Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
Discalced Carmelite historian Peter-Thomas Rohrbach shows us how our First Reading for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) fits within the Carmelite legend of Elijah and Elisha and the Carmelite tradition, which indicates that we have inherited their double spirit.
In December 1915 St. Teresa of the Andes took a pivotal step toward her Carmelite vocation when she received permission to profess a private vow of chastity.
Saint Teresa of the Andes entered the Carmel of the Holy Spirit in the township of Los Andes, some 90 kilometers from her home in Santiago de Chile on Wednesday, 7 May 1919. The Prioress said that when Teresa said farewell to her oldest sister, she said, "Until heaven! Life is so short!"
Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity writes to her beloved Abbé Chevignard in 1903, "To think that God calls us by our vocation to live in this holy light! What an adorable mystery of charity! I would like to respond to it by living on earth as the Blessed Virgin did, 'keeping all these things in my heart'..."
Blessed Elia of St. Clement entered the Carmel of Bari on this date in 1920. She wrote, "Lord, I've heard your voice, I'm flying to Carmel."
We recall that on this date in 1920, St. Teresa of the Andes requested the last Sacraments as she lay dying from typhus. We recall the peace she experienced when going to confession two years earlier.
Jesus, my Jesus! [...] You see my weaknesses, my cowardice, my fears, my miseries! [...] I'm afraid of sacrifice, of the Cross.
A picture of Jesus crucified slipped from her missal. No one was collecting the blood he had shed. Thérèse decided that she would henceforth remain, in spirit, at the foot of that cross to collect that blood for sinners.
When one loves, everything is joy. The cross doesn't weigh down.
Céline tells us that Thérèse "received an audience with the Holy Father on Sunday 20th November 1887 with the pilgrims of the dioceses of Coutances, Bayeux, and Nantes"
‘Let yourself be loved more than these’ is your vocation. It is in being faithful to it that you will make Me happy for you will magnify the power of My love.
What could the wise Teresa have been thinking to set these bounds on even my little love? This walling, barring, minimizing, shrinking— how could her great Castilian heart approve?
Reading the Letters of St. Jerome so encouraged me that I decided to tell my father about my decision to take the habit
"To whom much has been given," Jesus says, "much will be required". Maria Teresa knew this.
The Saint heard a voice: "I am Teresa of Jesus-I want you among my daughters."
The Carmelite must ascend the Tabor of Carmel and be clothed with the garments of penance that will make her more like Jesus.
She had already known when she moved to her 'Nazareth' that her aim was the 'desert' of Carmel. But she had to await the Lord’s hour.
Approaching confession from the abyss of her misery, she casts off everything, desiring to preserve in herself only the image of God according to which she was created
The way to perfection of individual nature is loving devotion and surrender to God who is love
My tearful eyes began to fix themselves on a picture of the Sacred Heart, and I heard a very sweet voice say to me...
Carmelite Quotes 
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