550th ANNIVERSARY OF
THE BULL CUM NULLA

1. It was with joy that I learnt that this religious family commemorates this year the 550th anniversary of the entry into the Order of the cloistered contemplatives and the anniversary of the institution of the Third Order made up of lay people who wish to live Carmelite spirituality in the world.

With the spread of the Carmelites in Europe, some women asked to be joined to the Order with the same bonds as the male religious. Many of the faithful also desired to live that same spirituality, while remaining in their own homes. Blessed John Soreth, prior general at that time, understood that a life of sacrifice, solitude and prayer lived by the nuns would help the friars by reminding them of the primitive and genuine spirit of Carmel. So too it would help the lay people if they were to be permitted to drink from the same common, spiritual well as was the case with the other orders of mendicants.

Thus my venerable predecessor pope Nicholas V on 7 October 1452 was asked to grant the faculty to set up in the Order the cloistered nuns and an association of lay people living in the world, the Carmelite Third Order. This is what the pope granted by means of the bull Cum nulla and which we are celebrating today.

I am sure that recalling this authoritative intervention by the pope will be good reason for celebration by the Cloistered nuns of Carmel, while it will also spur on the Third Order to be spiritually ever more engaged in the service of the new evangelisation.

2. Immersed in silence and in prayer, Carmelite nuns remind all believers, and especially their brothers who are engaged in the active apostolate, of the absolute primacy of God. They are totally consecrated to searching for Him and they give witness to the fact that the source of full human realisation and the font of all spiritual activity is God. When the heart is open, then He encounters his sons and daughters to introduce them to his intimacy and He brings about an ever more perfect union of love. For Carmelite nuns the choice of living in solitude, separated from the world, is a response to this specific call from the Lord. Carmel is, therefore, a source of wealth for the whole Christian community.

From the very beginning this form of cloistered life bore fruit and over the course of the centuries was enriched by the shining witness of exemplary women, some of whom have been officially recognized as blesseds or saints and proposed as models to imitate even today. I would like to recall here Blessed Françoise D’Amboise, considered to be the founder of the Carmelite nuns in France, because she worked in such close collaboration and friendship with Blessed John Soreth; Blessed Giovanna Scopelli, one of the outstanding exponents of the Carmelite experience in Italy and Blessed Arcangela Girlani, who chose that name because she desired so much to dedicate herself completely to the praise of God, like the angels in heaven. In Florence, Saint Mary Maddalena de’Pazzi was a renowned example of apostolic and ecclesial zeal and a paragon of ceaseless searching for god and His glory.

In this deeply engrained tradition of holiness, in Spain we find Saint Teresa of Jesus, the most outstanding figure of the Carmelite cloistered life and whom the nuns of every age look to for constant inspiration. Teresa re-worked and renewed the Carmelite tradition and fostered the desire to live always in more perfect solitude with God, thus imitating the first male hermits on Mount Carmel. Following her example, Carmelite nuns are called, as is written in their Constitutions, "to prayer and to contemplation, because that is our origin, we are the offspring of those holy fathers on Mount Carmel who in great solitude and total disdain for the world, searched for this treasure and precious flower." (Nuns Constitutions, n. 61)

3. I am most willing to join in the Carmelite Family’s offering of thanks for the countless wonders God has worked in the course of the centuries through this form of consecrated life which, as we read in the Rule of St. Albert of Jerusalem, is "holy and good" (n. 20). In the silence of Carmel all over the world the perfumed flowers of holiness continue to blossom; these are souls in love with Heaven who with their evangelical heroism have sustained and continue to sustain the mission of the Church.

The men of Carmel, taken up as they are with so many concerns, need to be reminded that absolute priority must be given to the search "for the kingdom of God and its justice" (Mt 6:33). By looking at Carmel, where prayer becomes life and life flourishes in prayer, other Christian communities will appreciate better how they too can become "authentic ‘schools’ of prayer", as I wrote in the Apostolic letter Novo millennio ineunte (n. 33) I would ask our dear Carmelite sisters who are dedicated to the Lord’s praise to help Christians in our age to accomplish this ascetic and apostolic task. Let their monasteries become beacons of holiness especially for the parishes and dioceses that are fortunate enough to have them.

4. The 550th anniversary of the Bull Cum nulla commemorates also the incorporation of lay people into the Carmelite Family, through the institution of the Third Order. These were men and women who were called to live the Carmelite charism in the world and to sanctify their whole daily round of work through their faithfulness to their baptismal promises. In order that they can realise this vocation fully they have to learn how to mark out the day with prayer and especially the celebration of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. Let them follow Elijah’s example: his prophetic mission grew out of a continuous experience of God; let them imitate above all Mary, who listened to the Word of the Lord and keeping it in her heart, put it into practice.

Those brothers and sisters who are bound to the Order through the Scapular should recognize the gift that they have received and be faithful in all circumstances to the obligations that arise from their membership of the Order in a charismatic sense. Let them not be content with a superficial Christianity, but let them answer Christ’s radical call to his disciples to be perfect as their heavenly father is perfect (cf. Mt. 5:48).

It is with these feelings that I invoke over the whole Carmelite Family a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that it may follow faithfully its vocation and may tell of God’s merciful love for men and women of our age. To that end, I beg also the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Splendour of Carmel, and I give from my heart an Apostolic Blessing to all the Friars, Nuns and Third Order members, with the encouragement that they may all make a contribution to the sanctification of the world.

Vatican City, 7 October 2002
Memoria of Our Lady of the Rosary
Johannes Paulus II