Carmelitas Descalzos
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