Whispers from Carmel to encourage and inspire | Susurros del Carmelo Teresiano
Mary, at the top of Calvary standing beside the Cross
To me you seem like a priest at the altar,
Offering your beloved Jesus, the sweet Emmanuel,
To appease the Father’s justice…
A prophet said, O afflicted Mother,
« There is no sorrow like your sorrow ! _ »
O Queen of Martyrs, while remaining in exile
You lavish on us all the blood of your heart !
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus
Why I Love You, O Mary (PN 54, excerpt)
Mary triumphs, she gives the fruit of life!… She triumphs over the dragon that devours her children!… The Mother gives her life for her children… She gives her fruit to save her children!…
Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified
Mariam Baouardy, the Little Arab
Prayers and Canticles, Notebook 8
Better and more than anyone else, we who are doubly the children of Mary should imitate her, to be enriched as faithful children with the fruits of her maternity; seeking the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary for salvation.
Saint Raphael Kalinowski
Mother of God, Hope of the World
Praskiewicz OCD, S 1998, Saint Raphael Kalinowski: An Introduction to his Life and Spirituality, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Let her gaze at you.
The gaze of Mary is God’s gaze directed at each one of us. She looks at us with the same love that comes from the Father and blesses us.
Bishop Silvio José Báez, O.C.D.
Homily for the Immaculate Conception, 2018
Homily translation is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission
Are you the one who created the unclouded mirror
Next to the Almighty’s throne,
Like a crystal sea,
In which Divinity lovingly looks at itself?
You bend over the fairest work of your creation,
And radiantly your own gaze
Is illumined in return.
And of all creatures the pure beauty
Is joined in one in the dear form
Of the Virgin, your immaculate bride:
Holy Spirit Creator of all!
Saint Edith Stein
And I Remain With You:
From a Pentecost Novena
The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 4 ICS Publications, Washington DC © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
You make me feel that it’s not impossible
To follow in your footsteps, O Queen of the elect.
You made visible the narrow road to Heaven
While always practicing the humblest virtues.
Near you, Mary, I like to stay little.
I see the vanity of greatness here below.
At the home of Saint Elizabeth, receiving your visit,
I learn how to practice ardent charity.
~ ~ ~
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Why I Love You, O Mary (PN54, Stanza 6)
Saint Thérèse’s first draft of the poem is featured in the image above. Stanza 6 is the second stanza on the right side of the page. Lines 5-6 and 7-8 of the stanza appear in brackets.
View the complete image of St. Thérèse’s first draft of the poem, an image of her second draft, details of her corrections, and images of the finished poem and its full text in English or French at the website of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.
When I read in the Gospel “that Mary went in haste to the hill country of Judea” (Lk 1:39) to perform her loving service for her cousin Elizabeth, I imagine her passing by so beautiful, so calm and so majestic, so absorbed in recollection of the Word of God within her. Like Him, her prayer was always this: “Ecce, here I am!” Who? “The servant of the Lord,” (Lk 1:38) the lowliest of His creatures: she, His Mother! Her humility was so real for she was always forgetful, unaware, freed from self. And she could sing: “The Almighty has done great things for me, henceforth all peoples will call me blessed.” (Lk 1:49, 48)
Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity
Last Retreat, Fifteenth Day
The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity volume 1: I Have Found God, General Introduction and Major Spiritual Writings ICS Publications, Washington DC © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
Let us not forget the prophetic words of the Virgin Mary that never have been disproved by history: “The Lord pulls the powerful down from their thrones.”
(Luke 1:52)
Bishop Silvio José Báez, O.C.D.
9 June 2018
Mary was also a model of faith. Oh, how pleasing that faith was to the Heavenly Father! It was her faith that made Jesus grow in Her more each day. If we have such faith, Jesus will also grow in our hearts.
Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified
Thoughts of St. Mary of Jesus Crucified
Day by day they grow in prayerfulness and year-by-year they become living embodiments of our Rule and Constitutions. Admittedly, we may be far from perfect at the beginning of our religious life. However, once we have completed our apprenticeship, we must be the living embodiment of our Rule and Constitutions for no other reason than to work with Christ for the salvation of the world. Pray to our saints and to the Virgin Mary to help you to attain that goal. Amen.
Père Jacques of Jesus, O.C.D.
The Apostolate
Retreat for the Carmel of Pontoise, Conference Thirteen
Saturday evening, 11 September 1943
Listen to the Silence - A Retreat with Père Jacques (pp. 104) Translated and edited by Francis J. Murphy ICS Publications © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
Come, you who, descending into Mary, caused the Word to take flesh: effect in us by grace what you accomplished in her by grace and nature.
Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi
from the Office of Readings for her feast day
Annunciation
Modest Danilovich Sosenko (Ukrainian, 1875-1920)
Oil on canvas, 1913
Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum
In Mary we do not see the Lord, but we see her always by the Lord’s side
Her service is rendered directly to Him: through the prayer of intercession, she intercedes with Him for humankind; she receives from His hands graces to be bestowed and does indeed transmit them. She does not represent the Lord but assists Him. Her position is thus analogous to that of Eve by the side of the first Adam. But Mary is beside Jesus not for His sake but for ours.
Saint Edith Stein
Problems of Women’s Education
Lectures for 1932 Summer Semester, German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy
Essays On Woman Edited by Dr. Lucy Gelber and Romaeus Leuven, OCD; Translated by Freda Mary Oben, Ph.D. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Book 2 (p. 29) ICS Publications, Washington D.C. © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
She raised her head as a servant of the Lord welcoming his word
The gospel says, “raise your heads” (Luke 21:28). The Lord wants us to look to the future with hope. There are certainly problems, there are situations that create fear; but as Christians, we who believe in Jesus Christ who is to come, we raise our heads.
Raising your head means being able to talk to God. Lifting your head is a gesture of humility in the gospel. It is the one who stands up to meet the Lord and listen to him, to be available to walk wherever he sends us, to be available to listen to his voice, to speak with him like the Virgin Mary did: she raised her head as a servant of the Lord welcoming his word.
She raised her head — full of grace — to do the will of God in everything and always to be moved by the Spirit that had descended upon her most holy womb. Mary teaches us to raise our heads; that is not the lifting up of the haughty, the head-raising of the proud, who look at others from above, who are so sure of themselves that they think they don’t need others.
To raise your head in the gospel means raising your head to meet God and abandoning yourself into his hands; it means gazing at him with love and welcoming his love like the Virgin.
Bishop Silvio José Báez, O.C.D.
Auxiliary Bishop of Managua
Homily, First Sunday of Advent, 2015 (excerpt)
About the painting:
The archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin that she will bear the Son of God. New Testament (Luke 1:26-38). Above her hovers a dove who represents the Holy Spirit, the medium through whom the Christ Child was conceived. Unusually, the Virgin’s cloak is painted yellow. This color probably had symbolic significance, possibly as a sign of hope and/or purity.
Learn more from The National Gallery
The Virgin Mary shares this condition of creaturehood with us.
God is pure act, as the philosophers say; that is, he is the total realization of all possibility. We are not pure act; we have not realized all possibilities of being that are in us. Our being evolves as our heart intensifies its affections and perfects them. Our body grows and then declines. God himself is pure actuality, pure act. Nothing in him is in the state of possibility, passing from nonexistence to existence. All is infinite existence in him.
The human person, on the contrary, far from being this totality of realization, is a creature of infirmity and dependence. Remember what I was saying to you regarding creation? Nothing exists that cannot be annihilated instantly, if the creative action ceases to operate. It is this way, because we are not self-existent beings, as the words of Our Lord to Saint Catherine of Siena indicated: “You are she who is not.” This is the foundation of our being. We are not; we have only a borrowed being, unceasingly renewed by God. The Virgin Mary shares this condition of creaturehood with us. By herself she was not; she was totally dependent, as we are totally dependent.
Père Jacques of Jesus, O.C.D.
Virginity in God and in Mary
Retreat for the Carmel of Pontoise, Conference Six
Wednesday evening, 8 September 1943
Listen to the Silence - A Retreat with Père Jacques (pp. 41-42) Translated and edited by Francis J. Murphy ICS Publications © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
I remember that when my mother died I was twelve years old or a little less. When I began to understand what I had lost, I went, afflicted, before an image of our Lady and besought her with many tears to be my mother. It seems to me that although I did this in simplicity it helped me. For I have found favor with this sovereign Virgin in everything I have asked of her, and in the end she has drawn me to herself. It wearies me now to see and think that I was not constant in the good desires I had in my childhood.
Saint Teresa of Avila
The Book of Her Life, Chapter 1
The Book of Her Life: Chapter 9; The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (unless otherwise noted) Published by ICS Publications, Washington DC Copyright © 1976 by Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, Inc.
After Jesus Christ, doubtless at the distance that there is between the Infinite and the finite, there is one who was also the great praise of glory of the Holy Trinity. She responded fully to the divine election of which the Apostle speaks: she was always “pure, immaculate, and without reproach” in the eyes of the thrice-holy God.
Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity
Last Retreat, Fifteenth Day
The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity volume 1: I Have Found God, General Introduction and Major Spiritual Writings (p.160) ICS Publications, Washington DC © Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc.
Deep within, Mary had learned to listen to the heartbeat of her Son, and that in turn taught her, throughout her life, to discover God’s heartbeat in history.
Bishop Silvio José Báez, O.C.D.
From the homily of His Holiness Pope Francis
Holy Mass on the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
From the beginning of his novitiate he applied himself to the exercises of religious life with great fervor. He had singular affection for the Blessed Virgin Mary and was especially devoted to her. He had a filial trust in her protection. She was his refuge in all the problems of his life, in the troubles and anxieties that disturbed his soul, and therefore he would call her “his good mother.”
Eulogy in Praise of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, No. 17
Writings and Conversations on the Practice of the Presence of God
Excerpt from Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Writings and Conversations on the Practice of the Presence of God Edited by Conrad De Meester, OCD, Translated by Salvatore Sciurba, OCD Published by ICS Publications, Washington DC Copyright © 1994, 2015 by Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, Inc.
Today we continue the novena to St. Joseph. Joseph is so silent in the Gospels, so ordinary, that it took many years for the Church to give him due importance. St. Joseph is special because he reflects in a unique way the love of the Eternal Father for his only begotten Son.
Reading
Matthew 1:18-25
18 This is how Jesus Christ was born. A young woman named Mary was engaged to Joseph from King David’s family. But before they were married, she learned that she was going to have a baby by God’s Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph was a good man and did not want to embarrass Mary in front of everyone. So he decided to quietly call off the wedding.
20 While Joseph was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord came to him in a dream. The angel said, “Joseph, the baby that Mary will have is from the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and marry her. 21 Then after her baby is born, name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
22 So the Lord’s promise came true, just as the prophet had said, 23 “A virgin will have a baby boy, and he will be called Immanuel,” which means “God is with us.”
24 After Joseph woke up, he and Mary were soon married, just as the Lord’s angel had told him to do. 25 But they did not sleep together before her baby was born. Then Joseph named him Jesus.
Reflection
The intervention of the angel in the Gospel is not only to reassure Joseph but to inform him of his role in the plan of God. You shall call him Jesus and you will receive him as your Son. How deep is my faith to see the hand of God in the daily events of my life?
Prayer
Lord God, in your loving providence you chose St. Joseph to be the spouse of your holy Mother, grant that we may be worthy to have him for our intercessor in heaven whom on earth we venerate as our holy patron, Amen.
Hymn to St. Joseph
In Joseph’s care were Jesus
And Mary guarded well,
Provided for and cherished,
As all the stories tell;
And when he died, his spirit
Went forth from them in peace;
Within their arms so loving,
He found his soul’s release
J. Michael Thompson
Copyright © 2010, World Library Publications
76 76 D
AURELIA, THAXTED
Source: Carmelite Sisters of St. Teresa
Hymn used with the kind permission of the composer
At the time of our Lord, if someone had asked who his closest collaborator was, the answer would have been, “It’s Peter… It’s James… It’s John.”
In fact, it was the Virgin Mary in Nazareth although none could see it.
Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus
notredamedevie.org
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