Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
St. Titus Brandsma was beatified on this day in 1985; we’ve translated an excerpt from St. John Paul II’s homily on his “inspiring motive and driving force,” the “commandment of love taken to extremes.”
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St. Titus Brandsma’s commitment to the vow of poverty in solidarity with the poor was unshakeable. He wrote, “Without poverty, a religious is a Pharisee, a gentleman of ease pretending to be a poor man.” And in his conferences he taught, “Giving alms is our way of life.”
During his 1935 lecture series in North America, St. Titus Brandsma stayed with the Carmelite friars at their college in Niagara Falls, Ontario. We share excerpts from a meditation that he wrote on the pinnacle of the mystical life compared to "the roaring and the rushing of Niagara Falls".
We thank you for joining us in this year's Novena to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. As we conclude, St. Titus Brandsma leads us as we contemplate the Gospel for this Solemnity, the Virgin standing beneath the Cross of Jesus.
St. Titus Brandsma once again turns to St. John of the Cross and the Living Flame of Live to help explain the profound mystery of Mary's motherhood of God: "casting a shadow is similar to protecting, favoring, and granting graces."
Saint Titus Brandsma describes the most thrilling moment of Saturday evening devotions in the Church of the Carmelites: the solemn chanting of the Salve Regina. "All now stand before the altar of Mary... above which the statue of Mary glimmers in the light."
St. Titus Brandsma applies St. John of the Cross's image of the clear pane of glass and the ray of sunlight to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
St. Titus Brandsma explains that when "the Holy Virgin gifted the Holy Scapular to the Order as the pledge of her special protection... the Netherlands already had a cloister" founded by St. Simon Stock himself.
"...it is on this evening that the Carmelite Fathers hold their Benediction in honor of Our Lady of the Holy Scapular, in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel."
In Mary, we see the most beautiful image of our union with God. Mary is thus our Guide on our way to the mystical union with God.
“The volume of the breviary I have with me has a beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mount Carmel... I simply opened the breviary on a little corner shelf above my bed to the left. When I am sitting at the table I only have to glance up in order to see her, and when I am in bed my glance falls directly on the Virgin with the star, 'The Hope of All Carmelites'.”
On 13 June 1942, Saint Titus Brandsma, chained to a Protestant pastor, was loaded onto a cattle car and transported to Dachau. As he left the platform, he said: "nothing bad can happen to me, because the Lord is with me."
When Carmelite Father Michael Driscoll was a young man 50 years ago, he started reading and collecting articles about Father Titus Brandsma, one of Netherlands’ leading churchmen.Carmelite priest’s miracle is touching hearts and souls around the world — Crux Now
In today's Gospel, Jesus says, "as I have loved you, so you also should love one another." As a professor at Nijmegen, Titus was known to say that we must "look upon everyone with God’s eyes so that we love them as He loves them."
Titus Brandsma's love for Mary was contagious. He had learned to live "with Mary, for Mary, and in Mary", according to the teachings of Carmel's Marian spirituality and he explained this to his students, directees, and friends.
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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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