Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
It is hardly surprising to learn that the poet Jessica Powers was a great hymn writer, too. One of the hymns that she wrote for the Carmelite liturgies appears on the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In it, she mentions the gift of the scapular.
Carmelite poet Jessica Powers contemplates the image of St. Mary Magdalen, who "ran on Easter morning, her hair wind-tumbled and her cloak awry. [...] She sought, as love so often seeks and finds, a Radiance that died or seemed to die..."
Safe sped I through that night, By the secret stair, disguised and unseen, -O moment of delight!- Wrapt in that night serene, New-hush'd to rest the house where I had been.
This is the badge of the friends of the Man of Sorrows: the mark of the cross, faint replica of His, become ubiquitous now; it spreads like a wild blossom on the mountains of time and in each of the crevices.
On the evening of Love, speaking without parable, Jesus said: "If anyone wishes to love me All his life, let him keep my Word.
At the foot of your Cross, Beloved… Jesus, my crucified Love I just told you again to take My heart without ever giving it back to me...
One may kneel down and make a plea with words from book or breviary... But some day, hidden by His will, if this meek child is waiting still, God will take out His mercy-key and open up felicity, where saltiest tears are given right to seas where sapphire marries light
Coming to him, we shall love him always. We want him to remain, filled with peace, In our Love!
Within the cross is life and consolation. It alone is the road leading to heaven.
In a poem that St. Teresa wrote for the profession of a Carmelite nun, she encourages the young religious to prepare for spiritual combat: "Sleep no longer, sleep no more, for now, there is no earthly peace."
I made a covenant with my eyes not to be watching to see what beauty might come down to me. Christ is my beauty; Him alone I see.
At Cana, seeing the married couple's anxiety which they cannot hide, for they have run out of wine, in your concern you tell the Savior, hoping for the help of his divine power.
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener. It is to keep the vigil of mystery, earthless and still. One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit, strange as the wind's will.
Yesterday, Lord, it was you I was looking for in the people of my own flesh and blood in those who loved me Today, Lord, it is you who I have found in strangers, in foreigners in those who do not love me
St. Edith Stein departed from Cologne bound for Echt, Holland on the night of 31 December 1938. In a farewell poem, she wrote: "In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, The kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life."
Here is a small bird cast as John the Baptist who from my treetops is inspired to say: I come from heaven to prepare the way.
And if I rejoice, Lord, in the hope of seeing you, yet seeing I can lose you doubles my sorrow. Living in such fear and hoping as I hope, I die because I do not die.
Come is the love song of our race and Come our basic word of individual wooing. It lifts audacious arms of lowliness to majesty's most amiable undoing, to Godhood fleshed and cradled and made least.
The flower that I pick, O my King, is you!
The ninth poem in the generally acknowledged collection of St. Teresa's poetry is her brief meditation 'On Patience' called 'Nada Te Turbe'. We present two English translations and a commentary by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D.
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