Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
How urgent it is for us to call on the Holy Spirit as we enroll, figuratively speaking, in the University of Divine Love! What do we have to do in order to benefit fully from our master’s lessons? First, we must consciously acknowledge the impossibility of progressing in prayer apart from our master. Recall the... Continue Reading →
St John of the Cross urges us to practice interior solitude so that our hearts may focus on God alone.
Brother Lawrence says that the practice of the presence of God is "the essence of the spiritual life, and it seems to me that by practicing it properly you become spiritual in no time."
In the Gospel reading for Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus asks Peter, "do you love me more than these?" Saint Thérèse explains in a letter that she makes Peter's response to Jesus her one and only prayer before the Tabernacle: "My God, you know that I love You."
An recurring theme in the writings of St. John of the Cross is his counsel on how to achieve union with God; in other words, how to become a saint. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, he explains in concrete terms the need to conform our will to God's will and to detach our soul from all things in order to go to God.
Already in his first encyclical, John Paul II highlighted the mystery of merciful love contemplated in Christ the Redeemer: "'God is love'... This revelation of love is also described as mercy; and in man's history this revelation of love and mercy has taken a form and a name: that of Jesus Christ."
St. John of the Cross offers a profound commentary on Christ's resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, when she mistook him for the gardener. "This inebriation and urgent longing of love prompted her to ask the man she thought was the gardener if he had stolen him and, if he had, to tell her where he had put him so she could take him away..."
The house of Bethany was the delight of Jesus when He was on earth; ; it was His favorite dwelling. There He was intimately known by Lazarus, served by Martha and madly loved by Mary.
"Whoever is imbued with a lively faith in Christ present in the tabernacle, whoever knows that a friend awaits here constantly—always with the time, patience, and sympathy to listen to complaints, petitions, and problems—this person cannot remain desolate..."
On Holy Thursday, 1 April 1920, St Teresa of the Andes began to experience the first signs of her terminal illness, typhus. One year earlier she wrote to a friend, "Religious life, my little sister, is nothing but a life of sacrifice. The soul has given itself to God and must give itself entirely, for love leaves nothing for itself; it consumes everything so that from these ashes, one single person may rise: Christ."
May the things of earth never be able to trouble my soul, and may nothing disturb my peace. Jesus, I ask you for nothing but peace...
In St. Teresa's commentary on the Our Father, she writes, "if we return to Him like the prodigal son, He has to pardon us. He has to console us in our trials. He has to sustain us in the way a father like this must."
O spiritual master, guide it to the land of promise flowing with milk and honey.
He wants to be my peace so that nothing can distract me or draw me out of “the invincible fortress of holy recollection.” It is there that He will give me “access to the Father” and will keep me as still and as peaceful in His presence as if my soul were already in eternity.
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."
Like our Lord in today's gospel reading, St. Teresa compares the soul to a tree that is planted by the fount of life. "There would be no freshness, no fruit, if it were not for this fount sustaining the tree, preventing it from drying up, and causing it to produce good fruit."
Happy Birthday to Blessed Titus Brandsma! From his article on Mary's motherhood of God: "In his Explanation of “The Living Flame of Love”, St. John of the Cross draws the Holy Mother of God as clearly as possible into the circle of his metaphor clarifying the mystical life...."
From the beginning of the Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila explains what it would mean for this "beautiful castle... to fall into mortal sin; there's no darker darkness nor anything more obscure and black...."
Let theologians learn from Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity to make use of the truths of dogma in order to be recollected in God
We recall that on 3 February 1944 the three Jewish boys who Father Jacques had hidden in his school were deported to Auschwitz
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