We know that we have a very rich order that spans East and West, as well as the Old and New Testaments. Here is a beautiful little tribute to St. Teresa of the Andes and her reasons for entering Carmel. Let us meditate upon the deeper meaning of being called to such an order that calls us to deeper union with the Holy Trinity. Blessings!
Friday, September 13, 2013
Reasons to Become Carmelite by St. Teresa of the Andes
JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
We know that we have a very rich order that spans East and West, as well as the Old and New Testaments. Here is a beautiful little tribute to St. Teresa of the Andes and her reasons for entering Carmel. Let us meditate upon the deeper meaning of being called to such an order that calls us to deeper union with the Holy Trinity. Blessings!
We know that we have a very rich order that spans East and West, as well as the Old and New Testaments. Here is a beautiful little tribute to St. Teresa of the Andes and her reasons for entering Carmel. Let us meditate upon the deeper meaning of being called to such an order that calls us to deeper union with the Holy Trinity. Blessings!
Sunday, September 8, 2013
MARY of NAZARETH Film Trailer
JMJT! Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Our Foundress St. Teresa called her communities 'the dove cotes of Our Lady' and Carmel continues to be considered the order of the Virgin. Today we celebrate the birth of Our Lady in a special way, and we ask her to bring rebirth to our hearts and minds, that we may unite ourselves to God in all things and see Our Triune God in all circumstances. May she teach us to be open to His Divine Will as she was. Amen.
In less than a month, a new movie will be released that depicts the life of Our Lady. How radically different would our world be if everyone learned of Our Lady's humility, purity, goodness, and faithfulness, and then sought to imitate her virtues with her maternal assistance. Check out the trailer above and see if your parish might be able to sponsor a showing of this movie.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Fr. Alzinir Debastiani, OCD Portland OCDS Western Regional Congress June 2013
JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
THE OCDS COMMUNITY: PRAYERFUL FRIENDS AND EVANGELIZERS
by Fr. Alzinir Debastiani, OCD Portland OCDS Western Regional Congress June 22, 2013
Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Teresian Carmel:
Peace to each of you here present during this 2013 OCDS Western Regional Congress in Portland, Oregon. May you be empowered and enlightened in Seeking Christ through the Interior Castle in Carmelite Secular Life. May you radiate in your lives the light of the Holy Trinity living within each of you.
I am deeply grateful to my confrere in Carmel in the person of Fr. Donald Kinney, OCD, and to Lee Ann Trunk and Alice Gustafson for their kind invitation to me personally. I also thank the OCDS community of Portland of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary who are hosting us, along the other organizers and speakers. May God bless you! With me I also bring the prayers and greetings of our Father General, Fr. Saverio Cannistrà, with wishes for a fruitful Congress.
Allow me to introduce myself briefly:
I am Fr. Alzinir Francisco Debastiani from the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil, a Discalced Carmelite friar of the Province of St. Joseph since 1984 and a priest since 1991. In Brazil I was pastor, teacher, and Delegate for the OCDS for 6 years. In May of last year, I became the General Delegate for the OCDS.
After just over a year, I can say that I am still discovering and assimilating the meaning of this mission. I count on your prayers.
As members of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, we have embarked on a journey of preparation for the Fifth Centenary of the Birth of holy Mother Teresa in 2015. With Teresa we want to deepen our vocation to the Teresian Carmel and our response to the call of the Lord, after the example of our holy Mother: "I am Yours, for You I was born, what do You want of me?"
As "sons and daughters of the Church," we Carmelites join in the Year of Faith (2012-13) during this Fiftieth Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. We welcome the proposal of the 2012 Synod of Bishops to collaborate in the new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith. Hopefully these events are propelling us to devote more and more of our lives to God so that we may have the missionary zeal of our holy Mother: "[to give] a thousand lives to save one soul." 1
1. Between the Year of Faith and the Fifth Centenary of the Birth of St. Teresa (2015)
One of the principal objectives which the General Chapter of 2009 proposed for this sexenium was to read the complete works of St. Teresa in preparation for the Fifth Centenary of her birth. This is what the text says:
"The context for this reading of St Teresa is the lead-up to the Fifth Centenary of her birth (2015). Direct contact with her writings, read in a meditative way, will enable us to share the human and spiritual adventure which she herself lived and which she holds out to us. We want to wake up again to her spirit, take hold of her wisdom, approaching her writings with a listening ear, as disciples, sons and daughters, so that our lives and our service of the Church and the world will be shaped afresh by her charism. We want to get in touch with her message as a source of hope in our human, Christian and Carmelite lives.” 2
The Year of Faith proclaimed by His Holiness Benedict XVI, launched on October 11, 2012 and ending on November 24 of this year, aims at the rediscovery of faith in Christ, especially for those who were baptized but have been away from the Church, bringing about a loving and friendly encounter with Christ, the source of life, the one who leads us into participation in the Trinitarian life. 3
At the same time, the “Year of Faith . . . is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. . . . Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. ‘Faith working through love’ 4 becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life 5
Saint Teresa is a clear example of how "faith in God's mercy" 6 leads her to a radical transformation of life—let us recall here the symbol of the silkworm—from the moment that she responded to the graces which the Lord granted her. We can say that she enters into the castle of the Holy Trinity through the gate of faith and prayer and allows "Christ to live in her." From this fact and knowing the necessity of fraternal help for growth in the spiritual life, she founded small communities of nuns, who are to be friends, who are to be mutually helpful (“all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped”7, who are to share the spiritual life, encouraging one another other in service to the Lord and to his Church.
1. SANTA TERESA OF JESUS, MASTER OF PRAYER
Saints are privileged witnesses of God who have "confessed the beauty of following Jesus"8: "every saint is like a ray of light streaming forth from the word of God"9.
St. Teresa of Jesus is "a Mother of spiritual people." Her word, always relevant in the Church, is that of prayer. She is a mystagogue—one who understands and teaches mystical doctrine. Profoundly aware of what it means to be a human being inhabited by divine grace, of "so rich a nature and the power to converse with none other than God"10, she compares those who do not pray or who pray badly with the paralytic11, with one who is unable to walk.
What motivates someone to leave this state and undertake the path in search of the Lord except the prayerful faith which makes him a pilgrim?
Prayer and reflection provide the motive to seek the light of the interior castle. It is the search for the Transcendent, the desire for God present in the heart of every human person, which calls him to live the path of exodus from the self and to go in search of the light that "burns in the heart."
For Teresa:
"…prayer is the door to favors as great as those He granted me. If this door is closed, I don’t know how He will grant them. For even though He may desire to enter and take delight in a soul and favor it, there is no way of His doing this, for He wants it alone and clean and desirous of receiving His graces… I, indeed, cannot understand why, unless it is that they want to undergo the trials of life with greater trial and close the door on God so that He may not make them happy. I certainly pity those who serve the Lord at their own cost, because for those who practice prayer the Lord Himself pays the cost since through their little labor He gives them delight so that with the help of this delight they might suffer the trials." 12
In order for there to be prayer, reflection must also accompany it, along with a theological attitude, an awareness that one is talking to God:
"A prayer in which a person is not aware of whom he is speaking to, what he is asking, who it is who is asking and of whom, I do not call prayer however much the lips move. Sometimes it will be so without this reflection, provided that the soul has these reflections at other times.” 13
For this reason, the vocational path which we undertake in the Teresian Carmel is motivated by a personal quest for friendship with God, for "Him who, we know, loves us." 14
It is important that every Carmelite community be a place of formation in an authentic life of prayer. “From foolish devotions, may God deliver us," 15 said Teresa. Such prayer leads to an ever more profound and true relationship with Christ. This requires the acquisition of the virtues of “love for one another, detachment from all created things, and true humility” necessary for us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us.” 16
It is fundamental to keep our relationship with Jesus at the very center of our life. Our Father General, in the Fourth Iberian Congress of the Secular Order in Avila, in April of 2012, stated:
"In Carmel we are for Jesus because He has touched us mysteriously... The first and fundamental manifestation of the Teresian charism is to live all things with Jesus...in an exercise of faith, of theological life, which is only possible if constantly nourished by prayer, understood as a friendly dialogue with the Lord, and in daily listening to the Word of God.
Father General continues: “The other aspect of our vocation is our ‘concern for others,’ for the community, for the Church. Life with Christ and life in Christ is not selfish, nor self-centered, but a life for others, without reservations or calculations. This is, moreover, the only verifiable sign that we are really with the Lord and not simply ourselves. These characteristics of the charism that animated the life of Teresa can be reproduced in very different states of life, in new ways, and with new riches. Charism is fertile and produces ‘the fruits of the Spirit’: love, peace, joy, goodness17. At the same time, it is demanding and occupies the various areas of our lives and makes them its own. So when you choose this vocation with ‘a determined determination,’ 18 you discover sooner or later that you no longer belong to yourself, that you own nothing for yourself, but at the same time, that you possess everything in a new way.”
2. THE OCDS COMMUNITY: A PLACE OF TRAINING IN PRAYER AND IN COMMUNION
Teresa’s charismatic legacy calls us to form communities of "staunch friends of God," 19 i.e., communities where before all else the members sincerely love one other; then, that the members help one another, that they share and walk together toward one goal: to witness their faith in Jesus Christ, who is present "where two or three are gathered in his name." 20
The community of the Secular Order should be a place where I can refuel and renew my spiritual energies in order to witness the faith and love of Christ in the family, at work, wherever I find myself.
Blessed John Paul II, at the completion of the Jubilee Year 2000, left us a task for this millennium:
"To make the Church the home and school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings ... we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up. "21
For this, it is necessary first to ponder and contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the source and origin of the Church and of every human being. The human being is "a substance founded on relationship," 22 who, “discovering that he is loved by God, comes to understand his own transcendent dignity, to learn not to be satisfied only with himself but to encounter his neighbor in a network of relationships that are ever more authentically human." 23
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004) describes the primary vocation of the human person as:
“The revelation in Christ of the mystery of God as Trinitarian love is at the same time the revelation of the vocation of the human person to love. This revelation sheds light on every aspect of the personal dignity and freedom of men and women, and on the depths of their social nature. ‘Being a person in the image and likeness of God ... involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other ‘I’, because God himself, one and triune, is the communion of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (n. 34)
Hence comes the importance of a reverential fraternal communion, of a warm welcome and of an affectionate, open, and familial relationship among the members of our communities.
Saint Teresa perceived the need for people who would live the same ideal and would have the same desire for God which she experienced. Despite the fact that at the Incarnation she lived with about 160 other nuns, she could not find the support she needed for the religious life and for prayer:
"There is so much sluggishness in matters having to do with the service of God that it is necessary for those who serve Him to become shields for one another that they might advance… Of myself I know and say that if the Lord had not revealed this truth to me and given me the means by which I could ordinarily talk with persons who practiced prayer, I, falling and rising, would have ended by throwing myself straight into hell. For in falling I had many friends to help me; but in rising I found myself so alone that I am now amazed I did not remain ever fallen. And I praise the mercy of God, for it was He alone who gave me His hand." 24
Teresa understands the need to be "staunch friends of God" 25 And here is the secret and the power of the Community:
"I should like the five of us who at present love each other in Christ to make a kind of pact that since others in these times gather together in secret against His Majesty to prepare wicked deeds and heresies, we might seek to gather together some time to free each other from illusion and to speak about how we might mend our ways and please God more since we do not know ourselves as well as others who observe us if they do so with love and concern for our progress." 26
To gather as friends for mutual help in spiritual growth is the ideal of community life in St. Teresa. This always requires an openness and respect for others, the ability to dialogue about the spiritual life and share it freely, in order that one may perceive the action of God in the life of another which may promote growth in my spiritual life. Here is also the task of community meetings: mutual help in the spiritual path, to be a place of sharing and of trusting and reciprocal acceptance among the members.
A good synthesis of the community life in St. Teresa and of her virtues may be found in n. 30 of the Document of the General Chapter of 2009:
"An ideal community life is defined by these three factors: a community that is before all else a "college of Christ"27, after the more radical way of the early Church, because He is present within the community 28, He is “ the Lord of the house"29, who "gathered us here"30, a community that lives the demands of strict equality and of true love 31, and where everything is guided by an evangelical style of love that is effective, free, disinterested 32,which sees manual work as the standard 33, a community marked by humanism, characterized by special and uncommon elements for its time: culture, human virtues, gentleness, prudence and discretion, simplicity, kindness and joy 34.
St. Teresa gives us some valuable advice: “Those who really love God, love every good, desire every good, favor every good, praise every good. They always join, favor, and defend good people. They have no love for anything but truth and whatever is worthy of love.”35
In light of all these texts, to grow in fraternal communion is a constant need of every community, because individualism is one of the characteristics of our current society which most easily seeps into our communities.
When there is true love among the members of a community, it becomes a source of evangelization because of this testimony of communion, as Jesus said: "all men will know that you are my disciples" 36 as happened to the early Christians.37
3. "APOSTOLIC ACTIVITY IS THE FRUIT OF PRAYER"
This statement comes from no. 26 of the OCDS Constitutions.
It reflects that earnest desire which led St. Teresa to try to do something about the ills of the Church and of society in her time38. Her great love for Christ and for the Church's mission led her to undertake the work of the foundation of monasteries for the nuns and convents for the friars, without fearing the work and persecutions that would come39.
For the secular Carmelite, apostolic activity exercised individually or in community is part of your vocational identity, as described in part IV of the Constitutions. And the apostolic activity of the laity in the Church is one of the great achievements of Vatican II, which devotes Chapter IV of Lumen Gentium, expanded in Apostolicam Actuositatem, on the apostolate of the laity. This was one of the great achievements of Vatican II, but which, unfortunately, after 50 years is still far from being put into practice.
The 1987 Synod of Bishops, with its exhortation Christifideles Laici, makes a fundamental statement for our understanding of the lay apostolate in light of the Church as a mystery of communion:
"… Only from inside the Church's mystery of communion is the ‘identity’ of the lay faithful made known, and their fundamental dignity revealed. Only within the context of this dignity can their vocation and mission in the Church and in the world be defined. "40
It is a mission that is accomplished through personal witness, where
"Every person must walk unhesitatingly according to his own personal gifts and duties in the path of living faith, which arouses hope and works through charity. All Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives—and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will. In this temporal service, they will manifest to all men the love with which God loved the world."41
With regard to the apostolate, we should be careful not to fall into two temptations, about which John Paul II spoke in 1988:
"... the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the
temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world."42
Therefore, we can say that the identity of the lay vocation in the Teresian Carmel is to build holiness in the world, which means living faith, hope and love where I am, without separating faith and life or only within the Christian community.
I like this phrase of St. Teresa: "The true lover loves everywhere and is always thinking of the Beloved"43. In social life, family, work, entertainment, ministry, interpersonal relationships, we see always with the eyes of faith, hope and above all charity, as the OCDS Constitutions state:
"To give particular importance to prayer which, nourished by listening to the Word of God and by the liturgy, is conducive to relating with God as a friend, not just in prayer, but in daily living. To be committed to this life of prayer demands being nourished by faith, hope, and above all, charity in order to live in the presence and the mystery of the living God." (9,c)
St. Teresa, by means of an example, invites us to do something for those in need:
"Suppose we were to see a Christian with his hands fastened behind his back by a strong chain, bound to a post, and dying of hunger, not because of lack of food, for there are very choice dishes beside him, but because he cannot take hold of the food and eat, and even has great loathing for it; and suppose he sees that he is about to breath his last and die, not just an earthly death but an eternal one.
Wouldn’t it be terrible cruelty to stand looking at him and not feed him? 44
Give food to those who are dying of hunger ... Of which hunger? Physical hunger, certainly, but also other forms of hunger, such as the lack of meaning in life, which many attempt to satisfy through drugs, pleasure, consumerism, and many others things, as you know. Jesus came in order to give being and meaning to everything. We must lead people to Him.
In the same vein, it is significant what Carmelo Dotolo, theologian and professor at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, suggests:
"If we accept the idea that our joys and hopes, doubts and questions characterize us in our quest, then, the vocation and identity of the lay Christian is to be a companion in the search for meaning, knowing that the salvific figure described in the Gospel inserts Himself into the question that belongs to each person, and guides uncommon perspectives marked by the unpredictability of God's love."45
The Message to the People of God of the Synod of Bishops in 2012 on the New Evangelization for the transmission of the faith points us in the same direction:
“It is up to us today to render experiences of the Church concretely accessible, to multiply the wells where thirsting men and women are invited to encounter Jesus, to offer oases in the deserts of life. Christian communities and, in them, every disciple of the Lord, are responsible for this: an irreplaceable
testimony has been entrusted to each one, so that the Gospel can enter the lives of all. This requires of us holiness of life.”46
In Carmel we have an immense wealth in the writings of our saints: they are an inexhaustible well that inspires so many lives and leads us to communion with the Triune God who lives in each of us. Teresa’s response of faith led her into communion with the Mystery of the Trinity:
"The soul knows in such a way that what we hold by faith, it understands, we can say, through sight—although the sight is not with the bodily eyes nor with the eyes of the soul, because we are not dealing here with an imaginative vision. Here all three Persons communicate themselves to it, speak to it, and explain those words of the Lord in the Gospel: that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell in the soul that loves Him and keeps His commandments. "47
But she tells us that the fruit of prayer is the realization of works. The Church asks us for a New Evangelization through works because "the love shown to those in spiritual and material need, which is expressed in works of fellowship, solidarity and assistance, speaks louder than words." 48
As our holy Mother in her own time, doing “the little within her power," 49 the question that she asks of the Lord must apply to each of us: "What do You want of me?"
What can I do to improve “the little within my power” in my community, my family, my work?
CONCLUSION
Dear brothers and sisters, among the many fruits that will certainly proceed from this Congress, I ask especially that it may prompt us to advance on the path of friendship and union with Christ, in fraternal communion, in truth, humility, and love of neighbor. May the experiences and reflections which have taken place during this Congress help you to grow as people, as Christians, and as Teresian Carmelites. May they be lived with faith, for "faith commits every one of us to become a living sign of the presence of the Risen Lord in the world"50.
May Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our Mother and Sister, intercede for us and teach us to do what Jesus teaches us.
Thank you very much!
Fr. Francisco Alzinir Debastiani, OCD
Rome, 21 January 2013
FOOTNOTES
1 St. Teresa, The Way of Perfection, 1:2.
2 I Was Born for You, n. 3.
3 cf. Porta Fidei 1.
4 Gal 5:6.
5 cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Porta Fidei 6.
6 OCDS Constitutions, 7.
7 The Way of Perfection, 4:7.
8 Porta Fidei 13.
9 Verbum Domini 48.
10 The Interior Castle, I, 1:6.
11 cf. The Interior Castle, I, 1:6.
12 Life, 8:8-9.
13 The Interior Castle, I,1:7.
14 Life, 8:5.
15 Life, 13:16.
16 cf. The Way of Perfection, 4:4.
17 cf. Gal 5:22.
18 The Way of Perfection, 21:2.
19 Life, 15:15.
20 Mt 18:20.
21 Novo Millennio Ineunte, 43.
22 Josef Ratzinger, in Paolo Gamberini, Jesu maestro de relazioni umane, Religiosi in Italia 391, 2012, p. 138.
23 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n.4.
24 Life, 7:22.
25 Life, 15:5.
26 Life, 16:7.
27 cf. The Way of Perfection, 13:5, note 2.
28 cf. Life, 32:11.
29 WP, 17:7.
30 WP, 1:5; 3:1.
31 cf. WP, 4:7.
32 WP, 4:11; 7:6.
33 cf. Constitutions of St. Teresa, n. 28.
34 cf. WP, 41:7-8; 42 ; NMI 43; “I was born for You,” n. 30.
35 cf. The Way of Perfection, 40:3.
36 Jn 13:34-35.
37 cf. Acts 2:42-46; 4:32-35.
38 cf. The Way of Perfection, 1-3; Foundations, 1.
39 cf. Foundations, 18:5.
40 CL 8, cf. LG 31.
41 Lumen Gentium 41.
42 Christifideles Laici 2.
43 Foundations,5:16.
44 The Interior Castle, VII, 1:4.
45 www.carmelodotolo.eu/vocazione_laico_in_chiesa_oggi.html (p. 3).
48 Instrumentum Laboris, The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, n. 124.
49 The Way of Perfection, 1:2.
50 Porta Fidei 15.
THE OCDS COMMUNITY: PRAYERFUL FRIENDS AND EVANGELIZERS
by Fr. Alzinir Debastiani, OCD Portland OCDS Western Regional Congress June 22, 2013
Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Teresian Carmel:
Peace to each of you here present during this 2013 OCDS Western Regional Congress in Portland, Oregon. May you be empowered and enlightened in Seeking Christ through the Interior Castle in Carmelite Secular Life. May you radiate in your lives the light of the Holy Trinity living within each of you.
I am deeply grateful to my confrere in Carmel in the person of Fr. Donald Kinney, OCD, and to Lee Ann Trunk and Alice Gustafson for their kind invitation to me personally. I also thank the OCDS community of Portland of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary who are hosting us, along the other organizers and speakers. May God bless you! With me I also bring the prayers and greetings of our Father General, Fr. Saverio Cannistrà, with wishes for a fruitful Congress.
Allow me to introduce myself briefly:
I am Fr. Alzinir Francisco Debastiani from the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil, a Discalced Carmelite friar of the Province of St. Joseph since 1984 and a priest since 1991. In Brazil I was pastor, teacher, and Delegate for the OCDS for 6 years. In May of last year, I became the General Delegate for the OCDS.
After just over a year, I can say that I am still discovering and assimilating the meaning of this mission. I count on your prayers.
As members of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, we have embarked on a journey of preparation for the Fifth Centenary of the Birth of holy Mother Teresa in 2015. With Teresa we want to deepen our vocation to the Teresian Carmel and our response to the call of the Lord, after the example of our holy Mother: "I am Yours, for You I was born, what do You want of me?"
As "sons and daughters of the Church," we Carmelites join in the Year of Faith (2012-13) during this Fiftieth Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. We welcome the proposal of the 2012 Synod of Bishops to collaborate in the new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith. Hopefully these events are propelling us to devote more and more of our lives to God so that we may have the missionary zeal of our holy Mother: "[to give] a thousand lives to save one soul." 1
1. Between the Year of Faith and the Fifth Centenary of the Birth of St. Teresa (2015)
One of the principal objectives which the General Chapter of 2009 proposed for this sexenium was to read the complete works of St. Teresa in preparation for the Fifth Centenary of her birth. This is what the text says:
"The context for this reading of St Teresa is the lead-up to the Fifth Centenary of her birth (2015). Direct contact with her writings, read in a meditative way, will enable us to share the human and spiritual adventure which she herself lived and which she holds out to us. We want to wake up again to her spirit, take hold of her wisdom, approaching her writings with a listening ear, as disciples, sons and daughters, so that our lives and our service of the Church and the world will be shaped afresh by her charism. We want to get in touch with her message as a source of hope in our human, Christian and Carmelite lives.” 2
The Year of Faith proclaimed by His Holiness Benedict XVI, launched on October 11, 2012 and ending on November 24 of this year, aims at the rediscovery of faith in Christ, especially for those who were baptized but have been away from the Church, bringing about a loving and friendly encounter with Christ, the source of life, the one who leads us into participation in the Trinitarian life. 3
At the same time, the “Year of Faith . . . is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. . . . Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. ‘Faith working through love’ 4 becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life 5
Saint Teresa is a clear example of how "faith in God's mercy" 6 leads her to a radical transformation of life—let us recall here the symbol of the silkworm—from the moment that she responded to the graces which the Lord granted her. We can say that she enters into the castle of the Holy Trinity through the gate of faith and prayer and allows "Christ to live in her." From this fact and knowing the necessity of fraternal help for growth in the spiritual life, she founded small communities of nuns, who are to be friends, who are to be mutually helpful (“all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped”7, who are to share the spiritual life, encouraging one another other in service to the Lord and to his Church.
1. SANTA TERESA OF JESUS, MASTER OF PRAYER
Saints are privileged witnesses of God who have "confessed the beauty of following Jesus"8: "every saint is like a ray of light streaming forth from the word of God"9.
St. Teresa of Jesus is "a Mother of spiritual people." Her word, always relevant in the Church, is that of prayer. She is a mystagogue—one who understands and teaches mystical doctrine. Profoundly aware of what it means to be a human being inhabited by divine grace, of "so rich a nature and the power to converse with none other than God"10, she compares those who do not pray or who pray badly with the paralytic11, with one who is unable to walk.
What motivates someone to leave this state and undertake the path in search of the Lord except the prayerful faith which makes him a pilgrim?
Prayer and reflection provide the motive to seek the light of the interior castle. It is the search for the Transcendent, the desire for God present in the heart of every human person, which calls him to live the path of exodus from the self and to go in search of the light that "burns in the heart."
For Teresa:
"…prayer is the door to favors as great as those He granted me. If this door is closed, I don’t know how He will grant them. For even though He may desire to enter and take delight in a soul and favor it, there is no way of His doing this, for He wants it alone and clean and desirous of receiving His graces… I, indeed, cannot understand why, unless it is that they want to undergo the trials of life with greater trial and close the door on God so that He may not make them happy. I certainly pity those who serve the Lord at their own cost, because for those who practice prayer the Lord Himself pays the cost since through their little labor He gives them delight so that with the help of this delight they might suffer the trials." 12
In order for there to be prayer, reflection must also accompany it, along with a theological attitude, an awareness that one is talking to God:
"A prayer in which a person is not aware of whom he is speaking to, what he is asking, who it is who is asking and of whom, I do not call prayer however much the lips move. Sometimes it will be so without this reflection, provided that the soul has these reflections at other times.” 13
For this reason, the vocational path which we undertake in the Teresian Carmel is motivated by a personal quest for friendship with God, for "Him who, we know, loves us." 14
It is important that every Carmelite community be a place of formation in an authentic life of prayer. “From foolish devotions, may God deliver us," 15 said Teresa. Such prayer leads to an ever more profound and true relationship with Christ. This requires the acquisition of the virtues of “love for one another, detachment from all created things, and true humility” necessary for us to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended so highly to us.” 16
It is fundamental to keep our relationship with Jesus at the very center of our life. Our Father General, in the Fourth Iberian Congress of the Secular Order in Avila, in April of 2012, stated:
"In Carmel we are for Jesus because He has touched us mysteriously... The first and fundamental manifestation of the Teresian charism is to live all things with Jesus...in an exercise of faith, of theological life, which is only possible if constantly nourished by prayer, understood as a friendly dialogue with the Lord, and in daily listening to the Word of God.
Father General continues: “The other aspect of our vocation is our ‘concern for others,’ for the community, for the Church. Life with Christ and life in Christ is not selfish, nor self-centered, but a life for others, without reservations or calculations. This is, moreover, the only verifiable sign that we are really with the Lord and not simply ourselves. These characteristics of the charism that animated the life of Teresa can be reproduced in very different states of life, in new ways, and with new riches. Charism is fertile and produces ‘the fruits of the Spirit’: love, peace, joy, goodness17. At the same time, it is demanding and occupies the various areas of our lives and makes them its own. So when you choose this vocation with ‘a determined determination,’ 18 you discover sooner or later that you no longer belong to yourself, that you own nothing for yourself, but at the same time, that you possess everything in a new way.”
2. THE OCDS COMMUNITY: A PLACE OF TRAINING IN PRAYER AND IN COMMUNION
Teresa’s charismatic legacy calls us to form communities of "staunch friends of God," 19 i.e., communities where before all else the members sincerely love one other; then, that the members help one another, that they share and walk together toward one goal: to witness their faith in Jesus Christ, who is present "where two or three are gathered in his name." 20
The community of the Secular Order should be a place where I can refuel and renew my spiritual energies in order to witness the faith and love of Christ in the family, at work, wherever I find myself.
Blessed John Paul II, at the completion of the Jubilee Year 2000, left us a task for this millennium:
"To make the Church the home and school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings ... we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up. "21
For this, it is necessary first to ponder and contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the source and origin of the Church and of every human being. The human being is "a substance founded on relationship," 22 who, “discovering that he is loved by God, comes to understand his own transcendent dignity, to learn not to be satisfied only with himself but to encounter his neighbor in a network of relationships that are ever more authentically human." 23
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004) describes the primary vocation of the human person as:
“The revelation in Christ of the mystery of God as Trinitarian love is at the same time the revelation of the vocation of the human person to love. This revelation sheds light on every aspect of the personal dignity and freedom of men and women, and on the depths of their social nature. ‘Being a person in the image and likeness of God ... involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other ‘I’, because God himself, one and triune, is the communion of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (n. 34)
Hence comes the importance of a reverential fraternal communion, of a warm welcome and of an affectionate, open, and familial relationship among the members of our communities.
Saint Teresa perceived the need for people who would live the same ideal and would have the same desire for God which she experienced. Despite the fact that at the Incarnation she lived with about 160 other nuns, she could not find the support she needed for the religious life and for prayer:
"There is so much sluggishness in matters having to do with the service of God that it is necessary for those who serve Him to become shields for one another that they might advance… Of myself I know and say that if the Lord had not revealed this truth to me and given me the means by which I could ordinarily talk with persons who practiced prayer, I, falling and rising, would have ended by throwing myself straight into hell. For in falling I had many friends to help me; but in rising I found myself so alone that I am now amazed I did not remain ever fallen. And I praise the mercy of God, for it was He alone who gave me His hand." 24
Teresa understands the need to be "staunch friends of God" 25 And here is the secret and the power of the Community:
"I should like the five of us who at present love each other in Christ to make a kind of pact that since others in these times gather together in secret against His Majesty to prepare wicked deeds and heresies, we might seek to gather together some time to free each other from illusion and to speak about how we might mend our ways and please God more since we do not know ourselves as well as others who observe us if they do so with love and concern for our progress." 26
To gather as friends for mutual help in spiritual growth is the ideal of community life in St. Teresa. This always requires an openness and respect for others, the ability to dialogue about the spiritual life and share it freely, in order that one may perceive the action of God in the life of another which may promote growth in my spiritual life. Here is also the task of community meetings: mutual help in the spiritual path, to be a place of sharing and of trusting and reciprocal acceptance among the members.
A good synthesis of the community life in St. Teresa and of her virtues may be found in n. 30 of the Document of the General Chapter of 2009:
"An ideal community life is defined by these three factors: a community that is before all else a "college of Christ"27, after the more radical way of the early Church, because He is present within the community 28, He is “ the Lord of the house"29, who "gathered us here"30, a community that lives the demands of strict equality and of true love 31, and where everything is guided by an evangelical style of love that is effective, free, disinterested 32,which sees manual work as the standard 33, a community marked by humanism, characterized by special and uncommon elements for its time: culture, human virtues, gentleness, prudence and discretion, simplicity, kindness and joy 34.
St. Teresa gives us some valuable advice: “Those who really love God, love every good, desire every good, favor every good, praise every good. They always join, favor, and defend good people. They have no love for anything but truth and whatever is worthy of love.”35
In light of all these texts, to grow in fraternal communion is a constant need of every community, because individualism is one of the characteristics of our current society which most easily seeps into our communities.
When there is true love among the members of a community, it becomes a source of evangelization because of this testimony of communion, as Jesus said: "all men will know that you are my disciples" 36 as happened to the early Christians.37
3. "APOSTOLIC ACTIVITY IS THE FRUIT OF PRAYER"
This statement comes from no. 26 of the OCDS Constitutions.
It reflects that earnest desire which led St. Teresa to try to do something about the ills of the Church and of society in her time38. Her great love for Christ and for the Church's mission led her to undertake the work of the foundation of monasteries for the nuns and convents for the friars, without fearing the work and persecutions that would come39.
For the secular Carmelite, apostolic activity exercised individually or in community is part of your vocational identity, as described in part IV of the Constitutions. And the apostolic activity of the laity in the Church is one of the great achievements of Vatican II, which devotes Chapter IV of Lumen Gentium, expanded in Apostolicam Actuositatem, on the apostolate of the laity. This was one of the great achievements of Vatican II, but which, unfortunately, after 50 years is still far from being put into practice.
The 1987 Synod of Bishops, with its exhortation Christifideles Laici, makes a fundamental statement for our understanding of the lay apostolate in light of the Church as a mystery of communion:
"… Only from inside the Church's mystery of communion is the ‘identity’ of the lay faithful made known, and their fundamental dignity revealed. Only within the context of this dignity can their vocation and mission in the Church and in the world be defined. "40
It is a mission that is accomplished through personal witness, where
"Every person must walk unhesitatingly according to his own personal gifts and duties in the path of living faith, which arouses hope and works through charity. All Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives—and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will. In this temporal service, they will manifest to all men the love with which God loved the world."41
With regard to the apostolate, we should be careful not to fall into two temptations, about which John Paul II spoke in 1988:
"... the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the
temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world."42
Therefore, we can say that the identity of the lay vocation in the Teresian Carmel is to build holiness in the world, which means living faith, hope and love where I am, without separating faith and life or only within the Christian community.
I like this phrase of St. Teresa: "The true lover loves everywhere and is always thinking of the Beloved"43. In social life, family, work, entertainment, ministry, interpersonal relationships, we see always with the eyes of faith, hope and above all charity, as the OCDS Constitutions state:
"To give particular importance to prayer which, nourished by listening to the Word of God and by the liturgy, is conducive to relating with God as a friend, not just in prayer, but in daily living. To be committed to this life of prayer demands being nourished by faith, hope, and above all, charity in order to live in the presence and the mystery of the living God." (9,c)
St. Teresa, by means of an example, invites us to do something for those in need:
"Suppose we were to see a Christian with his hands fastened behind his back by a strong chain, bound to a post, and dying of hunger, not because of lack of food, for there are very choice dishes beside him, but because he cannot take hold of the food and eat, and even has great loathing for it; and suppose he sees that he is about to breath his last and die, not just an earthly death but an eternal one.
Wouldn’t it be terrible cruelty to stand looking at him and not feed him? 44
Give food to those who are dying of hunger ... Of which hunger? Physical hunger, certainly, but also other forms of hunger, such as the lack of meaning in life, which many attempt to satisfy through drugs, pleasure, consumerism, and many others things, as you know. Jesus came in order to give being and meaning to everything. We must lead people to Him.
In the same vein, it is significant what Carmelo Dotolo, theologian and professor at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, suggests:
"If we accept the idea that our joys and hopes, doubts and questions characterize us in our quest, then, the vocation and identity of the lay Christian is to be a companion in the search for meaning, knowing that the salvific figure described in the Gospel inserts Himself into the question that belongs to each person, and guides uncommon perspectives marked by the unpredictability of God's love."45
The Message to the People of God of the Synod of Bishops in 2012 on the New Evangelization for the transmission of the faith points us in the same direction:
“It is up to us today to render experiences of the Church concretely accessible, to multiply the wells where thirsting men and women are invited to encounter Jesus, to offer oases in the deserts of life. Christian communities and, in them, every disciple of the Lord, are responsible for this: an irreplaceable
testimony has been entrusted to each one, so that the Gospel can enter the lives of all. This requires of us holiness of life.”46
In Carmel we have an immense wealth in the writings of our saints: they are an inexhaustible well that inspires so many lives and leads us to communion with the Triune God who lives in each of us. Teresa’s response of faith led her into communion with the Mystery of the Trinity:
"The soul knows in such a way that what we hold by faith, it understands, we can say, through sight—although the sight is not with the bodily eyes nor with the eyes of the soul, because we are not dealing here with an imaginative vision. Here all three Persons communicate themselves to it, speak to it, and explain those words of the Lord in the Gospel: that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell in the soul that loves Him and keeps His commandments. "47
But she tells us that the fruit of prayer is the realization of works. The Church asks us for a New Evangelization through works because "the love shown to those in spiritual and material need, which is expressed in works of fellowship, solidarity and assistance, speaks louder than words." 48
As our holy Mother in her own time, doing “the little within her power," 49 the question that she asks of the Lord must apply to each of us: "What do You want of me?"
What can I do to improve “the little within my power” in my community, my family, my work?
CONCLUSION
Dear brothers and sisters, among the many fruits that will certainly proceed from this Congress, I ask especially that it may prompt us to advance on the path of friendship and union with Christ, in fraternal communion, in truth, humility, and love of neighbor. May the experiences and reflections which have taken place during this Congress help you to grow as people, as Christians, and as Teresian Carmelites. May they be lived with faith, for "faith commits every one of us to become a living sign of the presence of the Risen Lord in the world"50.
May Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our Mother and Sister, intercede for us and teach us to do what Jesus teaches us.
Thank you very much!
Fr. Francisco Alzinir Debastiani, OCD
Rome, 21 January 2013
FOOTNOTES
1 St. Teresa, The Way of Perfection, 1:2.
2 I Was Born for You, n. 3.
3 cf. Porta Fidei 1.
4 Gal 5:6.
5 cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Porta Fidei 6.
6 OCDS Constitutions, 7.
7 The Way of Perfection, 4:7.
8 Porta Fidei 13.
9 Verbum Domini 48.
10 The Interior Castle, I, 1:6.
11 cf. The Interior Castle, I, 1:6.
12 Life, 8:8-9.
13 The Interior Castle, I,1:7.
14 Life, 8:5.
15 Life, 13:16.
16 cf. The Way of Perfection, 4:4.
17 cf. Gal 5:22.
18 The Way of Perfection, 21:2.
19 Life, 15:15.
20 Mt 18:20.
21 Novo Millennio Ineunte, 43.
22 Josef Ratzinger, in Paolo Gamberini, Jesu maestro de relazioni umane, Religiosi in Italia 391, 2012, p. 138.
23 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n.4.
24 Life, 7:22.
25 Life, 15:5.
26 Life, 16:7.
27 cf. The Way of Perfection, 13:5, note 2.
28 cf. Life, 32:11.
29 WP, 17:7.
30 WP, 1:5; 3:1.
31 cf. WP, 4:7.
32 WP, 4:11; 7:6.
33 cf. Constitutions of St. Teresa, n. 28.
34 cf. WP, 41:7-8; 42 ; NMI 43; “I was born for You,” n. 30.
35 cf. The Way of Perfection, 40:3.
36 Jn 13:34-35.
37 cf. Acts 2:42-46; 4:32-35.
38 cf. The Way of Perfection, 1-3; Foundations, 1.
39 cf. Foundations, 18:5.
40 CL 8, cf. LG 31.
41 Lumen Gentium 41.
42 Christifideles Laici 2.
43 Foundations,5:16.
44 The Interior Castle, VII, 1:4.
45 www.carmelodotolo.eu/vocazione_laico_in_chiesa_oggi.html (p. 3).
46 http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20121026_message-synod_it.html (no. 3).
47 The Interior Castle, VII, 1:6.48 Instrumentum Laboris, The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, n. 124.
49 The Way of Perfection, 1:2.
50 Porta Fidei 15.
Pope Francis Encourages Carmelites to Deepen Contemplative Roots
JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
To Most Reverend Father
Fernando Millán Romeral
Prior General
of the Order of Brothers
of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.
One of the most beautiful ways for entering into prayer is through the Word of God. Lectio divina brings you into direct conversation with the Lord and it opens for you wisdom’s treasure. The intimate friendship with the One who loves us, enables us to see with the eyes of God, to speak with his Word in our hearts, to treasure the beauty of that experience and to share it with those who are hungry for eternity.
Letter of Pope Francis to the Carmelites on the Occasion of General Chapter 2013
To Most Reverend FatherFernando Millán Romeral
Prior General
of the Order of Brothers
of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.
I address you, dear Brothers of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, as you celebrate your General Chapter. At this time of grace and renewal that calls on you to discern the mission of the glorious Order of Carmelites, I would like to offer you a word of encouragement and hope. The ancient charism of Carmel throughout these past eight centuries has been a gift for the whole Church. Your contemplative origins spring from the land of the epiphany of God’s abiding love manifested in the Word made flesh. As you ponder your mission in Carmel today, I would ask you to consider three things that might guide you on your pilgrim way: love as allegiance, as prayer and as mission.
Allegiance
The Church has the mission to bring Christ to the world and it is for this, as Mother and Teacher she invites each one of us to draw near to him. In the Carmelite liturgy for the feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel we contemplate Our Lady as being “near the Cross of Christ.” This is also the place where one finds the Church: near to Christ. It is also the place for every faithful member of the Carmelite Order. Your Rule begins with the exhortation to the brothers to “live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ”; to follow him and to serve him with a pure and undivided heart. This close relationship to Christ happens in solitude, in fraternal assembly and in mission. “The fundamental choice of a life that is concretely and radically dedicated to following Christ.” (Ratio Institutionis Vitae Carmelitanae 8) making of your lives a pilgrimage of loving transformation. The Second Vatican Council recalls the role of contemplation on the journey of life: “It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and divine, visible and invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world as pilgrims.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 2) The early hermits of Mount Carmel retained the memory of that holy place, and even if exiled and distanced from it constantly kept their gaze fixed on the glory of God. Reflecting on your origins and history and contemplating the vast lineage of those who lived the Carmelite charism down through the centuries you will discover again your present vocation to be prophets of hope. It is precisely with this hope you will be reborn. Often what is new is only something very old seen in a new light.
Within your Rule is the heart of the Carmelite mission then and now. As you approach the eight centenary of the death of Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1214 you will recall that he formulated “a way of life”, a space that enables you to live a spirituality that is orientated towards Christ. He outlines both external and internal elements, a physical ecology of space and the spiritual armour needed in order to fulfil one’s vocation and mission.
In a world that often misunderstands Christ, and in fact rejects him, you are invited to draw near and to unite yourselves more closely with him. It is a continuous call to follow Christ and be conformed to him. This is of vital importance in our world so disoriented, “for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim.” (Lumen Fidei 4) Christ is present in your fraternity, your common worship and in the ministry entrusted to you: renew the allegiance of your whole life!
Prayer
The Holy Father Benedict XVI, before your General Chapter of 2007 reminded you that “faith’s inner pilgrimage towards God begins in prayer”; and at Castel Gandolfo in August 2010 said to you that: “You are the ones who teach us how to pray”. You speak of yourselves as contemplatives in the midst of the people. If it is true that you are called to live on the heights of Carmel then it is also true that you are called to witness in the midst of the people. Prayer is that “royal road” that leads to the profound mystery of the One and Triune God, but it is also the narrow pathway to God in the midst of the people as pilgrims in the world towards the Promised Land.
One of the most beautiful ways for entering into prayer is through the Word of God. Lectio divina brings you into direct conversation with the Lord and it opens for you wisdom’s treasure. The intimate friendship with the One who loves us, enables us to see with the eyes of God, to speak with his Word in our hearts, to treasure the beauty of that experience and to share it with those who are hungry for eternity.
Returning to the simplicity of a life centred on the Gospel is the challenge for a renewed Church: a community of faith that always finds new ways of evangelization in a world continually changing. The saints of Carmel have been the great preachers and teachers of prayer. This is what is needed once again from Carmel in the twenty-first century. Constantly throughout the length of your history, the greats of Carmel have sought to call you back to your prayerful contemplative roots, roots always fruitful in prayer. Here is the heart of your witness: the “contemplative” dimension of the Order, to be lived, cultivated and transmitted. I would like each one of you to ask yourself: how is my contemplative life? How much time during my day do I dedicate to prayer and contemplation? A Carmelite without this contemplative life is a dead body! Today, perhaps more than in the past, it is so easy to allow ourselves to be distracted by the cares and worries of this world and to succumb to false idols. Our world is fractured in so many ways: rather the contemplative unites and powerfully builds the call to unity. Now more than ever is the moment for you to discover again that inner pathway to love through prayer and to offer to the people today in your preaching and mission the witness of your contemplation, not easy solutions but that wisdom that comes from pondering “day and night the Law of the Lord”. The Word always brings one near to the glorious cross of Christ. United in contemplation and austerity of life is not a secondary aspect of your life and witness. There is a very strong temptation even for you to fall into a mundane spirituality. The spirit of the world is the enemy of the life of prayer: never forget this! I exhort you to a more austere and penitential life, according to your authentic tradition, a life distant from all worldliness, distant from the world’s criteria.
Mission
My dear Carmelite brothers, yours is the same mission as Jesus. All the planning and Chapter dialogue will be of little use, if you do not begin your renewal here. Your Carmelite family is seeing a wonderful “springtime” across the world, that fruit, a gift of God, and the missionary involvement of the past. Today the mission brings its heavy challenges as the Gospel message is not always accepted or even violently rejected. We must never forget, even if thrown into murky and unknown waters, that the one who gives the mission will also give the courage. So celebrate your Chapter with the hope that never dies, with a strong spirit of generosity regaining your contemplative life and the simplicity and austerity of the Gospel.
Addressing pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square I said: “Each individual Christian and every community is missionary to the extent that they bring to others and live the Gospel, and testify to God’s love for all, especially those experiencing difficulties. Be missionaries of God’s love and tenderness! Be missionaries of God’s mercy, which always forgives us, always awaits us and loves us dearly”(Homily 19th May 2013). The witness of Carmel in the past is one of a deep spiritual tradition that grew into one of the great schools of prayer. It has evoked courage in men and women facing danger and even death. We are only too aware of two great contemporary martyrs in Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and Blessed Titus Brandsma. I would ask you then: today among you, do you still have the endurance, the courage of these saints?
Dear Brothers of Carmel, the witness of your love, and your hope radiating from your deep friendship with the living God, can reach like a “gentle breeze” renewing and re-awakening your ecclesial mission in today’s world. To this you have been called. Your Profession Rite puts on your lips these words: “I entrust myself to God that by His grace and with the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary I may attain perfect charity in the service of God and the Church.”
Our Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Carmel, accompany your steps and make fruitful your daily journey towards the Mountain of God. I invoke upon all the members of the Carmelite Family, and most especially you Capitulars, the abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit and to all I heartily impart the Apostolic Blessing.
FRANCISCUS
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified
JMJT! Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Today we continue to see the ravages of war and religious hatred exhibited most especially in the Middle East. Our hearts are torn in sorrow as we learn of the many Coptic faithful who have been killed in Egypt and their Churches that have been burned to the ground. We grieve the death of so many brother and sister Catholics and Christians in Syria and Iraq and the resulting exodus of so many from the very heartland of early Christianity. What to do, we lament? I propose that we pray to Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified "AKA "The Little Arab" and "THe Lily of Palestine", a great mystic of Carmel, who was born in Egypt and would eventually found the Carmelite Convent in Bethlehem.
Blessed Mary had a great love for our Lord and Our Lady who saved her from death when her throat was slit by a Muslim man incensed by her refusal to convert. She bore the wounds of Christ on her body, and had many spiritual gifts. Perhaps foremost was a great love for the Holy Spirit and a recognition of our dependence on His guidance and light at all times. She wrote, "The world and religious communities are seeking novelties in devotions, and they are neglecting true devotion to the Paraclete. That is why there is error and disunion, and why there is no peace or light. They do not invoke light as it should be invoked, and it is this light that gives knowledge of truth. It is neglected even in seminaries . . . .
Every person in the world that will invoke the Holy Spirit and have devotion to Him will not die in error.
Message to Priests
Personally, I have taken this message to heart. As a rule I offer a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit on the first ferial day of each month.
Every priest that preaches this devotion will receive light while he is speaking of it to others. I was told that each priest in the world should be required to say one Mass of the Holy Spirit each month, and all who assist at it will receive very special grace and light. (See http://vultus.stblogs.org/index.php/2007/08/blessed-mariam-of-jesus-crucif/)
It is noted that "Mariam's devotion to the Holy Spirit was not common in her time. And yet her spiritual journey seemed to be guided by the Spirit in unprecedented ways. Inspired by having received a special prayer to the Holy Spirit during one of her ecstatic experiences, she was convinced that devotion to the Holy Spirit, who was then commonly known as the Paraclete, was needed by the whole Church. She even sent a petition to Pope Pius IX asking him to cultivate a greater devotion within the Church to the Holy Spirit. No one knows what the pope thought of this at the time, but 20 years later Pope Leo XIII published an encyclical about devotion to the Paraclete."
I am including a thumbnail sketch of her life below which was originally published in Mystics of the Church [See http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2010/07/blessed-mariam-baouardy-little-arab-and.html],for your edification and encouragement here. Let us be sure to invoke her intercession and strong aid especially for the Middle East in these painful and violent times, and ask her to help us draw closer to the Holy Spirit, that we may discern the Divine Will and always be obedient to Him.
Mariam enters the Carmelites –becomes Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified
Having both gained admittance into the Carmelites, the two religious presented themselves at the door of the Carmel of Pau, France on Saturday, June 15, 1867. Mariam knew nothing at all of Carmel or of St. Teresa. But that day she understood that the mysterious words of her miraculous nurse at Alexandria were realized, "You will be a child of St. Joseph before becoming a daughter of St. Teresa".
Before we explore the extraordinary mystical graces given to Myriam, below is a outline of dates pertaining to her religious life:
May 1865 - June 1867, Novitiate of the sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition at Marseille,
June 1867 - August 1870, Carmel of Pau, France
August 1870 - November 1872, Carmel of Mangalore, India
November 1872 - August 1875, Carmel of Pau, France
September 1875 - August 1878, Carmel of Bethlehem.
She helps found two Carmelite houses
In 1870 she went with the founding group to establish the Carmel of Mangalore in India. It was there in Mangalore that Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified made her profession. She returned to the Carmel of Pau, France in 1872. Three years later she went to the Holy Land where she built a monastery in Bethlehem and began the planning for another at Nazareth.
Her Ecstasies
Those who read her life discover that Myriam had experienced ecstasies all her life: from her early childhood, in the garden, in her home, and in the church of Ibillin; during the bloody night at Alexandria, at her employers in Beirut and Marseille. In the church of St. Nicholas she was rapt in an ecstasy that lasted four days. But it was especially from the time she entered religious life that the phenomena began to be intensified. At the Capelette, when she was with the Sisters of St. Joseph, she was found in ecstasy in the chapel, at recreation, and especially at night in the dormitory.
After she entered Carmel, we note a crescendo, to the degree that at Mangalore the ecstasies occurred almost daily: she had as many as five a day. At Bethlehem, during her last years, they were still more frequent, but at the same time more serene and more painful.
The ecstasies would sometimes occur suddenly, and at other times progressively. "There are times," she said, "when I can do absolutely nothing: no matter what I do to prevent it; and at other times I can distract myself a little in order not to go off." In fact she did struggle against the raptures. In her ignorance of mystical things she did not even suspect the privilege she enjoyed for she spoke of her ecstasies as “sleep” And how she fought against going to “sleep”! She begged Father Manaudas, her spiritual director, to forbid her to this sleep."My child," the priest replied, "do not worry; you can go to sleep in all security." She began to cry. She made the same request to Bishop Lacroix, who ordered her to abandon herself to God instead of struggling against such a sleep. It was in fact a real struggle. In order to resist the rapture she moved around, she shook herself, she dashed to the fountain to wash herself, she worked more diligently. She even tried pricking her skin with pins, and in refectory she put burning hot food into her mouth. Nothing helped.
To the mistress of novices, who asked her how she could easily go to sleep, she replied innocently: "I feel as though my heart is open; as though there was a wound in it; and when I have certain ideas and impressions of God which move me, it feels like someone touched the wound in my heart, and I fall in weakness, I lose myself."
During her professions ceremony at Mangalore, November 21, 1871, it required an order of the prioress to awaken her so that she could pronounce the vow formula. On June 28, 1873, at Pau, the prioress went into the little one´s cell after the recitations of matins. The latter was seated before the open window: she was in ecstasy. She said to the mother prioress: "The whole world is asleep, and God so full of goodness, so great, so worthy of all praise, and hardly no one is thinking of Him! See, nature praises Him, the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass, everything praises Him, and man, who knowledge of His benefits, who ought to praise Him, sleeps! Let us go, let us go and wake up the universe!" She skipped out of her cell: "Let us go and praise God, and sing His praises. Everyone is sleeping, the whole world is asleep, let us go and wake them up. Jesus is not known, Jesus is not loved. He, so full of goodness, He who has done so much for man!"
During her ecstasies, her body sometimes remained supple, but often it became rigid, remaining in the same position that it was at the beginning of the ecstasy. During this time, nothing and no one could make her move. It was impossible to have her sit or lay down, or to take her from her any object she was holding, or to lower her raised arm. Only obedience could overcome this immobility. She was also completely insensible to any external stimulus. Once, she injured her knee with a nail, which caused her much pain and she could not help but to limp when walking.due to the pain. Suddenly she was rapt in ecstasy, and remained for two hours on her knees.
On another occasion, on November 30, 1874, she began to sing "in a clear and strong voice", although since her martyrdom her voice had been hoarse because of the fact that her neck was cut so severely. On January 7, 1875, a violent blow on the head resulted in one eye being injured. Mariam, "later being rapt in ecstasy", wrote the faithful secretary, "we brought a light near her injured eye, which we had not yet been able to examine due to her humility and also the pain caused when opening it. It was open, and although quite inflamed, it remained steady when we put the light in line with its gaze."
Another notable detail was that when she came to herself she had no remembrance of what had transpired. With one exception however: the memory of it returned to her when authority asked her to give an account of what she had seen and heard. "I remember these things," she acknowledged , "to tell them to whom I should.”
A few sayings of Blessed Sister Mariam while in ecstasy:
"I am in God, and God is in me. I feel that all creatures, the trees, the flowers belong to God and also to me. I no longer have a will, it belongs to God. And all that is God´s is mine.
"Only love can fill the heart of man. The just man is satisfied with love and a pinch of earth, but the wicked man, with all the pleasures, honors, riches (he can acquire), is always hungry, always thirsty. He is never satisfied.
"Pay attention to little things. Everything is great before the Lord. The Lord does not want robbery in the sacrifice. Offer and give Him everything.
"In heaven, the most beautiful souls are those that have sinned the most and repented. But they made use of their miseries like manure around the base of the tree."
"Be very charitable; when one of your eyes sees what is not right, shut it and then open the other one! Change everything into good."
"If you love your neighbor, it is by this that you will know if you love Jesus. Each time you look at your neighbor without seeing Jesus, you fall very low."
Miraculous Levitations
We see in the lives of many mystic saints that an ecstatic, while in ecstasy, can be drawn a little above the ground through a supernatural and mysterious grace. However, Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified was one of the only ones, along with Saint Joseph of Cupertino, to make real flights. The phenomena was verified for the first time on June 22, 1873 in the garden of the Carmel of Pau. Noticing her absence at supper, the mistress of novices looked for her in vain in the cloister and the orchard, then another nun heard a song: "Love! Love!" She looked up and discovered Mariam balancing herself without support at the top of an enormous lime tree.
Advised of this, the prioress arrived and confronted with this phenomena she initially did not know what to do. After a prayer she addressed the little one: "Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, if Jesus wishes it, come down through obedience without falling or hurting yourself."
At the simple word obedience, the ecstatic descended in fact "with the radiant face" and perfect modesty, stopping on some of the branches to sing Love."Hardly was she on the ground," noted a witness, "and as if to make amends to our mother and sisters for our anxiety in looking for her and in seeing her perched up so high, she embraced us with a sort of enthusiasm and affection impossible to express."
Eight ecstatic levitations were documented: Beginning in 1873 on June 22, July 9, 19,25, 27, 31, August 3, 1873 and finally on July 5, 1874. "How did you manage to climb like that?" the mother prioress asked her. And she replied: "The Lamb held out His hands to me:" Some of the nuns wanted to make sure of this so they spied on her. One day a lay sister who was working in the garden was witness to the flight: "She had taken hold of the tip of a little branch that a bird would have bent; and from there, in an instant, she had been lifted on high." On July 5, perched on the lime tree, she addressed the mother prioress: "I was on that one there and I came up here. Look, see, my alpargates (a kind of soft slipper) are still there."
On July 19, 1873, when the order was given for her to descend, she hesitated a moment. She begged to be allowed more time with the Lamb. "No," insisted the prioress, "through obedience, come down." She obeyed, but the shadow of hesitation had been fatal: the vision had disappeared. "The Lamb went away." Sighed the sister, "He left me alone to come down." In fact, because of her hesitance in obedience it was with effort that she got down to the ground and for four days of grief she expiated that unhappy moment. On July 25, the levitation lasted from four to seven o'clock in the evening; on July 31, it lasted from the end of recreation, which follows supper in the evening, until nine o'clock. This phenomenon occurred only at the Carmel of Pau.
In a letter dated February 14, 1927, Father Buzy, the Carmelite´s biographer, wrote the following statement to bishop Oliver Leroy:"Sister Mary used to raise herself to the top of the trees by the tips of the branches: she would take her scapular in one hand, and with the other the end of a small branch next to the leaves, and after a few moments she would glide along the outside edge of the tree to its top. Once up there, she would remain holding on to branches normally too weak to bear a person of her weight. "
The following are some depositions given by witnesses at process: "Sister E., now deceased, told me that one day when she happened to be in the garden with the servant of God, the latter said to her: "Turn around." She had hardly turn her head when looking back again, she saw the little one already seated on the top of the lime tree, on a little branch, balancing herself like a bird and singing divine love. Another person declared: "Once I saw her in ecstasy at the top of the lime tree, seated at the tip of the highest branch, which, normally would never have been able to support her. Her face was resplendent! I saw her come down from the tree like a bird, from branch to branch, with great nimbleness and modesty."
Her Stigmata
First let us read, in the memoirs of Mother Veronica at the Capelette, the description of the first stigmata of the little Arab:
"On the first Thursday, May 2, 1867, when I went to see Mary, I found her sitting near her bed in great pain. She showed me her side, her feet and her hands. On these latter, in the place where they had been imprinted, that is to say on the upper part, there was a sort of blister, which formed the head of the nails, and in the palms the spot was black and swollen. At the place on her side, a little above the heart, there was the form of a cross all red and inflamed; and in the middle three small blisters with a little hole…I spent the night near her, and at five o'clock in the morning blood flowed from the wounds in her hands which I bathed, and the pain seemed to be alleviated. The blood flowed from the palm. The fingers were contracted and curved around, as if the nail had really gone into the palm, she could not extend them, nor take hold of the glass when I gave her a drink from time to time…
At about nine o'clock blood flowed from the crown of thorns all around her head. I can solemnly attest that I saw blood coming from the holes of the thorns, one of which, in the center of her forehead, opened before me, and blood gushed from it. While I was washing it, it closed again, leaving her forehead without any mark, except the traces of blood. Her feet were white; one would have said the feet of a corpse, and the toes were stretched like those of one crucified. The wounds on the upper part bled, as did the wound on her side. After three hours she was completely herself again, experiencing only a little weakness. I told her to get up, which she did by herself, and that evening she came to supper with the community."
In the notes of the Carmel of Pau, we read that on Thursday, February 27, 1868: "She could not get up, she was suffering so much in her hands and feet. We took her to the infirmary. All that evening when passing near there, we would smell a strong sweet fragrance, but we could not detect its source. The novice´s veils and mantle also had a pleasant odor. The night was a bad one for her and the next morning blood began to flow from her feet and hands. The crown of thorns bled profusely at two different times, then the wound in her side, all with unspeakable pain. At noon all the bleeding stopped but the wounds remained open and became deeper each day, which prevented her from walking or putting her feet on the floor, for forty days. She could hardly bear any contact with the linens used to wrap her wounds, especially on Friday and Saturday. From that day until the following Friday, the wounds only oozed, but on Thursday of each week, a large pimple formed, black likea nail, which grew in size until Friday, then at the hour she designated in advance, this sort of blister fell off and the blood flowed; afterward the wound closed until the following week."
During the Mangalore period, we have above all the testimony of Father Lazare, a Carmelite and her director. On November 24 and 25, 1871, he attentively examined the stigmata. From his report we selected some precise statements:
"The hands were swollen on the palm and the wounds were open;but all around the edge of the wounds there was a little coagulated blood, no doubt because this wound had begun to open several days before. On the inside of the hand there was a sort of button, forming the head of the nail. The flesh of the palm seemed to have been separated violently; it was torn, if I may thus express it, on the inside there were no tears, only the head of the nail was visible. The feet were similarly pierced through and through. The wounds were fresh, the flesh torn perhaps more than on the hands. One of the perforations was exactly in the middle of the sole of the foot, and there it ended with a quite newly formed small round hole, just as if the point of a sharp nail had been driven through it and then pulled out. It was the same with the other foot."
Lastly, for the Bethlehem period (1875-1878), we have chiefly the testimony of the mistress of novices, mother Mary of the Child Jesus. The stigmata appeared during the Lent of 1876. On March 3, the first Thursday of Lent, the little one called the mother into her cell and said to her: "See my humiliation; I don't anyone to come here, look at my hands." And the witness stated precisely: "We were able to ascertain that the blackish swelling, that looked like a large nail in the palm of her hands and also on the top of the hand, was formed much more quickly than during the Lent of 1868. Towards nine o'clock, the marks were still darker and more extended; her contracted fingers prevented her from using her hands. At noon, we saw the same thing on the upper part of her feet, but she absolutely refused to let us cover them with linen, which would greatly increased her suffering."
The following day the stigmatist was covered with a sweat of blood. Friday, March 10, the mistress of novices and the sister infirmarian saw the crown of thorns take form on her bloody forehead. The same phenomenon on Friday, March 24: Here is their testimony:
Having both gained admittance into the Carmelites, the two religious presented themselves at the door of the Carmel of Pau, France on Saturday, June 15, 1867. Mariam knew nothing at all of Carmel or of St. Teresa. But that day she understood that the mysterious words of her miraculous nurse at Alexandria were realized, "You will be a child of St. Joseph before becoming a daughter of St. Teresa".
Before we explore the extraordinary mystical graces given to Myriam, below is a outline of dates pertaining to her religious life:
May 1865 - June 1867, Novitiate of the sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition at Marseille,
June 1867 - August 1870, Carmel of Pau, France
August 1870 - November 1872, Carmel of Mangalore, India
November 1872 - August 1875, Carmel of Pau, France
September 1875 - August 1878, Carmel of Bethlehem.
She helps found two Carmelite houses
In 1870 she went with the founding group to establish the Carmel of Mangalore in India. It was there in Mangalore that Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified made her profession. She returned to the Carmel of Pau, France in 1872. Three years later she went to the Holy Land where she built a monastery in Bethlehem and began the planning for another at Nazareth.
Her Ecstasies
Those who read her life discover that Myriam had experienced ecstasies all her life: from her early childhood, in the garden, in her home, and in the church of Ibillin; during the bloody night at Alexandria, at her employers in Beirut and Marseille. In the church of St. Nicholas she was rapt in an ecstasy that lasted four days. But it was especially from the time she entered religious life that the phenomena began to be intensified. At the Capelette, when she was with the Sisters of St. Joseph, she was found in ecstasy in the chapel, at recreation, and especially at night in the dormitory.
After she entered Carmel, we note a crescendo, to the degree that at Mangalore the ecstasies occurred almost daily: she had as many as five a day. At Bethlehem, during her last years, they were still more frequent, but at the same time more serene and more painful.
The ecstasies would sometimes occur suddenly, and at other times progressively. "There are times," she said, "when I can do absolutely nothing: no matter what I do to prevent it; and at other times I can distract myself a little in order not to go off." In fact she did struggle against the raptures. In her ignorance of mystical things she did not even suspect the privilege she enjoyed for she spoke of her ecstasies as “sleep” And how she fought against going to “sleep”! She begged Father Manaudas, her spiritual director, to forbid her to this sleep."My child," the priest replied, "do not worry; you can go to sleep in all security." She began to cry. She made the same request to Bishop Lacroix, who ordered her to abandon herself to God instead of struggling against such a sleep. It was in fact a real struggle. In order to resist the rapture she moved around, she shook herself, she dashed to the fountain to wash herself, she worked more diligently. She even tried pricking her skin with pins, and in refectory she put burning hot food into her mouth. Nothing helped.
To the mistress of novices, who asked her how she could easily go to sleep, she replied innocently: "I feel as though my heart is open; as though there was a wound in it; and when I have certain ideas and impressions of God which move me, it feels like someone touched the wound in my heart, and I fall in weakness, I lose myself."
During her professions ceremony at Mangalore, November 21, 1871, it required an order of the prioress to awaken her so that she could pronounce the vow formula. On June 28, 1873, at Pau, the prioress went into the little one´s cell after the recitations of matins. The latter was seated before the open window: she was in ecstasy. She said to the mother prioress: "The whole world is asleep, and God so full of goodness, so great, so worthy of all praise, and hardly no one is thinking of Him! See, nature praises Him, the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass, everything praises Him, and man, who knowledge of His benefits, who ought to praise Him, sleeps! Let us go, let us go and wake up the universe!" She skipped out of her cell: "Let us go and praise God, and sing His praises. Everyone is sleeping, the whole world is asleep, let us go and wake them up. Jesus is not known, Jesus is not loved. He, so full of goodness, He who has done so much for man!"
During her ecstasies, her body sometimes remained supple, but often it became rigid, remaining in the same position that it was at the beginning of the ecstasy. During this time, nothing and no one could make her move. It was impossible to have her sit or lay down, or to take her from her any object she was holding, or to lower her raised arm. Only obedience could overcome this immobility. She was also completely insensible to any external stimulus. Once, she injured her knee with a nail, which caused her much pain and she could not help but to limp when walking.due to the pain. Suddenly she was rapt in ecstasy, and remained for two hours on her knees.
On another occasion, on November 30, 1874, she began to sing "in a clear and strong voice", although since her martyrdom her voice had been hoarse because of the fact that her neck was cut so severely. On January 7, 1875, a violent blow on the head resulted in one eye being injured. Mariam, "later being rapt in ecstasy", wrote the faithful secretary, "we brought a light near her injured eye, which we had not yet been able to examine due to her humility and also the pain caused when opening it. It was open, and although quite inflamed, it remained steady when we put the light in line with its gaze."
Another notable detail was that when she came to herself she had no remembrance of what had transpired. With one exception however: the memory of it returned to her when authority asked her to give an account of what she had seen and heard. "I remember these things," she acknowledged , "to tell them to whom I should.”
A few sayings of Blessed Sister Mariam while in ecstasy:"I am in God, and God is in me. I feel that all creatures, the trees, the flowers belong to God and also to me. I no longer have a will, it belongs to God. And all that is God´s is mine.
"Only love can fill the heart of man. The just man is satisfied with love and a pinch of earth, but the wicked man, with all the pleasures, honors, riches (he can acquire), is always hungry, always thirsty. He is never satisfied.
"Pay attention to little things. Everything is great before the Lord. The Lord does not want robbery in the sacrifice. Offer and give Him everything.
"In heaven, the most beautiful souls are those that have sinned the most and repented. But they made use of their miseries like manure around the base of the tree."
"Be very charitable; when one of your eyes sees what is not right, shut it and then open the other one! Change everything into good."
"If you love your neighbor, it is by this that you will know if you love Jesus. Each time you look at your neighbor without seeing Jesus, you fall very low."
Miraculous Levitations
We see in the lives of many mystic saints that an ecstatic, while in ecstasy, can be drawn a little above the ground through a supernatural and mysterious grace. However, Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified was one of the only ones, along with Saint Joseph of Cupertino, to make real flights. The phenomena was verified for the first time on June 22, 1873 in the garden of the Carmel of Pau. Noticing her absence at supper, the mistress of novices looked for her in vain in the cloister and the orchard, then another nun heard a song: "Love! Love!" She looked up and discovered Mariam balancing herself without support at the top of an enormous lime tree.
Advised of this, the prioress arrived and confronted with this phenomena she initially did not know what to do. After a prayer she addressed the little one: "Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, if Jesus wishes it, come down through obedience without falling or hurting yourself."
At the simple word obedience, the ecstatic descended in fact "with the radiant face" and perfect modesty, stopping on some of the branches to sing Love."Hardly was she on the ground," noted a witness, "and as if to make amends to our mother and sisters for our anxiety in looking for her and in seeing her perched up so high, she embraced us with a sort of enthusiasm and affection impossible to express."
Eight ecstatic levitations were documented: Beginning in 1873 on June 22, July 9, 19,25, 27, 31, August 3, 1873 and finally on July 5, 1874. "How did you manage to climb like that?" the mother prioress asked her. And she replied: "The Lamb held out His hands to me:" Some of the nuns wanted to make sure of this so they spied on her. One day a lay sister who was working in the garden was witness to the flight: "She had taken hold of the tip of a little branch that a bird would have bent; and from there, in an instant, she had been lifted on high." On July 5, perched on the lime tree, she addressed the mother prioress: "I was on that one there and I came up here. Look, see, my alpargates (a kind of soft slipper) are still there."
On July 19, 1873, when the order was given for her to descend, she hesitated a moment. She begged to be allowed more time with the Lamb. "No," insisted the prioress, "through obedience, come down." She obeyed, but the shadow of hesitation had been fatal: the vision had disappeared. "The Lamb went away." Sighed the sister, "He left me alone to come down." In fact, because of her hesitance in obedience it was with effort that she got down to the ground and for four days of grief she expiated that unhappy moment. On July 25, the levitation lasted from four to seven o'clock in the evening; on July 31, it lasted from the end of recreation, which follows supper in the evening, until nine o'clock. This phenomenon occurred only at the Carmel of Pau.
In a letter dated February 14, 1927, Father Buzy, the Carmelite´s biographer, wrote the following statement to bishop Oliver Leroy:"Sister Mary used to raise herself to the top of the trees by the tips of the branches: she would take her scapular in one hand, and with the other the end of a small branch next to the leaves, and after a few moments she would glide along the outside edge of the tree to its top. Once up there, she would remain holding on to branches normally too weak to bear a person of her weight. "
The following are some depositions given by witnesses at process: "Sister E., now deceased, told me that one day when she happened to be in the garden with the servant of God, the latter said to her: "Turn around." She had hardly turn her head when looking back again, she saw the little one already seated on the top of the lime tree, on a little branch, balancing herself like a bird and singing divine love. Another person declared: "Once I saw her in ecstasy at the top of the lime tree, seated at the tip of the highest branch, which, normally would never have been able to support her. Her face was resplendent! I saw her come down from the tree like a bird, from branch to branch, with great nimbleness and modesty."
Her StigmataFirst let us read, in the memoirs of Mother Veronica at the Capelette, the description of the first stigmata of the little Arab:
"On the first Thursday, May 2, 1867, when I went to see Mary, I found her sitting near her bed in great pain. She showed me her side, her feet and her hands. On these latter, in the place where they had been imprinted, that is to say on the upper part, there was a sort of blister, which formed the head of the nails, and in the palms the spot was black and swollen. At the place on her side, a little above the heart, there was the form of a cross all red and inflamed; and in the middle three small blisters with a little hole…I spent the night near her, and at five o'clock in the morning blood flowed from the wounds in her hands which I bathed, and the pain seemed to be alleviated. The blood flowed from the palm. The fingers were contracted and curved around, as if the nail had really gone into the palm, she could not extend them, nor take hold of the glass when I gave her a drink from time to time…
At about nine o'clock blood flowed from the crown of thorns all around her head. I can solemnly attest that I saw blood coming from the holes of the thorns, one of which, in the center of her forehead, opened before me, and blood gushed from it. While I was washing it, it closed again, leaving her forehead without any mark, except the traces of blood. Her feet were white; one would have said the feet of a corpse, and the toes were stretched like those of one crucified. The wounds on the upper part bled, as did the wound on her side. After three hours she was completely herself again, experiencing only a little weakness. I told her to get up, which she did by herself, and that evening she came to supper with the community."
In the notes of the Carmel of Pau, we read that on Thursday, February 27, 1868: "She could not get up, she was suffering so much in her hands and feet. We took her to the infirmary. All that evening when passing near there, we would smell a strong sweet fragrance, but we could not detect its source. The novice´s veils and mantle also had a pleasant odor. The night was a bad one for her and the next morning blood began to flow from her feet and hands. The crown of thorns bled profusely at two different times, then the wound in her side, all with unspeakable pain. At noon all the bleeding stopped but the wounds remained open and became deeper each day, which prevented her from walking or putting her feet on the floor, for forty days. She could hardly bear any contact with the linens used to wrap her wounds, especially on Friday and Saturday. From that day until the following Friday, the wounds only oozed, but on Thursday of each week, a large pimple formed, black likea nail, which grew in size until Friday, then at the hour she designated in advance, this sort of blister fell off and the blood flowed; afterward the wound closed until the following week."
During the Mangalore period, we have above all the testimony of Father Lazare, a Carmelite and her director. On November 24 and 25, 1871, he attentively examined the stigmata. From his report we selected some precise statements:
"The hands were swollen on the palm and the wounds were open;but all around the edge of the wounds there was a little coagulated blood, no doubt because this wound had begun to open several days before. On the inside of the hand there was a sort of button, forming the head of the nail. The flesh of the palm seemed to have been separated violently; it was torn, if I may thus express it, on the inside there were no tears, only the head of the nail was visible. The feet were similarly pierced through and through. The wounds were fresh, the flesh torn perhaps more than on the hands. One of the perforations was exactly in the middle of the sole of the foot, and there it ended with a quite newly formed small round hole, just as if the point of a sharp nail had been driven through it and then pulled out. It was the same with the other foot."
Lastly, for the Bethlehem period (1875-1878), we have chiefly the testimony of the mistress of novices, mother Mary of the Child Jesus. The stigmata appeared during the Lent of 1876. On March 3, the first Thursday of Lent, the little one called the mother into her cell and said to her: "See my humiliation; I don't anyone to come here, look at my hands." And the witness stated precisely: "We were able to ascertain that the blackish swelling, that looked like a large nail in the palm of her hands and also on the top of the hand, was formed much more quickly than during the Lent of 1868. Towards nine o'clock, the marks were still darker and more extended; her contracted fingers prevented her from using her hands. At noon, we saw the same thing on the upper part of her feet, but she absolutely refused to let us cover them with linen, which would greatly increased her suffering."
The following day the stigmatist was covered with a sweat of blood. Friday, March 10, the mistress of novices and the sister infirmarian saw the crown of thorns take form on her bloody forehead. The same phenomenon on Friday, March 24: Here is their testimony:
"About five thirty, all around the front of her head was bleeding; she had a sort of crown of little button shaped holes, some of which were still open as we looked on. During this time she wiped the blood from them. She got up right after that and all traces disappeared."
Holy Week was frightful. Every part of her was bleeding: head, heart, hands and feet. During the course of her life she came to relive and act out certain scenes of the passion. She became the crucified spouse of a crucified God! Identified with her Spouse to the very details of Good Friday! "When she was in the state, she could have been called an 'ecce homo,' " declared Mother Honorine, in 1867 at the Capelette.
The next year at Pau, France, on Good Friday April 10, 1868, the stigmatist was truly on the cross; all her wounds reopened and the blood flowed from her head as well. We cannot conceive the intensity of the suffering she experienced. First she felt her legs pulled one after the other; and the same with her arms; then she felt her nails being driven in…Later, the heart bled as usual, and immediately after that, the wounds began to heal. She remained very weak all week and continued to suffer from her knees which were injured, swollen and full of bumps, perhaps resembling those our Lord must have had after all His Falls.
At certain moments, even her cheek became red as if someone were slapping her in the face. The most terrible scene took place on Friday, April 14, 1876 in temporary Carmel of Bethlehem. Let us once again allow the mistress of novices to speak:
The next year at Pau, France, on Good Friday April 10, 1868, the stigmatist was truly on the cross; all her wounds reopened and the blood flowed from her head as well. We cannot conceive the intensity of the suffering she experienced. First she felt her legs pulled one after the other; and the same with her arms; then she felt her nails being driven in…Later, the heart bled as usual, and immediately after that, the wounds began to heal. She remained very weak all week and continued to suffer from her knees which were injured, swollen and full of bumps, perhaps resembling those our Lord must have had after all His Falls.
At certain moments, even her cheek became red as if someone were slapping her in the face. The most terrible scene took place on Friday, April 14, 1876 in temporary Carmel of Bethlehem. Let us once again allow the mistress of novices to speak:
"She was groaning and she trembled in her whole body. It was heart rending to see her like that. She often repeated these words: "My God, do not abandon me; my God I offer it to You! Pardon, my God, pardon!" At a quarter past two in the afternoon she began a painful agony; we were all around her. Her legs were stiff, her feet down and crossed one over the other; her arms extended in the form of the cross, were supported by two of the sisters; her chest was distended, she even emitted a few sighs, as though she were breathing forth her soul…After three and a half hours, she had a little relief and spoke again to those "children" (angels) saying to them: "Have pity on me, call me today." She also experienced transports of desire and love: "Call me so that I may leave this earth!" Then she was heard to say: "Fiat, Jesus!" We then had the impression that the crucified one was descending from the cross and from Calvary in order to prepare for the Easter joys."
Don Belloni, confessor of the stigmatist at Bethlehem, asserted that when holding one of her hands against the light, the flesh appeared transparent at the place of the stigmata.
Besides being deeply grounded in humility, in her ignorance she did not realize that the stigmata was a privileged grace from God; she looked upon it as an illness and begged God and Blessed Virgin to take from her what she called "the wretched marks." According to her prediction, the wounds reopened the following Lent, at the Carmel of Pau. They caused atrocious suffering and flowing of the blood. That was renewed every Friday during the Lent of 1868.The Carmelite nuns were admitted to see the prodigy; and the superior of the Carmel, Father Guilly entered the enclosure. He verified the phenomena, he put his finger on one of the wounds: at this contact the novice´s entire body shuddered. On Holy Saturday the Stigmata disappeared.
The wounds appeared again at Mangalore. On November 20, 1871, the eve of her profession, the little one confided to the mistress of novices: "If I tell you something will you keep my secret?" - "Yes." - "Look, this illness that I fear so much has returned." And she showed her her swollen hands and feet. The day after her profession the stigmata bled profusely. Frightened, the sister earnestly begged God to cure her. This time again she was heard. For more than four years she experienced nothing.
The last period of stigmatization took place at Bethlehem in April 1876. It was the longest and most painful. It made witnesses think they were on Calvary before the spectacle of Crucifixion! Sister Mariam said: "Do you know? Five rosebushes are blooming, quick, quick. They have given the roses to others, and the thorns to me." And she added with a smile: "We do not like that; here we give at least a few roses! And not to let me smell the perfume at all, nothing but thorns! Oh, well - I deserve it! That Jesus may be content, that is all I desire. I accept all the thorns on my body, but tell the Master of the rosebushes to close the roses." After these red flowerings at Marseille, Pau, Mangalore, and Bethlehem, the "five roses" of her Stigmata were closed for the last time on April 26, 1876.
Sources: Sources: "Mariam the little Arab; Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified; 1846-1678", by Amédée Brunot S.C.J.; Published by The Carmel of Maria Regina, 87609 Green Hill Road, Eugene, Oregon 97402. Availible for $8.00. More information here:http://aquerofoundation.com/id19.html
"Louis Massignon and Mariam Baouardy (Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified)
A Palestinian Saint for Our Time" by Dorothy C. Buck -Full article located here:
http://www.dcbuck.com/Articles/Baouardy/Baouardy2col.pdf
“I THIRST, I THIRST FOR JESUS ALONE! HAPPY THE SOULS WHO SUFFER IN SECRET, KNOWN TO GOD ALONE!
HOW I LOVE A SOUL SUFFERING WITH PATIENCE, HIDDEN WITH GOD ALONE!
ONCE YOU HAVE GIVEN GOD SOMETHING, YOU MUST NEVER TAKE IT BACK.”
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Fr. Doug's Homily 8/17/2013 -- "St. Edith Stein"
JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Here is a video of Fr. Doug's homily given on Saturday 8/17/2013, entitled "St. Edith Stein".
Here is a video of Fr. Doug's homily given on Saturday 8/17/2013, entitled "St. Edith Stein".
Fr. Doug's homily 7/20/2013 -- "How Do You See Jesus?"
JMJT!
Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Here is a video of Fr. Doug's homily given on Saturday 7/20/2013, entitled "How Do You See Jesus?".
Here is a video of Fr. Doug's homily given on Saturday 7/20/2013, entitled "How Do You See Jesus?".
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