Mary Magdalene bore the surname of the noble family of Pazzi in Florence. Already by the 15th century, the Pazzi family exercised great political power. She was born on 2nd April 1566, given a good education and, from her childhood, she had a deep sense of the presence of God, a great love for the Eucharist and a longing to live a penitential life. Contrary to the usual practice but, with the consent of her confessor, she was allowed to make her first communion at the age of ten years. When she was seventeen years, she was accepted by the Carmelite nuns of Saint Mary of the Angels in Florence, her native city. During her novitiate, she had a serious illness which lasted for two months and brought her close to death. As a result, she was allowed to anticipate her profession. However, she recovered and for three years she was assistant mistress of novices, then sacristan, and, for a further six years, mistress of novices. Also, for a period, she had charge of the junior professed and in 1604 she was elected subprioress. Her continuous physical sufferings and severe spiritual trials were a great burden but she was enriched by God with extraordinary graces. She died on 25th May 1607. She was beatified in 1626 and canonized on 28th April 1669.

Read more here

Prayer

Father in heaven,
you gave the virgin Blessed Archangela Girlani
particular dedication to the mystery of the eternal Trinity.
Through her prayers
may we taste the delights of your glory
already here on earth,
and look upon you for ever in heaven.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord.

Angelo was born on September 1, 1642.

His life can be divided into two periods: the years spent in his religious province of Tuscany, and those spent in Rome.

Wherever he had worked during the first period of his religious life, he had given a fine impression as a religious steeped in silence, prayer and mortification, but, above all, given to the works of charity, both spiritual and corporal, in favor of the sick and the poor.

In Rome he had the care of the two hospitals (for men and for women) of St. John and established the hospice for the convalescent poor on the street that led from the Colosseum to the basilica of St. John Lateran.

His motto was: "Whoever loves God must go to find Him among the poor".

Read more

The Vatican has approved a new liturgical calendar for the Order. The Order was notified on November 18, 2021, by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The calendar was approved and signed by officials at the congregation on November 6, 2021, the Feast of Saint Nuno Álvares Pereira.

Fr. Michael Farrugia, the procurator general of the Order, has written a letter to the Order explaining the changes. This letter and the new calendar as well as some accompanying documents are now posted on the Order’s website.

Some modifications were made to the 1972 Proper Calendar which has been in use until now. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments revised the levels and dates of the celebrations according to the 1999 norms. The new calendar is divided into two parts: the first is intended for celebrations in the whole Order, while the second is an Appendix, for celebrations intended exclusively for local areas. In the first part the dates and levels of the celebrations are indicated: solemnity, feast, and obligatory memorial. Some ‘optional memorials’ have been moved to the Appendix, whereas previously they could be celebrated throughout the Order. Now they are allowed in certain regions.

This is further explained in Fr. Michael's letter and in the accompanying documents:

Read pdf here (121 KB) the Letter to the Order, by Fr. Michael Farrugia O. Carm.

Read pdf here (42 KB) the Decree on the Calendarium proprium

Read pdf here (16 KB) the Approval of the Calendarium proprium

Read pdf here (68 KB) the Calendarium proprium

On January 8th we celebrate the Feast of Saint Peter Thomas. 

He joined the Carmelite Order when twenty years of age. He was Procurator General of the Order at the Papal Curia at Avignon and also an official preacher to the Curia there.

In 1354, he was appointed bishop of Patti and Lipari. He acted as papal legate to the kings and emperors of his time, seeking to promote peace and to re-establish unity with the Eastern Churches.

Read more here

This year, on December 29, is the 450th anniversary of the birth of Ven. John of St Samson. He was christened the following day in Sens. He had a very difficult childhood. He was blinded by an incompetent physician after contracting chicken pox and was orphaned at a young age.

He was introduced to the Parisian Carmelites in Place Maubert in 1603 and joined the Order at Dol-de-Bretagne three years later. When he was transferred to Rennes in 1612, he became the spiritual soul of the Touraine reform.

His deep mystical life made him a seasoned teacher of the spiritual life. His teachings, dictated to novices and disciples, have come down to us in over 4000 manuscript folios.

A lover of solitude made fruitful by his encounters with God, he was aflame with ardent love for humanity especially the poor and the sick to whom he ministered through his charism of healing.

He died in the odor of sanctity on September 14, 1636 at Rennes. His last words were: “With Christ, I am affixed to the cross.”

Of the Ineffable Incarnation of God made Man

But let us now, my Love and my Life, look at Your ineffable Love and Your ineffable Incarnation. It is from here on and in this vein that I am lost in an abyss within the innermost depths of all Your Deity. There I do not know where to start to reason about you, in all humility.

For, seeing Your resolution to save us, and your Love and its order to effect it, and the means which you hold fast to, that is what totally enraptures me in admiration outside of myself, where, being fixed in the enjoyment of this admirable mystery above admiration, I would not like to break into speech. And what can we say of a mystery so ineffable, which contains and comprehends contraries so opposite and so distant one from the other as are the all and the nothing, immensity and infinity and nothingness, Deity in itself and nothingness?

This is what has already detained us, occupied more in admiration of such an ineffable Mystery, than in speaking as a result of my ardent love. 

What is this? The Word is made flesh. Behold You whom all creatures cannot comprehend cut short in human nature, in the form and manner of an infant enclosed within the maternal prison of a mother made Mother of God, of the flesh with which you clothed Yourself, elevating it and uniting it to Your infinite Subject!

It is the perpetual subject of profound astonishment of all creatures. For to see You so much changed without change, so far off without distance, so much cut short and so great, so contained and so containing, so enclosed and so free, indeed so enclosed and so universal in all and by all, so high and so low, so wide and so narrow, so strong and so weak, so powerful and so powerless, so much more than all and above all and so next to nothing; all that, I say, my Love and my Life, is an eternal cause to creatures high and low, not only of eternal admiration and astonishment at the contemplation of this sight, but also of annihilating them by itself and reducing them to nothing in the action and act of their astonishment.

St. John was born, probably in 1540, in Fontiveros, near Avila in Spain.

As Saint John says - in order to arrive at the All which is God, it is necessary that man should give all of himself, not like a slave but inspired by love.

Canonized by Pope Benedict XIII on 27th December 1726, he was proclaimed a doctor of the Church by Pius XI on 24th August 1926.

Read pdf here (67 KB) "Who is St. John of the Cross for Me?", by Sister Hernalyn U. Rebuton, INSC.

Watch here the Interview with Dr. John D. Love, S.T.D., on the relevance of St. John's today.

Read more here

Today, the Holy Father, during the Audience granted to His Most Reverend Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, authorized the said Congregation to promulgate the Decree concerning the miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Titus Brandsma.

We give thanks to God for the positive outcome obtained and we continue to pray to the Lord, hoping that soon the canonization of Blessed Titus Brandsma will take place.

Read here (only in Italian) the Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office

On November 13th we celebrate the memorial of Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli.

Maria Scrilli, in religion Maria Teresa of Jesus was born in Montevarchi on May 15, 1825 and was called by the heavenly Father while in Florence on November 14, 1889.

She was beatified in Fiesole (Florence) on October 8, 2006.

The Blessed Mother was a devotee of the Florentine saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi whom she met while still an adolescent reading the lives of saints.

She is the foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Carmel.

Mother Maria Teresa's charism lives on in her Institute in the nations where it is present today: Italy, the United States, Canada, Poland, India, Brazil, the Czech Republic and the Philippines.

Prayer for Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli

Lord Jesus,
Who in the evangelic testimony
of the Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli
continue to show to the world that it is the gentle
who inherit your kingdom
and that only in You do those who are
tired and oppressed find rest
following her example, may we experience in our hearts
the desire to serve you in our brothers
and to be able to awaken, especially in young people,
a burning thirst for your love, Grant to us we pray you,
by her intercession, the favor we Confidently ask of you ….
You live and reign forever and ever. Amen .

Glory be.
Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli.
Pray for us...

Read pdf here (47 KB) the Interview with Sr. Maria Stella Marzano, Superior General of the Institute of Our Lady of Carmel

Read pdf here (34 KB) "Maria Scrilli’s Presence in this Arduous Path" by Sr. Stephanie Gadalquivir, INSC

Read pdf here (34 KB) "Citizens of Heaven" by Sr. Lini Mathew, INSC

Read here a short bio of Bl. Maria Teresa Scrilli

Visit here to purchase The Autobiography of Maria Teresa Scrilli (available only in English), published by Edizioni Carmelitane

On November 9, 2021, the Ordinary Session of the Cardinals and Bishops who are members of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints met with a positive result for the cause of the canonization of Blessed Titus Brandsma, O. Carm.

Soon the Prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, will submit the conclusions of the Ordinary Session to the Holy Father for approval. The Holy Father, if he confirms the conclusions of the Ordinary Session, will then convoke the Ordinary Consistory in which he would official announce the canonization of the Blessed.

We give thanks to God for the positive results obtained so far. We continue to pray to the Lord, hoping that the canonization of Blessed Titus Brandsma will soon be achieved.

Read our post entitled Brandsma Writings Now Available in English here