Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm.

Introduction:

In this paper I propose to interface the Carmelite tradition on contemplative prayer and two popular forms of contemplative practice called centering prayer and “Christian Meditation.” We are asking how these widely used, current practices fit into that tradition. Do the new forms agree or disagree with past thinking? What does the Carmelite tradition have to say pro and con about them?

We have a double question: what can Carmelites learn from these new movements and what can centering prayer and Christian Meditation learn from our tradition? These forms are new, though their proponents maintain that they are simply the contemplative tradition of the Church in contemporary dress. How should Carmelites regard them? Are they in continuity with the past and to what extent do they represent something new? These are the questions of this paper.

An Historical Vignette

Let me begin with a little history that sets the stage for our inquiry. One of the first generations of Discalced Carmelite writers, Jose de J.-M Quiroga (1562-1628) set down the method of mental prayer taught by St John of the Cross. It consisted of three steps: 1) the representation of some mysteries; 2) pondering them; and 3) experiencing the fruit of the process in “an attentive and loving quietude toward God,” “a peaceful, loving and calm quiet of faith,” or a “simple attention to God.”¹. The method was contemplative, because it led into passing moments of contemplation; these moments became longer and longer and soon dominated the prayer.

The moments coalesced into the habit or state of contemplation, as taught by St John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel [2.14.2.]. Thus the habit of contemplation was built up, according to the adage: sow an act and you reap a habit. This result was called acquired contemplation, a contemplative experience of God that by definition could be achieved by ordinary grace and human industry.

Contemplation was thus deemed accessible to any sincere seeker. According to Quiroga, John of the Cross expected his novices to reach at least this state of initial contemplation by the end of the one-year novitiate, an opinion shared by Thomas of Jesus (1564-1627) and others. (Arraj, 64-65).

This thumb-nail history recalls a time very much like our own, a time of great enthusiasm and optimism about reaching contemplation. The concept of an “acquired contemplation” democratized contemplation and made it available to all. John himself spoke explicitly only about the gift of special, infused contemplation, a mystical gift which presumably was not available to everybody. This transitional, acquired contemplation was there for the taking according to the early Discalced teachers, who claimed John of the Cross as warranty for this opinion.

In this paper we accept both kinds of contemplation as valid outcomes of contemplative practice.² We believe that acquired contemplation is the same reality as initial infused contemplation; only the naming and theological explanation are different. The legitimacy of acquired contemplation was defended as recently as the l940’s by the eminent Discalced Carmelite, Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen. ³

Contemplative Prayer Today

We cite this history as a backdrop for the topic of this paper. Today thousands of devout Christians are pondering the mystery of God’s presence in daily contemplative prayer. They sit silently before an ikon or the tabernacle and if asked, they would describe their prayer as simple, loving attention beyond words or images. “I look at him and he looks at me.” They ponder in very simple attention as John of the Cross’ second step directs and they experience a sense of loving presence as in the third step of John of the Cross’ method of meditation. The third step in fact is the point of the prayer, its beginning and end.

The ability to stay in this posture of attention to God is assumed, and no clear distinction is drawn between the discrete acts and the state of contemplation that is developed.

The ancients postulated a long and consistent effort at daily meditation to reach the state of acquired contemplation — one year was thought sufficient but also necessary among the Carmelites cited above. This view would be considered optimistic by older religious and clergy who were trained to expect progression in mental prayer that saw contemplation as a far-off goal. Now we are being taught to practice directly and immediately a quiet, gentle resting in God that is itself considered to be contemplation and to lead to ever higher degrees of contemplation.

The contemplation that is the outcome of theses contemplative acts is seldom defined. The contemporary methods consist in the very acts that were seen as the fruit of the representation and the pondering in John of the Cross’ meditation. The contemplation in these contemplative acts is seldom defined. It is left generic in nature, having lost its specificity. In modern writing contemplation describes almost any mental prayer that is silent and wordless, from quiet resting in the divine presence to infused contemplation. Infused contemplation remains as a special mystical gift, admittedly rare and

extraordinary in the spiritual life. But contemplation as such is for everyone to practice in these new methods.

What are these methods? We single out centering prayer, taught by Contemplative Outreach under the leadership of Thomas Keating, and Christian Meditation as developed by John Main and promoted by the World Community for Christian Meditation under the leadership of Laurence Freeman. These two methods of simple, non-discursive, loving attention to God are chosen for study out of a plethora of non-discursive ways of praying, because they are widely known and practiced in North America today. They are lumped together, because they are similar in approach. They have the same roots in the western mystical tradition, and while they have significant differences, they are more alike than different and they offer name recognition for each other

Lectio Divina

Let me introduce these prayers in the context of lectio divina. Lectio divina is the ancient, monastic formula for appropriating the biblical text and for leading the practitioner into the experience of contemplation. A biblical text is read, pondered, prayed over, and finally experienced. The first three acts of lectio divina — reading, meditating, praying — culminate in the fourth act of tasting or touching the reality in the text. The fourth act is called contemplation; it is more receptive than the first three, though the whole lectio divina in the monastic tradition is a contemplative exercise.

Thomas Keating often presents centering prayer as a way to restore this contemplative dimension of lectio divina. For too long the prayer has been too heady and rationalistic; the first three discursive acts have received almost exclusive attention and the final act is neglected. He would correct that imbalance by promoting the fourth act on its own as the way to renew the contemplative character of lectio divina. The Trappists designed a prayer form that begins and ends with the fourth act. This centering prayer is to be practiced methodically and regularly twice a day as the keystone of one’s prayer life. Centering prayer does not replace lectio, nor is it a new form of lectio divina. It is an exercise to sharpen one’s contemplative awareness, a way to renew all four acts by raising the contemplative character of a person’s life. Christian Meditation has a similar purpose

John Main considers his discipline of meditating to be the traditional, Christian meditation of the past. He is simply renewing the meditative or contemplative practice of the past, and both of these are the same one practice. He calls his prayer “contemplation, contemplative prayer, and meditative practice,” all three terms being synonyms of meditation.⁴ John Main’s meditation, in his view, is mainline Christian practice from the past, and it is practiced in the rosary or litanies, in the “Jesus prayer” and in the short ejaculatory phrases as taught by John Cassian and The Cloud of Unknowing. Christian Meditation for him stands on its own as the meditation of the Christian tradition over against the rational, discursive methods of the counter-reformation; it is receptive and non- discursive by definition.

These two methods of prayer represent one answer to the yearning for the experience of God in our time. Centering prayer came out of the sixties and seventies, when many people, youth especially, were turning to Eastern religions and transcendental meditation for spiritual experience and enlightenment. Older spiritually awakened Christians were likewise experiencing a hunger for God and for a deeper prayer life. Both young and old were concerned with the practical question of how to pray contemplatively. They were looking for methods like those available in the Eastern religions.

The architects of these new prayer forms learned from the East, but they based their teaching on the ancient, western mystical tradition. The Trappists at Spencer, Mass developed centering prayer largely from The Cloud of Unknowing. John Main discovered Christian Meditation in John Cassian. As a layman he had learned the original lines of his approach from an Eastern swami, but he found his way of meditating in John Cassian and The Cloud. John Main made the teaching of contemplative prayer to lay people the life- work of his latter years.

The new styles of contemplative prayer go right to the heart of prayer, seeking experience and contact with the living God in loving faith and quiet presence. The new methods are “spiritual exercises,” designed to raise up the whole spiritual life as aerobics or a workout in the gym tone up the physical body. The practice takes place twice daily, for twenty minutes to a half hour, and the two periods are the anchors and the catalysts of the rest of the prayer life of the participant. These two periods represent a conversion, a new commitment that is to be the heart and soul of a new prayer life. The two periods are to be faithfully carried out as the first order of one’s prayer life each day. The rest of one’s spiritual life is energized from here. The contemplative union fostered in centering prayer or Christian Meditation brings a contemplative dimension to the celebration of liturgy, to bible reading and the practice of lectio divina, to vocal prayer, to community life and ministry.

The new methods are not magic. They are providential discoveries of our time, gifts of God that are there for the taking and promising intimacy with God. They are active prayer, but the activity is simple and receptive. One sits before the Lord, and the hoped for outcome is the in breaking of God “from the other side,” the divine touch that is God’s response to the human efforts, which themselves are antecedently inspired by God.

The contemplation or experience of God is not necessarily verifiable psychologically. The divine visit is validated by the fruits of the Spirit. The person strives to be open and welcoming, to be empty and poor in spirit, and these attitudes are invitations to a deeper divine presence. Whatever the empirical experience in the human consciousness the contemplative activity is bringing about transformation in the depths of the person, and this conversion will show itself in the person’s life.

The whole person - body, soul, and spirit — is engaged in the prayer. The body is brought into the process via posture, breathing, relaxation, and the use of a holy word or mantra. The psychological functions of thinking, feeling, willing and loving are definitely in play in muted, simple ways. The main task of the one praying is non-discursive attention by use of the mantra throughout the prayer in Christian Meditation or attending and consenting to the presence of God within and using the sacred word as needed in centering prayer. The one praying is knocking ever so gently at the door of the Spirit deep within, awaiting further action from the indwelling God.

The Carmelite Tradition

We are now ready to look at the Carmelite tradition for its evaluation of these two new methods of prayer. The sources we shall examine are The Rule of St. Albert, The Institution of the First Monks, the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, and the Touraine reform. I shall identify each of these sources as we address them.

We begin our inquiry with the earliest document of the Carmelite Order, The Rule of St Albert, composed between l206 and l214.

It was originally a letter from the patriarch of Jerusalem that presented a “formula vitae” or life pattern for the hermits; it was revised into a full-fledged rule by Innocent IV in 1247.

This latter is the “primitive rule” in Teresa of Avila’s understanding and the ideal to which she recalled the Order.

The Rule describ es a life rather than particular practices of prayer. This is brought out by the Dutch artist Arie Trum in the beautiful symbol designed to express the rule entitled “No Image Satisfies.” The entire text of the rule is written out in cruciform with a golden circle in the center. The Rule leads one into the circle. The circle is empty and it is the place of encounter with God. This empty space represents “purity of heart,” which is the condition for full “allegiance to Jesus Christ.” (Rule, prologue) Emptiness and fullness are the core of the Carmelite rule.

The Rule itself is eminently Scriptural, being a collage of explicit and implicit citations. The word of God forms the Carmelite and it is mediated through the liturgy (daily Mass), the psalms (originally read privately, later in the Divine Office), public bible reading at meetings and in the refectory, and above all through lectio divina prescribed in the famous chapter VII (n.10 in the new listing): “Let all remain in their cells, or near them, meditating day and night on the law of the Lord and keeping vigil in prayer, unless occupied with other lawful duties.”

This is the defining chapter of the Rule, though the communitarian aspects emphasized in studies today are likewise foundational.

The community is the place where personal transformation takes place and ministry originates.

What is the meaning of “meditating” and “keeping vigil in prayer” in this primary text of the Rule? The model will be the monastic practice of the time, which came from the Desert Fathers and Mothers through John Cassian and the ancient rules of Pachomius, Basil, and the Master. The monastic practice of the time included many forms of praying, such as Our Father’s, the psalms, the Jesus prayer, as well as different ways of reflecting on the word of God. One special way of meditating or pondering the

word of God was repeating phrases of Scripture, often aloud. Cassian develops this method and suggests the words, “God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me”.⁵ This use of a mantra fits the prayer of the heart, which is Thomas Merton’s characterization of meditation in the Desert tradition.⁶ This prayer was not intellectual analysis or active use of the imagination.

Prayer of the heart consisted in entering deeply into one’s self to seek purity of heart,

1. e., utter detachment and surrender to the indwelling God. The way to the heart was the word of God. Biblical phrases were repeated and pondered as in the Jesus prayer, which is a perfect example of the method followed. The goal was both transformation and continuous, loving conversation with God according to the exhortation of chapter XIV (now nn.18-19), which says: “May you possess the sword of the spirit, which is God’s word, abundantly in your mouth and in your hearts. Just so whatever you do, let it be done in the Lord’s word.”

This way of meditation was the “hagah” tradition of the Old Testament, which consisted in reciting passages from Sacred Scripture aloud from memory and repeating short phrases of the psalms to root the thought in the mind and heart.⁷ The continuous repetition was called “murmuring.” Kees Waaijman describes the practice in an Old Testament context:

One ‘murmured’ the Torah, ‘ruminating’ it until the text had completely become one’s own, and began to ‘sigh from within’ as the cooing of a dove. One made the Torah his own bodily, emotionally, cognitively, memorizing it so that he ultimately became one with Torah⁸

The whole person was involved — the voice, the imagination, the feelings, the mind and heart — and the whole person was to be “clothed” with the word of God. A new person emerged.

The method of meditating, therefore, was not objectified thinking, but pondering the word of God in one’s heart, with one’s whole interior being in non-discursive attention.

Even the mouth and the tongue participated, so that the pondering was physical as well as interior. This was one reason for placing the solitary cells at a distance from each other in order not to disturb the neighbors by noisey prayer.⁹ The end in view, however, was both public praise and the transformation of the person, letting the word of God penetrate one’s very being for a new, personal identity after the Scriptural model.

How close all this is to the mantra of John Main and to a lesser extent to the sacred word of Thomas Keating. The Carmelite is called to the prayer of the heart, a prayer thoroughly contemplative in method and goal. The prayer is holistic as well, involving body and soul. John Main’s “selfless attention” and Thomas Keating’s “consent” to the divine presence are expressed in the ancient practice. All these forms are ways into the golden circle of Arie Trum, where self-emptying makes room for the living God.

The Institution of the First Monks

The same perspectives of the Rule are found in the second document under inquiry, The Institution of the First Monks, a treatise on Carmelite life written by Philip Ribot in Catalonia in 1370 A.D. The work is a symbolic history of Elijah that is to function as a spiritual directory for the Carmelites who were now living in new circumstances in Europe away from Mount Carmel. Originally the book purported to be history, then it was interpreted to be a record of myths and legends, and today it is regarded as symbolic history, a serious effort to interpret Carmelite life through the life of Elijah. The mystical character of the Order is affirmed in the strongest terms with the same perspectives on emptiness and fullness found in the golden circle of Arie Trum.

The key passage is a commentary on the command to Elijah to “go eastward and hide in the brook Carith,” where he would “drink of the torrent.” (I Kings 17:2-4). The spiritual or mystical interpretation of these words is as follows:

These words to Elijah...reveal the twofold aim of religious life and the path God wants us to follow to perfection:

1)             ‘To offer to God a heart holy and pure from all stain of sin’.

*                       this is attained by our efforts, with the help of God’s grace;

*                       signified in the words ‘hide in Carith’, i.e. in perfect love.

2)             ‘To taste in our hearts and experience in our minds, not only after death but even in this life, something of the power of the divine presence and the bliss of eternal glory;. *this is a pure gift of God;

*signified in the words ‘ you shall drink of the torrent’¹⁰ In an unpublished paper delivered at a study week at the Washington Theological Union in September, l996, Hein Blommestijn used John Cassian to analyze this passage and to show that the twofold purpose is one movement of the Spirit with a proximate objective (skopos) and an ultimate goal (telos). The skopos is to present to God a pure heart; the telos to experience God. Like the farmer’s planting and cultivating his field with a view to the harvest, the work of purification is done in view of the experience of God. The first step occurs when one leaves one’s own center and enters the empty circle; there God meets the person in a mystical encounter. The work is all God’s. I enter the center and I become a new person, the result of what God is doing in me. The self-emptying and the encounter continue progressively throughout life. They are one movement with two stages, not first a life of asceticism and then another of mysticism. “Before Elijah could take a single step,” the Institution says, “God had already set him in motion.” (Chandler, 5)

The theology of Christian Meditation parallels this perspective of Philip Ribot. The mantra is an exercise in self-emptying. The mantra is the prayer, as Main repeats, and it is an exercise in selfless attention, the experience of poverty before God. At the same time it is an invitation for God to come and this is the contemplation hoped for in the practice. John Cassian extends the role of the mantra beyond formal prayer into continuous prayer. It will effect purification and union, he says:

Never cease to recite it in whatever task or service or journey you find yourself... This heartfelt thought will prove to be a formula of salvation for you. Not only will it protect you against all develish attack, but it will purify you from the stain of all earthly sin and will lead you on to the contemplation of the unseen and the heavenly and to that fiery urgency of prayer which is indescribable and which is experienced by very few.¹¹

Centering prayer too has the same tasks of purification and union. Early on its practice reveals and confronts the false self, the wounded believer who is the victim of false emotional patterns of happiness that stand in opposition to the call of grace. These false systems are largely unconscious; centering prayer uncovers them, helps one recognize them as one’s own, then effects their release, much as in the teaching of St John of the Cross about the dark night of the senses. The emphasis on receptive consent in centering prayer hastens the unloading of the unconscious, to use Keating’s phrase, and therefore addresses the work of purification¹² with more intensity. In both Christian Meditation and centering prayer the organic connection between self-emptying and fulness, kenosis and pleroma, is basic to the practice.

St Teresa of Avila

While Teresa had a prayer life before and after she entered Carmel in 1535, she confesses that she did not know how to go about praying until l538, when she discovered Francis of Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet. (BL. 4.7) There she learned in a new way the fact of the divine Indwelling and prayer as contact with the living God. “We need no wings to go in search of him,” she wrote, “but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon him present within us.” (WP. 28.2)

Temperamentally Teresa could not search in discursive prayer, nor could she control her restless imagination and memory. Methodical meditation was an impossibility for her. She writes for people like herself, “for souls and minds so scattered that they are like wild horses no one can stop.” (WP. 19.2) Prayer for her was presence, loving presence, a fact she learned from Osuna as the heart of recollection. Recollection was gathering up one’s soul, “collecting all one’s faculties together and entering within itself to be with its Lord.” (WP.28.4) Thus one moves within beyond the confining world of creatures into the sacred space of God.

Active recollection is the person’s own doing. Once recollected one fruitfully practices vocal prayer like the Our Father. Recollection and vocal prayer were Teresa’s mainstay. With gaze fixed on Christ she prayed the Our Father; this double practice was her recommendation for everyone and an¹³ easy way to the prayer of quiet. (WP.28.4) Teresa also practiced and taught a silent prayer of recollection that is remarkably like centering prayer¹⁴. In this prayer the recall of an image from the Passion functioned in the same way as the sacred word. First, Teresa strove to be present to Christ. She used many stratagems to help her find this recollection, such as a book at hand like a Linus blanket to be utilized as needed, inviting favorite saints like Mary Magdalen and the Samaritan woman to accompany her, holy cards, nature scenes. But her main strategy and the very goal of the prayer was “representing Christ interiorly.” (BL.4.7; WP.28.4)

This phrase is peculiarly Teresian. It does not mean imagining Christ - Teresa had little skill in this area. It means realizing that Christ is present now in her soul. This is a real presence of the living Christ. He is there; “your Spouse never takes his eyes off you.”

(WP.26.3) She does not see him; but he is there as if in the darkness, and he can be apprehended the way a blind person recognizes another person in the room. Representing Christ for Teresa means tuning into that real presence. But, you say, does not Teresa counsel imagining Christ in some mystery of the Passion? Yes, she recommends recalling Christ suffering in Gethsemani or at the pillar when awareness and attention are fading. These recalls are accessories, images to reinvigorate a fading loving attention. They are only means to heighten the sense of presence. They are images to be super­imposed on on the reality of the Christ within, to put a face on the faceless Christ. This recall of a gospel scene is the equivalent of the sacred word in centering prayer. It is used as needed to re-focus. The essence of the prayer is attending to the real Christ within; the imaging is totally secondary. This method soon brought Teresa into mystical experiences of quiet and union.

Notice how she connects these graces with the practice of “representing Christ:”

It used to happen, when I represented Christ within me in order to place myself in His presence, or even while reading, that a feeling of the presence of God would come over me unexpectedly so that I could in no way doubt He was in me or I totally immersed in Him. This did not occur after the manner of a vision. I believe they call the experience “mystical theology.” (BL. 10.1)

Her full entry into the mystical state came after the long struggle of l8 to 20 years.

It took that long to integrate her whole being in God. Throughout this period as well as afterwards her basic strategy at prayer was the prayer of active recollection twice daily for an hour each time. This was a foundation stone of her reform. Today in the contemplative movements there are two briefer periods of similar prayer with the same goal of personal reform and renewal. The different specifications address different life situations and cultural conditions and are tailored accordingly.

St John of the Cross

John of the Cross has no equivalent of active recollection in his synthesis. He has only two large categories of ways of relating to God, which he calls meditation and contemplation. These two forms describe self-directed activity (meditation) or pure receptivity before God (contemplation). They are adequately distinct from one another. Meditation utilizes our faculties and human potential to come to know and love God, always under grace, and contemplation is infused light and love that are the pure gift of God. Contemplation in both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross is always infused contemplation. John calls meditation a natural operation, contemplation a supernatural one; this terminology is peculiar to Teresa, John, and others of the time.

We saw in the first part of this paper that early followers of John developed a theory of “acquired contemplation” and appealed to his authority for the teaching. For some interpreters acquired contemplation is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. For others the self-directed achievement of a quiet, loving, restful presence to God beyond words and images is a real possibility. Acquired contemplation does not go beyond beginning contemplation, the experience described by John as “loving awareness of God, without particular considerations, in interior peace and quiet and repose, and without the acts and exercises (at least discursive, those in which one progresses from point to point)...” (A.2.13.4). This “general, loving awareness” lacks the specific difference that defines infused contemplation, namely, the mystical union of felt experience of God. Acquired contemplation is “ordinary” contemplation in contrast to the extraordinary contemplation of the higher states. It is one possible outcome of active contemplative practice.

Centering prayer and Christian Meditation are definitely active contemplative practice. The loving attention which they espouse comes from one’s own initiative and deliberate choice and is different from the passive loving attention in the presence of infused contemplation, which John describes as the awareness of “a person who opens his eyes with loving attention.” (F.3.33) This latter us is pure receptivity, “doing nothing” in the strongest definition of that phrase. Active contemplative practice is doing something and this is why this practice belongs to meditation in John’s schema.

John of the Cross may not speak as directly and volubly to budding contemplatives as does Teresa, but his teaching goes to the essentials. He knows exactly what practitioners of centering prayer and Christian Meditation must do to reach the transforming union. He spells out in detail what The Rule of St Albert and The Institution of the First Monks laid out in global terms about self-emptying and encountering God.

The basis for this common understanding about growth in prayer is the Paschal Mystery, the life principle of the followers of Jesus Christ.

Death and resurrection are achieved in the contemplative through the practice of faith. Faith is the only proximate means of union with God, says John of the Cross, and this principle applies to the whole journey.

Why is this so? Because faith screens out all that is not of God in our lives and welcomes God in all God’s truth and beauty. Our Blessed Lady is the perfect example of this principle. She is the woman of faith, who listens and carries out the word of God. She is like a window without spot, so that the sunlight totally dominates it; it is impossible to tell where the sunlight ends and the window begins. In Mary’s case all her choices come from faith; she waits on the word of God and follows it completely. There are no other choices in her life. Thus God dominates her life; God and her soul (herself) are “one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul”

(A.2.5.7.). This is the ultimate goal of all contemplative prayer and the way is the deepening and expansion of the life of faith.

Touraine Reform

The Touraine Reform is the glory of the Ancient Observance of the Carmelite Order. The reform began in the French province of Touraine in 1608 under the leadership of Philip Thibault; (1572-1638); it spread through the lowlands and eventually affected the whole Order. The most famous spiritual leader in the reform was the blind brother, John of St Samson, who has been called the French John of the Cross. The old Order lives by the spirit of Touraine more than any other influence.

Like the Teresian forerunner Touraine was not just aggiornamento or updateing monastic discipline. It was a return to the primitive spirit of the Order, which Kilian Healy describes as, “a life that was primarily (but not exclusively) contemplative wherein the spirit of solitude, silence and prayer reign supreme.”¹⁵ To this end the reform produced a significant body of spiritual literature, one element of which were four volumes of directories for novices. The fourth volume, whose Latin short title is Methodus orandi, treats discursive meditation, affective prayer, the prayer of simple regard (equated with acquired contemplation) as forms of active prayer that dispose the subject for infused contemplation. This is traditional teaching. What is a special contribution is the practice of aspirative prayer or aspirations. This topic receives extended consideration because it is seen as the way to fulfill Chapter VII of the Rule and to carry out the very purpose of the Order, which is actual, continuous, loving conversation with God.

Aspirative prayer is a step beyond ejaculations; it is more unctuous, more affective, and more “mystical” insofar as it is connected with the breathing of the Holy Spirit within the person. Aspirations are not thoughts or phrases, but “darts out of the flaming fire of love,” so that “the most simple affection is worth more than all the thoughts that are written in books.”¹⁶ Aspiratory prayer uses the word as the carrier of tremendous love: “all the affections of the heart are in the one word.”¹⁷ This practice is an expression of the deep conviction of Touraine that contemplative is synonymous with loving, and that the contemplative life is simply a life of deep love of God.

The Methodus considers aspiratory prayer an advanced way of praying that builds on previous meditation and affective prayer and looks toward divine union; it is part of the illuminative way. While the practice is not original with the Carmelites, since it comes out of the spirituality of introversion found in Augustine and popular in the lowlands and France at the time, it was adopted by Touraine as germane to the Order’s spirit. John of Saint Samson became its outstanding proponent.

What does aspiratory prayer have to say to centering prayer and Christian Meditation? It signals the primordial role of love in all contemplative prayer. This devotion can enrich the two contemplative forms of prayer by keeping them focused on this quality.

Like everything associated with contemplation in the l7th century aspiratory prayer was presented as a higher form of prayer. Were centering prayer or Christian Meditation to have existed at that time, they would have been restricted to advanced souls. In our day there is no restriction. The two forms are available to all. We are less regimented in relating forms and stages of prayer. In Touraine as in the rest of the Catholic world at the time the four acts of lectio divina had become stages of prayer rather than parts of an organic whole. There were four degrees: vocal prayer, meditation,

affective prayer and contemplation. The latter three were correlated with the three stages of spiritual development, namely, the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. Practitioners were locked into the prayer form that belonged to their state.The words of one great master of the period, Louis Lallemant, were typical: “Everyone should remain faithful to the prayer proper to the degree or state of his [sic] spiritual life.”¹⁸

Contemporary thinking breaks out of these hard and fast categories. No doubt some previous experience in mental prayer is helpful for contemplative practice, but it is not deemed essential. This is something new in Catholic thinking. Even the first theorist on lectio divina, Guiges II, thought that the four acts were so interconnected that they were always to be performed in sequence, so that “it would be a rare exception or a miracle to gain contemplation without prayer.”¹⁹ A different attitude prevails today. Aspirative prayer belongs to the same category as centering prayer and Christian Meditation; in our day it can claim a place with them as a method open to everyone and as a quality inherent in all contemplative prayer.

Conclusion

We come now to the end of our inquiry and draw the following conclusions:

1. The new forms of centering prayer and Christian Meditation relate positively to the Carmelite tradition. Christian Meditation is like a mirror of Chapter VII of the Rule and an application of the perspectives of The Institution of the First Monks. Centering prayer is like a variant of the active recollection of St Teresa of Avila. The Carmelite tradition has great affinity with these new forms of contemplative prayer.
2. Carmelite prayer is contemplative through and through. Even the method of mental prayer attributed to John of the Cross by Quiroga is probably closer to the new forms than to the highly rational discursive meditation or even the active imagination of our times, since the pondering (step two) was ordered to the quiet resting in God (step three).
3. The basic assumption of all Carmelite prayer is found in the twofold goal of the Order set down by Philip Ribot, namely, purity of heart and experience of the divine presence. The monastic prayer of the heart was designed to achieve this double goal; it is the prayer of Chapter VII of the Rule. Centering prayer and Christian Meditation are forms of that prayer of the heart.
4. The        Carmelite tradition emphasizes the fact that the word of God is the way to God. A recent document from the two Fathers General of the Carmelite Order puts it well: “the Word of God in Scripture becomes the Word of God in us to be joined to the Word of God in life.”²⁰ Both contemporary methods engage the word of God truly, not in discursive fashion, but concentrated in single words or phrases.
5. The teaching of Touraine on aspirative prayer deserves further study in order to align it with the two forms, either as another contemplative form or a quality of all these methods. Aspirative prayer has special affinity with centering prayer.

In summary our investigation indicates that centering prayer and Christian Meditation are friendly developments, not only in the monastic but also the Carmelite tradition.

They are new things and old drawn out of the storehouse of the riches of the western mystical tradition. (Mt 13:52)

Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm.

Kino Institute, Phoenix, AZ

¹     The phrases in quotation marks are taken from Quiroga as quoted in James Arraj, From John of the Cross to

Us (Chiloquin, OR: Inner Growth Books, l999)103-104. In this book James Arraj reopens the inquiry into acquired contemplation from the viewpoint of St John of the Cross and Carmelites. He believes the concept is a misinterpretation of John of the Cross (e.g. re Thomas of Jesus, pages 78-79). The error is a serious one in his opinion, because it caused the Quietist errors of the l7th century and the low esteem and malaise about mysticism in the l8th and l9th centuries. [Subsequent references to this book as well as to other sources cited in this paper will be indicated by author and page within the text.]

²     The tangled controversy about acquired contemplation is largely laid to rest today in favor of a broad

description of the experience of contemplation. This irenic interpretation is offered in my recent article, “Contemporary Prayer Forms - Are they Contemplation?” in Review for Religious 57(1998)77-87.

³     St. John of the Cross, Doctor of Divine Love, with Acquired Contemplation, the latter a translation of a l938

Latin text (Cork: Mercier, l946).

⁴     4, Talks on Meditation (Montreal, l979)10.

⁵     Conferences of John Cassian 10.19 (tr Colum Luibheid, New York: Paulist, l985) 185-186. Simon Tugwell

points out that Guigo II, one of the earliest architects of lectio divina, equated “meditating” with “repeating” the word. See his Ways of Imperfection (Springfield: Templegate, 1985)94-95. Later he points out that the word “meditate” actually means “repeat.” p.105.

⁶     See William H. Shannon, Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey (Cincinnati: St Anthony, 2000) 188-205.

Merton’s “meditation” is the contemplative prayer described in these pages.

⁷     Keith J. Egan, “Contemplative Meditation: a Challenge to the Tradition,” an essay to appear in Spirituality

for Ministry, II (ed. Robert J Wicks, New York: Paulist, 2000)

⁸     In Albert’s Way (ed. Michael Mulhall, O.Carm., Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1989)89.

⁹     Kaes Waaijman, O.Carm., The Mystical Space of Carmel (Amsterdam:Peeters,1999) [in ms. Page 58,

citing Decem Libri 8.4)

¹⁰  Philip Ribot, O.Carm., Institution of the First Monks,1.2, as quoted by Paul Chandler,O.Carm.in A

Workbook on this document (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, l992)7.

¹¹  Conferences, 10.14.

¹²  Cynthia Bourgeault, “From Woundedness to Union,” Review for Religious 58(Mar-Apr, 1999) 158-167.

¹³  Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, “Introduction” to Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle New York: Paulist,

l979)12-15,

¹⁴  Teresa describes active recollection in WP. 28-29; IC 4.3 and 6.7. I have analysed Teresa’s personal

experience of this prayer in BL in “Teresa of Avila and Centering Prayer,” Carmelite Studies III (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, l984) 203-209. This description parallels Thomas Alvarez, OCD in his beautiful exposition in Living with God, St Teresa’s Concept of Prayer (Dublin:

Carmelite Centre of Spirituality, n.d.) 12-18.

¹⁵  Methods of Prayer in the Directory of the Carmelite Reform of Touraine (Rome:Institutum

Carmelitanum, l956)16.

¹⁶  Methodus, cited in Healy, 63.

¹⁷  John Brenninger, O.Carm., The Carmelite Directory of the Spiritual Life (tr.Leo J. Walter, O.Carm.,

Chicago: Carmelite Press, l951)471. This manual has an excellent treatment of aspirative prayer, as does Venard Poslusney, O.Carm., Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation (Asbury, N.J., l994).

¹⁸  Cited in Paul Philippe, O.P. “Mental Prayer in the Catholic Tradition,” in Mental Prayer and Modern Life,

a Symposium (tr.Francis C. Lehner, New York: Kennedy, l950)3.

¹⁹  Scala claustralium, cited in Philippe, 23.

²⁰  "Passing through the Holy Door", Circular Letter of the OCD-OCarm General Superiors at the beginning of

the Third Millenium (Rome, l999)12.

Most Rev. Fr. John Malley, O.Carm.

This presentation was given by the former Prior General of the Carmelite Order during the 4^th International Lay Carmelite Congress held at Sassone, Rome, in September 2006, which had as its theme ‘Formation and Communication at the Service of the Community’.

It is a special joy to be with you at this International Congress of Lay Carmelites and to have the opportunity to renew many wonderful friendships that I have treasured in my past travels around the world. I have been asked by the organizing committee of the Congress to offer you some introductory thoughts about our spirituality and tradition, and I am very happy to do this.

While I was living in Rome from 1983-1995, and as I travelled to visit our Carmelite brothers and sisters in over 30 countries, I had a wonderful chance to give a special place or priority to a particular value of our way of life. It had seemed to me that my predecessor as Prior General for twelve years, Father Falco Thuis, had emphasized the prophetic ministry of Carmelites and the need for an option for the poor through a ministry of justice and peace. We all were certainly enriched by that emphasis. By the same token, my successor and our present Prior General, Father Joseph Chalmers, has been speaking and writing frequently about the contemplative aspect of our vocation and the need for a deeper prayer life. Without a doubt this too is a great blessing for each one of us.

Because of my own personal background and because of many wonderful, caring relationships that I had experienced during my journey in Carmel, I began in 1983 to use the term ‘Carmelite Family’ in my talks, in my writings, and in my visits around the world. I soon realized that each of the words in that term - ‘Carmelite and ‘Family’ - were important to me and needed to be studied and developed. In my initial talks at Provincial Chapters during 1984 and 1985, I tried to begin that work by emphasizing what I thought were the two greatest treasures that we possessed as Carmelites: first, our members - friars, sisters, laity (our family element), and secondly, our spirituality - charism and tradition (our Carmelite element). A year ago in my Province’s publication, The Sword, I wrote an article that emphasized our first treasure - community and fraternity - the family aspect of our charism. In this conference, I will be sharing about our second treasure - our spirituality, the Carmelite aspect of our charism.

Since the beginning of religious life in the Church, there have been different schools of spirituality. Even though every spirituality has but one foundation,

Jesus Christ, some holy men and women throughout the centuries have been attracted to specific values from His teaching and have emphasized certain truths of His life. As a result, particular Gospel values have become identified with different religious families in the Church. These are truly gifts of the Holy Spirit, enriching and benefiting the lives of God’s people.

We easily think of the gifts of Benedictine spirituality with its emphasis on the praise and worship of God, with each day being divided into hours of prayer in chapel, but there would also be time for work in the fields or in the scriptorium (ora et labora), and as a result Benedictine monasteries became the centers of stability and learning in the Church. Later, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, came Saint Dominic and Saint Francis. First, the Dominicans, preaching the Word of God in the midst of the people as mendicant friars, with one of their members, Saint Thomas Aquinas, deepening the Church’s insight into the Eucharist. Secondly, the Franciscans, who committed themselves to follow Jesus in poverty and simplicity, with a deep appreciation and love for the beauty of God’s creation. In the sixteenth century, there would be Saint Ignatius and the Jesuits, promoting the glory of God through obedience to the Holy Father, with an unfailing zeal for education and the missions.

Each of these saints and their schools of spirituality followed the same Christ, and all participated as religious in the one Church that He had founded, but they stressed different Gospel values to reach one specific goal - union with God. Each group realized that it did not “own” these Gospel values which were the foundation of their charism, but as religious they were called by the Lord to live these values and to pass them on to the members of the Church by the quality and witness of their lives.

In this talk I would ask you to reflect on ten fundamental values of our Carmelite spirituality. They will include the traditional values of prayer, community, and ministry that every religious group seems to emphasize when speaking or writing about its spirituality. I do feel strongly, however, that our charism has other more fundamental values that our saints have written about and that our tradition has stressed as the foundation of Carmelite life. I will try to share with you, very simply and briefly, some places in our tradition or in the writings of our saints, especially our three Doctors of the Church, Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Therese, where these fundamental values can be found.

I would ask you to remember that these ten values are not “written in stone” like the Ten Commandments, but are only proposed for your consideration and discussion. I would encourage each one of you personally to do your own reading and your own study of our spirituality in order to deepen your personal understanding, and perhaps to come up with your own list of ten fundamental values in our Carmelite tradition. I readily understand that at different moments in life, and certainly in particular areas and in specific communities, one or other of these values might seem more important and more necessary to each one of us. Obviously, the Holy Spirit breathes where He wills and inspires us differently, and we often respond according to our own particular personality and gifts. We should only be grateful to the Spirit that these values are a reality in our lives as we commit ourselves day after day to deepen our love for our Carmelite spirituality.

First Value: The Presence of God

Psalm 42 has expressed so well the longing of the human spirit: “Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God. My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life; when can 1 enter and see the face of God?” St. Augustine expressed this same truth so beautifully: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Our Carmelite spirituality begins on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. The first hermits, some probably lay pilgrims, and others former crusaders, came together toward the end of the 12th century to a place well known in Scripture for the presence and deeds of the Prophet Elijah. They were drawn by his words in the First Book of Kings: “God lives, in whose presence 1 stand.” They were seeking the presence, the face of the living God, the God of Love whose image Jesus constantly reflected during His time on earth, as He reminded His disciples of the Good News - that the God, who created us in His image, has first loved us and has called us to a personal union with Himself.

1 would suggest to you that the presence of God has been and should still remain the first and most fundamental value of our Carmelite spirituality and tradition. For centuries, this yearning, this striving, was expressed by the Latin words - Vacare Deo - a total availability to God as we become more aware of His presence in our life. Like so many of our Saints in Carmel, that phrase will take on a very personal meaning for each of us, as we strive to find time for Him, as we rest and relax in His presence, as we literally “take a vacation with God,” simply seeking God day after day in our many commitments and activities.

This inspiration to seek the presence of God is strongly rooted in our Carmelite spirituality because of the influence of Elijah the Prophet. The early hermits gathered on Mount Carmel by the fountain of Elijah. It was there that they hoped to find a spiritual environment, a place where God’s spirit and the human spirit would meet. Elijah and Elisha were inspiring models of this fundamental challenge for all Carmelites: to stand in the presence of the living God and to seek His face. The prophets of Mount Carmel reminded one and all that God lives among His people and that He loves each one of us with an everlasting love.

St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of the Child Jesus are two of our saints who witnessed so strongly to this first fundamental value. They remind us so well that the thirst for God is not the exclusive right of a privileged few, but that our God is eager to share Himself with every sincere soul. They are both so mindful of Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well: “Whoever drinks the water 1 give him will never be thirsty; no, the water 1 give shall become a fountain within him, leaping up to provide eternal life.”

We are all familiar with the story of Teresa, who at the age of seven ran away from home with her brother Rodrigo, and when asked by her anxious parents why she had done this, she replied: “I went because 1 want to see God, and to see him we must die.” The reply of a child, but it foreshadows her life-long quest - to live in the presence of the living God who loved her. She later wrote: “We need no wings to go in search of God but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.”

The spirituality of St. Teresa is simply this movement toward God present in the most inner mansion of her soul, where she seeks to be intimately united with Him. Teresa begins her quest for God by seeking only Jesus, but the whole Christ is revealed to her. She had looked to find God in relationship to herself, but she finds as “a daughter of the Church” that Christ Jesus is found in His members, in His mystical Body. Because of this profound understanding, she shared with us her beautiful prayer: “Christ has no body now but yours; no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on the world ...” How well does Teresa reflect the two-fold battle cry of Elijah, the prophet of Carmel: “God lives, in whose presence I stand,” and “With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts.”

St. Therese too, at a very young age, had a profound sense of the presence of God, one that was replete with love. Her image of God was taken from her own father whom she admired, respected, cherished and loved so much. Her mother tells us that Therese as a child “speaks only of God and wouldn’t miss her prayers for anything.” Later, in Carmel she had deepened this value to such an extent that as she was dying she tells us that the source of her joy came from a total acceptance of the will of “Papa, God” whom she was soon to see face to face. She told her sisters very simply: “Don’t be sad at seeing me sick like this. You can see how happy God is making me”.

Second Value: An Allegiance to Jesus Christ

Carmelites are the only religious and lay family in the Church whose beginnings took place in the Holy Land, the place where Jesus was born, lived, taught, suffered, died and rose from the dead. Benedictines might speak of Subiaco and Monte Cassino, Dominicans of southern France, Franciscans of Assisi, Jesuits of Paris and Rome as their birthplaces. The Carmelites alone can point with justifiable pride to Mount Carmel, the place of Elijah and Elisha, the land of Jesus and Mary.

When Albert, the Bishop of Jerusalem and the Patriarch of the Holy Land, wrote a formula of living for the first hermits on Mount Carmel, approximately 800 years ago, he had in mind the most important event in all of history - the birth of Jesus, God becoming incarnate among His people. Albert made this truth the central value of the Rule of Carmel: “Everyone ... should live a life in allegiance to Jesus Christ ... each one, pure in heart and stout in conscience, must be unswerving in the service of the Master ... each one of you is to stay in his own cell or nearby, pondering the Lord’s law day and night and keeping watch at his prayers, unless attending to some other duty.”

Jesus continues to be the center of the Carmelite way of life. In our tradition and for our saints, this allegiance to Christ became the essential element in putting Albert’s formula of living into practice. They took to heart as their inspiration the words of St. Paul to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

St. Teresa’s writings are filled with this allegiance and with the following of Jesus, and she emphatically tells her sisters that the person who would find God must go to Christ Jesus. She writes: “Imagine that the Lord Himself is at your side, and believe me, you should stay with so good a Friend for as long as you can before you leave Him. If you become accustomed to having Him at your side, as if He sees that you love Him to be there and are always trying to please Him, you will never be able, as we put it, to send Him away.” In contrast to many of the theologians of her day, both Dominicans and Jesuits, Teresa put great emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. She recounted His own words to her over and over again: “Be not disturbed, for I will give you a living book.” She emphasized: “The Lord Himself says that He is the Way; the Lord Himself also says that He is the Light and that no one can come to the Father save by Him, and he that sees me sees my Father also.”

St. John of the Cross strongly stressed the same value. To him, Jesus is the revelation of God, His presence among us. In the Ascent of Mount Carmel, he tells us that “in giving His Son, which is His Word - and He has no other - God spoke to us all together, once and for all, in this single Word.” For John, Jesus is the way, He is the door, the only door through which we reach the Father: “O would that I could get spiritual persons to understand that the road to God ... lies in denying ourselves in earnest within and without, and undergoing suffering with Christ”.

Third Value: The Dignity of the Human Person

After sharing with you about the first Carmelite value, the presence of God, the loving Father whom Jesus told us about in the Gospel, and then stressing the second value, allegiance to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word who came to live among us, it would be fitting and proper - “dignum et justum est” - to speak of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, as the third fundamental value of Carmelite spirituality, but regretfully the Holy Spirit has not been strongly emphasized in our Carmelite tradition nor by our saints, throughout the centuries. This is true, however, not only of our heritage, but it is also a reality in Christian theology for 2000 years. The Holy Spirit has been called “the forgotten Person of the Trinity” by many Catholic theologians. Fortunately though, in our own day, a new group of religious in our Carmelite Family in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Daughters of Carmel (Putri Karmel) and the Sons of Elijah, have developed a strong devotion to the Holy Spirit as part of their charism. Their ministry among the people has become an integral part of the charismatic renewal programs in those countries.

Despite little being written of the Holy Spirit, however, we must remember that in our Catholic and Carmelite tradition the dignity of the human person has been strongly emphasized. The New Testament speaks so powerfully of this value: “Do you not know,” writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, “that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Charity is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us” (I Corinthians 3:16; Romans 5:5). The presence of God in the soul and the work of sanctification, even though common to the three Persons of the Trinity, are especially attributed to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is, in fact, Love in the bosom of the Trinity - God’s gift to the soul through Love. And, of course, this respect for the human person is one of the strongest values that Jesus shared in the Gospel - His love for Peter, John, Magdalen, Lazarus, Zacchaeus, for each of His followers and for every person. Every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and is to be treated with value, dignity and love.

Perhaps here in my talk, I might interject a personal note. Sixty years ago, precisely during the first week of September in 1946, I entered the Carmelite seminary just outside the city of Boston in the United States. From the very beginning of my association with Carmelites, this specific value - respect for the dignity and uniqueness of each individual - has been such a rich treasure in my experience. I became a seminarian because of the warmth and respect shown to me by the Carmelites priests whom I met for the very first time when I visited a friend who was in the seminary.

Later as I studied our spiritual tradition, I found that our saints emphasized this truth over and over again: God calls each person, each soul, each alma in the words of St. John of the Cross to a transforming union with the Trinity through a following of Jesus Christ. In this sense, our Rule is exemplary. It allows each friar, each sister, each lay person a great amount of individual freedom in seeking and finding God. It places great emphasis on the God who calls us to union, just as He called Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophets of the Old Testament. It stresses the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul of each person, as it cites the words of St. Paul. Our Rule is so different from that of Benedict which spells out every detail along a person’s journey, or from the Exercises of Ignatius which map out very precisely the way to sanctity.

St. John of the Cross beautifully exemplifies this value - the dignity of the human person. He constantly writes about the individual soul - alma - in its relationship to God.

In his conferences and in his writings to the early members of the Teresian reform, he reminded each sister and brother that God desired a personal relationship and union. The authenticity of this relationship can only be measured in daily living, by the individual’s commitment to find time for God day after day in prayer, and by a constant reaching out to one’s neighbor in love. John says simply that this relationship is fed by a daily attendance at Mass and the Eucharist, by a daily reflection on the Word of God in imitation of Mary, the Mother of Carmel, who treasured the word in her heart. John reminds us that Jesus encouraged his apostles with the words: “Let us go apart to a deserted place.” Carmel tries to offer this same invitation to each of its members, giving every person an opportunity for intimacy with God. He alone is the answer to the longing, to the searching, to the restlessness that is present in every individual’s heart.

Fourth value: The Journey of Faith

The theme of a journey is such a strong part of our Carmelite tradition. Our historians point out that the first hermits on Mount Carmel came from different countries of Europe. They had journeyed from their native soil to settle in the Holy Land of Jesus and Mary, seeking the face of the living God. Perhaps a deep faith had driven them to that special place where God might be found, and for this reason they made a pilgrimage of trust to the mountains and the deserts of Israel. And only a generation or two later, during the 1230s and the 1240s, because of the Saracens’ persecution, some of these same hermits journeyed back to their native lands of Sicily, France, England and the Low Countries.

It is not surprising then that the journey theme, rooted in faith and trust, became such an integral part of our Carmelite spirituality. I would suggest to you that Mary - Our Lady of the Place, Our Lady of Mount Carmel - is the best model that we Carmelites might imitate in our personal journey of faith. The Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, called Mary “the Woman of Faith” because she persevered so loyally in union with her Son Jesus from Nazareth to Calvary. It is interesting to recall, however, that over sixty years before the Council, St. Therese anticipated this Church gathering and gave tremendous insights into the value of faith in Mary’s life. In her poem, Why Do I Love You, Mary, written in May 1897, only four months before her death, Therese presents our Blessed Mother as the Woman who journeyed in faith. She writes that every incident of Mary’s life portrayed in the Gospel - from the Annunciation to the birth of Jesus, from the loss in the Temple to the marriage feast of Cana, and finally to her standing at the foot of the Cross - was a challenge from God for her to make an act of faith.

We see this fourth value of Carmelite spirituality in the lives and writings of our greatest saints: Teresa, John of the Cross, and Therese. Teresa’s journey of faith takes place primarily in the depths of her own soul, as a movement inward toward God who is present within her and with whom she desires to be perfectly united. She writes in The Way of Perfection: “Remember how St. Augustine tells us about his seeking God in many places and eventually finding Him within himself ... We need no wings to go in search of God but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us.” In her initial vision of the Interior Castle, she writes that God is in the center, in the seventh mansion, and that He is the great reality of the castle. For

Teresa, God is not a symbol, a creation of the soul’s imagination. He truly dwells there. She firmly believed the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel: “If anyone loves me, my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). For Teresa, the spiritual life was, par excellence, an interior life - a movement, a journey toward God through faith into the depth, into the seventh mansion, of her soul.

Saint John of the Cross also strongly emphasized the priority of the journey of faith in Carmelite spirituality. First, he presented to his readers a drawing of the path of Mount Carmel leading to the union of the soul with God who dwells on the mountain. Then, he explained the meaning of this drawing in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. He is an excellent guide as he teaches each soul to resign itself into God’s hands, even when there is so often a personal desire to be in control. He encourages a surrender to God in love. To many, John’s manner of presentation, his language, and his patterns of thought seem difficult and forbidding, but the core of his teaching is nothing else than a stark emphasis of the heart of the Gospel message.

During the past 100 years, the Church, especially through the writings of the popes from Pius X to John Paul II, has consistently pointed out the journey of St. Therese as worthy of our imitation. She called her journey of faith “the little way of trust and absolute surrender”. When asked by her sister Pauline on 17^th July 1897, a few months before her death, “What way do you wish to teach souls after your death?”, Therese answered unhesitatingly, “It’s the way of spiritual childhood; it’s the way of confidence and total abandon.”

Therese realized that there is a constant refrain in the Gospel: “D0 not fear, do not be afraid,” as Jesus was so very sensitive to the emotion of fear that so many human beings experience. Therese learned this lesson well; it is her message to us in our fear-filled and anxious world. She continually emphasized the basic teaching of the Gospel - the loving Providence of God who is both a Father and Mother. She summed up her teaching with these words: “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love ... What pleases God is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His Mercy. To love Jesus - the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming Love.” She finishes with these challenging words: “Jesus deigned to show me the road that leads to God, and this road is the surrender of the little child who sleeps without fear in its Father’s arms.” This is a beautiful example of the Carmelite journey of faith.

When one of the scribes asked Jesus: “Which is the first of all the commandments?”, He replied: “This is the first: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And this is the second: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” During His preaching, and especially through His suffering and death, Jesus made love the central value and truth of His life. To be a follower of Christ - whether lay or religious - love must have a primacy in our lives.

All of us have often reflected about the meaning of love in our life, and we would probably agree in many ways with the psychologist, Erich Fromm, that the term ‘love’ implies the following four qualities: care as a mother treasures and watches over her child; responsibility in our attentiveness to the needs of one another; respect for the uniqueness and value of each person; growth in knowing better the person whom we love. The challenge for Christians, however, is putting this love into practice. The theologian, C. S. Lewis, encouraged the practice and expression of love in four concrete ways: affection that is similar to the warmth and care that a parent shares with a child through a smile, a touch; friendship that creates a special bond between two persons through mutual sharing and interests; charity that selflessly gives to others in imitation of Jesus, following the beautiful qualities that St. Paul enumerates in his first letter to the Corinthians; eros or sexual union by which married people become “no longer two but are united in one flesh.”

Christian spirituality throughout the ages has given us tremendous insights into the meaning of love, and it certainly has a primacy in our Carmelite tradition. Perhaps the latest Doctor of the Church, St. Therese, has placed this primacy into particular focus for us. It is difficult to describe Therese’s intense love of God and of the members of her community in Lisieux, but her spirituality begins with this truth. Her sister Pauline once said of her: “She breathed the love of God just as I breathe air.” Therese completely believed and trusted the beautiful words of St. John: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16).

All of us are familiar with her words in the Story of a Soul as she was reading St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “And the Apostle explains how all the most perfect gifts are nothing without Love. That charity is the excellent way that leads most surely to God. I finally had rest ... I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places ... in a word, that it was eternal .. Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O, Jesus, my love ... my vocation, at last I have found it ... my vocation is love!”

Saint Teresa too has given us valuable insights into the meaning of love. She wrote often of the friendships that Jesus showed during His life on earth. He shared in a special way with Peter, James and John, Mary Magdalen, and during the last weeks of His sorrowful struggle in Jerusalem, He used to go in the evenings to rest a while at Bethany, in the atmosphere of affection offered by Lazarus, Martha and Mary, who were so close to His heart. Teresa used these examples in her writing to show the relationship between love and friendship. She wrote in the Story of Her Life: “It is a great evil for a soul beset by so many dangers to be alone. Friends are so necessary.” Her 1500 letters attest so strongly to this need for friendship in her life. It was from a circle of close friends at the Convent of the Incarnation that there came the idea to begin her reform with the foundation of the monastery of St. Joseph in Avila. She encouraged a deep spiritual friendship among the first members of the reform: “In this house ... all must be friends with each other, love each other, be fond of each other, and help each other.” To be a friend of Jesus, her sisters must learn first to be friends with one another.

This value - the primacy of love - is very strong in our tradition. I remember reading once, as a very young student in philosophy, about the meaning of contemplation and its role in our Carmelite identity and spirituality. It was a description of contemplation given by Carmelite theologians at the University of Salamanca in the 17^th century: contemplation is a simple awareness of Truth under the influence of love. Franciscans might talk of poverty and peace, Dominicans of truth and the word of God, the Jesuits of obedience and the greater glory of God, but Carmelites identify the presence of God with love: “God is love and he who remains in love remains in God and God in him.”

Sixth Value: The Importance of Prayer

To many in the Catholic Church today, Carmel and prayer are synonymous. If we as Carmelites, both lay and religious, have anything to say to a contemporary world, it is about prayer. The writings and traditions of Carmel, which make up the history of our religious family are a result of attending to the Presence of the living God and responding to God in love. The Rule sums up our contemplative stance with the words: “Each one of you is to stay in his own cell or nearby, pondering the Lord’s law day and night and keeping watch at his prayers, unless attending to some other duty.”

In the history of Catholic spirituality, Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross

have been looked upon as experts in the science and in methods of prayer. Their goal for Carmelites, and even for Christians, might be simply stated: to know and see God, and to know and love oneself and one’s neighbor in the light of God’s face. How is this to happen? Teresa gives a very simple and concrete answer in the first pages of the Interior Castle: “Now let us return to our beautiful and delightful castle and see how we can enter it ... As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation.”

John of the Cross is called the Mystical Doctor. Prayer and contemplation are at the center of his four poems and his writings. He has a reputation for a demanding asceticism but at the core of his teaching is a conviction that only God’s love can break through the heart’s attachments, and for John contemplation is simply opening one’s life to God’s love.

In my years as a Carmelite, I have been very attracted and deeply nourished by two qualities of our Carmelite tradition of experiencing prayer: first, its listening element, and secondly, its relationship to love. From our very beginning on Mount Carmel with the chapel dedicated to Mary in the midst of the cells, she has been an inspiration and a model of prayer: “Mary treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19), and “near the cross of Jesus there stood His mother” (John 19:25) - beautiful signs of her listening posture and her loving heart. Another story about these same qualities that is often referred to by our Carmelite saints is the story of Martha and Mary, “who seated herself at the Lord’s feet and listened to His words.” With Jesus’ advise to Martha being: “You are anxious and upset about many things; one thing only is required. Mary has chosen the better part, and she shall not be deprived of it” (Luke 10:39, 4i"42).

Teresa sums up her feelings about these same two qualities in the Book of Her Life: “Mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but friendly conversation and frequent solitary talks with Him who we know loves us.” This is Teresa’s well- known definition of prayer, and rightly so, because with a simplicity astonishingly precise, she gives us the essence of prayer - a friendship with God, an exchange of love which God has for us, and which we have for Him. For Teresa, God is Love, and He has created us out of love for an eternal union with Himself.

Seventh Value: The Significance of Community

This value in our Carmelite tradition is expressed by different terms: community, fraternity, brotherhood, family, or simply by our official title in the

Church: Brothers and Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.

It seems fairly obvious that Albert, the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, in writing his Rule around the year 1206 to the first hermits, pilgrims, and former crusaders on Mount Carmel had the primitive Christian community in mind as he proposed a model to imitate and follow. Saint Luke described the life of the first followers of Jesus very simply: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ instructions and the communal life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers ... Those who believed shared all things in common; they would sell their property and goods, dividing everything on the basis of each one’s needs ... The community of believers were of one heart and one mind. None of them ever claimed anything as his own; rather everything was held in common” (Acts 2:42, 4:32).

For Albert this new religious group must first strive to be a Christian community. The hermits must seek “to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ,” following the Acts of the Apostles which pointed out the necessary steps to be a true community - one that is united and integrated in the Lord’s name. In Acts, five elements are emphasized: (a) the instructions of the Apostles - a listening to the Word in faith, as the community comes together often to reflect and to share in the light of God’s word; (b) a fraternal union - one that renders witness in koinonia of what it has seen and heard ... a communion which is the fruit of God’s presence in the life of each member; (c) the breaking of the bread - the community is called to celebrate the Eucharist on a daily basis, as it deepen its reflection on the word of God; (d) the prayers - the word is written in the plural to signify both communal and personal prayer, a listening to God in commitment with one’s brothers and sisters; (e) the apostolic dimension - a witness to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus through the sharing of goods in common as a sign of unity. The Rule of Carmel gives stress to these elements, and it includes two other qualities that were so important to St. Paul: (f) a diversity of charisms - the gifts of the Spirit are shared gratuitously for the service of others, since all need the support and love of one another; (g) a spirit of freedom - as Carmelites are called to choose their leaders to a vocation of love in imitation of Christ “who came not to be served but to serve and lay down His life for others.”

The Rule of Carmel lays the foundation for the value of community in our lives, and during the past 30 years many official documents of the Order have focused on the desire to develop deeper communication and cooperation among all of our members. They have emphasized the importance of building fraternity and a family spirit at ever deeper levels, seeing local, national, and international communities as important elements of our Carmelite way of life.

Eighth Value: A Commitment to Service

On 16^th July 1992, Fr. Camilo Macise, the General of the Discalced, and I had the opportunity and the privilege of writing the first joint letter to our international Carmelite Family, after almost four hundred years of separation and division (6^th June 1593). The letter was entitled A Praying Community at the Service of the People. The letter was written on the occasion of the Fifth Centenary of the Evangelization of America.

In the final section of the letter, Prophetic Presence and the Commitment to Justice, we wrote: “As sons and daughters of the prophets, we cannot close our eyes to what is happening in the world. As an international family, living in each of the continents, we need to open our eyes to the fundamental injustice which is dividing the human race between rich and poor with all that this implies for the overwhelming majority. As contemplative men and women, we should be able to say a prophetic word, not only to denounce the evils, but also as a tender and welcoming word for the victims of injustice. Conscious of God’s presence in the human person, we cannot accept that human dignity be trampled upon.”

In our commitment to minister to God’s people as laity and religious, the first model of service for all Carmelites is Jesus our Lord, who reminded His followers that He came not to be served but to serve and to give His life for others. The Gospel, and especially St. Mark, speaks constantly of the healing ministry of Christ, the Man for others. In His Rule St. Albert holds up this model for the first Prior of the community and for all the brothers.

It is well to remember in this regard that often in our Carmelite history and in our spirituality, there have been tensions between ministry and prayer, between the twofold words of Elijah the prophet: “God lives, in whose presence I stand,” which became the battle cry of the mystics and contemplatives, and “With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts,” which became the battle cry of the defenders of the apostolic life. Certainly, the first hermits on Mount Carmel, because of the nature of the terrain and the difficulty of ministry in a Moslem culture, put great emphasis on prayer and meditation on the word of the Lord. Later in Europe, however, with the mitigation of the Rule in 1247 by Pope Innocent IV, this small group of hermits who were already dispersed in different areas became mendicant friars who lived and served in the midst of the people, following the example of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. I believe strongly that God blessed this fundamental change in our spirituality and our tradition. It is very interesting for me to read that from the year 1247 until the General Chapter in 1291, the Order grew from a few isolated communities that had come from the Holy Land to 12 Provinces with over 150 houses in the major countries of Europe. But that was 1291, and today is 2006. As Lay Carmelites and baptized Christians, you are called to be deeply involved in the mission of the Church, locally, nationally, and even on an international level. I certainly cannot indicate to you what your ministry should be, but the person of Elijah is a valid inspiration and model of your service in the Church. This congress will give you a wonderful opportunity to share and reflect with one another about your apostolic work in the Church. I would only encourage you to remember that any ministry, whether individually or in community, should hopefully flow from our Carmelite heritage and bring about the growth and sanctification of our families, our work environment, and our society.

Ninth Value: The Beauty of Creation

This is a value that I personally feel is very significant in our Carmelite tradition. Even though it has not been mentioned often in literature about our spirituality, it has truly been highlighted by many of our saints. I would encourage you strongly to look for the concept, Beauty of God’s Creation, in your reading and study of our tradition.

In the list of religious groups in the Church today, we are probably the most significant family that is called after a place - Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. Most other groups are name after a religious founder: Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Salesians. We proudly remember the words of Isaiah the prophet when he praised and thanked God, writing about “the beauty and splendor of Carmel.”

In our tradition, we think first of Mary, who is called “the Beauty of Carmel” (Decor Carmeli), “the Flower of Carmel” (Flos Carmeli), and “Star of the Sea” (Stella Maris). In our early Carmelite writings, the sea was so prominent, and our first foundations in Europe were all close to seaports and harbors. The symbols of our Carmelite values are often taken from nature: desert, mountain, fire, water, flame, flowers.

When we think of the beauty of God’s creation, a saint who comes readily to mind is St. Therese. At the very beginning of her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, Therese is trying to understand why God has preferences, even though

He loves everyone from all eternity with unconditional love. She writes: “Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery. He set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little flower or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would not be decked out with little wild flowers. And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden ... I am writing the story of the little flower gathered by Jesus.” Therese was truly in love with nature, the beauty of God’s creation. She spoke and wrote of the stars, the sea, the mountains. Her description of her trip from Lisieux to Rome before she entered Carmel is truly beautiful. Later in Carmel, she wrote one of her most inspiring poems about creation to her sister Celine, entitled The Canticle of Celine.

The writings, and especially the poems, of St. John of the Cross also come readily to mind when we think of this special value of beauty in our tradition: The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Living Flame of Love, and The Spiritual Canticle. His writing are filled with signs of God’s creation: woods, streams, mountains, flowers, meadows, fire and flame, fountains, winds and breezes, night and dawn, deers and doves, and especially his Beloved, both human and divine. He has a beautiful stanza in The Spiritual Canticle when he writes of the Beloved: “Scattering a thousand graces, he passed through these groves in haste, and gazing in his going, with only his glance, he left them clothed with beauty” (“Mil gracias derramando, paso par estos sotos can presura, y yendolos mirando, can sola su figura vestidos los deja de hermosura”). John sees all created things clothed in beauty. He even capitalizes the word Beauty, as a way to emphasize God’s Being and His gifts. He rejoices in the marvels of creation where God has adorned persons and created things with such grace, loveliness and brilliance.

Other Carmelites have stressed similar aspects of the beauty of God’s creation: St. Teresa in her writings about streams and water, relating them to Jesus and His words: “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty; no, the water I give shall become a fountain within him leaping up to provide eternal life” (John 4:14); Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity and her love for the piano and music, light and photography, and her reflections on a favorite psalm: “God, You are my God, from dawn I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh longs for you, like earth arid and parched, without water” (Psalm 63); Blessed Titus Brandsma who wrote so glowingly on the beauty of the Falls at Niagara when he visited there in 1936. We should note here that our Carmelite spirituality is so close to that of the Franciscans in emphasizing this value. Saint Francis had such a great love for animals and for nature, as he shared his hymns to the sun, the moon and all creatures in praise of the beauty of God’s creation.

Tenth Value: The Need for Balance

In our inter-personal relationships - with our families, in our work environment, in our friendships both in community and with one another - there is a constant need for this value. We are always striving to find the proper relationship between the rational decision-making part of our personality, and our feelings and emotions - a harmony between our head and our heart. The Greek philosopher Plato put the need for balance so well as he encouraged all of us to find a proper harmony by which the inward person and the outward person might be one and at peace.

This challenge to find harmony and peace, this need for balance in our personal and Carmelite life, has been a constant theme in our tradition and in the writings of our saints. In the very last chapter of the Rule of Carmel, Albert shares his advice: “Here then are a few points I have written down to provide you with a standard of conduct to live up to ... See that the bounds of common sense are not exceeded, however, for common sense is the guide of the virtues.” Today we call this “common sense” balance, moderation, discretion, or prudence, remembering the old Latin saying: Virtus stat in media - “Virtue lies in a middle course.”

Reflect for a moment upon your own life in the light of our Carmelite heritage and spirituality. So often this need for balance creates a challenge, and sometimes there might be some definite tensions involved. For example: how much time can you give to your Lay Carmelite commitments and keep a proper balance with the needs of your family, your work, having quality time for friends and loved ones? Each of us as individuals and as a community must find a good balance between our time for prayer and our commitment to our work. As I already mentioned, one of the real challenges of daily living is: when do we listen to the rational side of our personality - our mind, our thinking, our head - or when are we more sensitive to our feelings and our emotions, to the whisperings of our heart.

In the history of Carmel almost from the beginning, even with the encouragement of Albert in the Rule, the need for a proper balance has truly been a challenge! It has been expressed by these tensions: action- contemplation, work-prayer, dialog-silence, friar-hermit, in the midst of the people-a solitary place. More concretely in practice - the original life of the hermits living in solitude on Mount Carmel and/or the mendicant friars serving in ministry among the people after the mitigation of Pope Innocent IV in 1247.

One of the earliest Prior Generals of the Order, Nicholas the Frenchman, was very adamant to his Carmelite brothers in 1270, encouraging them to give up ministry as friars in the city and to return to the desert and to the contemplative spirit of hermits. His letter, remembered in our tradition as The Flaming Arrow (Ignea Sagitta), urged a retreat to the slopes of Mount Carmel, if not literally, then whenever and however such an eremitical life could be established.

This challenge to find the proper balance in living out the Carmelite ideal is seen especially in the Teresian reform of the late 1500s. As a cloistered nun, St. Teresa desired to return to the primitive inspiration of the Rule of Albert as she understood it, with an emphasis on a community of close friendship among her sisters, living in silence and solitude. She wrote beautifully of her goal, “I want to see God,” and yet there was the call “to be a daughter of the Church.” Within her lifetime, and especially after her death, the Discalced priests and brothers who followed her call to reform were soon divided among themselves because of the need to find a proper balance; one group emphasizing the observance of the eremitical life (those led by Nicholas Doria) and others seeking more apostolic ministry (those led by Jerome Gratian). This tension and this challenge, and a need for balance, obviously continue even in our own days.

Conclusion

Even as I have presented these ten fundamental values of our Carmelite spirituality, I want you to remember that they are only to be considered as suggestions for you, as they are drawn from my own personal reading and study as a Carmelite for sixty years. I would encourage each of you, both personally and as a member of a particular community, to discuss and share about the values that you feel are most significant and essential in your life. Often in my travels, in a spirit of humor and probably from the perspective of a former teacher, I used to like to tell our cloistered nuns that all of our Carmelite spirituality and our charism could be summed up and very easily explained to others by ten simple words: God, Jesus, person, faith, love, prayer, community, ministry, beauty and balance. May all the ideas contained in these simple words enrich your life, and may they make you proud to be a member of our Carmelite Family.

Questions

1. In your personal life what do you see as your number one value and why?
2. Where is Mary in your Carmelite values?

Fr. John’s presentation was published in the book Formation and Communication at the Service of the Community, (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2007) - ISBN 978-88-7288-098-2.

Eugene McCaffrey, OCD

I have been asked to speak about contemplative prayer in the Carmelite tradition: a vast subject that covers eight hundred years of history, reflection and lived experience. Practically every Carmelite author has written about it, from the first hermits who gathered on Mount Carmel, inspired by the life of the prophet Elijah, down to the present day.

However, I think it is true to say that in recent years there has been a rediscovery of the centrality of contemplation in our Carmelite charism. Prayer, community and ministry are the accepted pillars of our vocation but contemplation - ‘that loving gaze that sees God in everything’, is once again seen as the central focus of the Carmelite way of life.

It would be easy for me this afternoon to quote the classic teachings of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila on contemplation but I think there is a real need to translate these into our own personal search for meaning and truth. Our experience of God and our spirituality today must emerge from the historical, concrete situation in which we find ourselves and must in turn challenge and enliven it. The contemplative response is not a luxury or an added extra; it is at the very core of how we see life and cope with the challenges and pressures of what we call our postmodern world. Perhaps this is what Karl Rahner meant when he said, a generation ago: ‘The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.’ The real challenge today is between mysticism and despair.

A Way of Being

Contemplation begins with desire - not our desire for God, but his desire for us. The first and greatest commandment may be to love God with every fibre of our being, but there is something still more fundamental: the realisation that we are loved first. Every contemplative makes this discovery, and in fact bases his/her life on it: that our God is a pursuing God. The whole Carmelite tradition is clear: our desire for God is first awakened by his desire for us. This is the message of our great saints and mystics. The Dark Night and The Spiritual Canticle of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle - together with every other spiritual classic - celebrate this divine pursuit: the Lover and the beloved seeking each other in the light and the darkness of love’s turbulent ways.

The hungers of the heart and the longings of the spirit are the result of God first desiring us and coming to us in love. This is what Iain Matthew, one of our most popular Carmelite writers, calls ‘the impact of God’: a God who is not a bystander waiting for us to find him but a restless God seeking to make space for himself in our lives. The challenge, of course, for all of us, is to let ourselves be loved, as the young French Carmelite, Elizabeth of the Trinity has said, and allow the reality of this love to change our hearts.

It often comes as a surprise that Carmelite writers speak so little about ways and methods of prayer. Instead, they go straight to the heart of what prayer is all about: exposure to this self- surrendering God. Their concern does not consist in the knowledge that we are saved, but in the assurance that we are loved. For them, the focus is clear and what they seek most of all is to awaken the heart to the presence within. ‘No matter how much you think you are searching for God’, John of the Cross reminds us, ‘he is searching for you much more.’

The one we are searching for is here in the very depths of our being, inviting and waiting for our response. This is why the key element of Carmelite prayer is silent, loving attentiveness to the one who dwells within.

The heart of contemplative prayer is love, and love is the only reality that will ultimately change us. Only when we have found a greater and a deeper love can we let go of the lesser loves that can ensnare the heart and hold it captive. Contemplation is the key to freedom of heart; it is a way of opening ourselves to the embrace of God’s love. John of the Cross may have a reputation for rugged asceticism but at the core of his teaching is the fact that love is the only reality that will ultimately change the heart from within. John is at pains to remind us that there is no setting out on the contemplative journey, unless the soul is, in the beautiful Spanish phrase, en amores inflamada, ‘enkindled with love and yearning’.

One Dark Night

Central to all Carmelite teaching on contemplation is the haunting image of the dark night described by John of the Cross, taken from one of his most famous poems, called: ‘One Dark Night’. Most of his writing, in one way or another, is a commentary on this poem. John uses this powerful symbol of night to describe a time of great personal crisis in prayer and in one’s life in general.

Contemplation may be, as he has described it, ‘an inflow of God’s love into the heart’, but this inflow is as much a source of pain as it is of light. At a certain point on the journey, the lights go out, the spring runs dry, the engine grinds to a halt, the centre cannot hold, the honeymoon is over ... whatever image you wish to use. God is healing and freeing the soul; the light, which in itself is not painful, blinds the soul, causing darkness, pain and confusion.

John’s advice is clear and has a universal relevance: darkness is part of the human reality. We need to let go of our accustomed ways of seeing and doing, and enter into a different landscape; sometimes it takes darkness to bring us alive. The poet David Whyte captures this beautifully in his poem ‘Sweet Darkness’:

It is time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes to recognise its own;

there you can be sure

you will not be beyond love;

the night will give you horizons

further than your eyes can see.

Which is exactly what John of the Cross is saying: learn to be at home in the darkness, do not run away from it, do not fight it or even try to understand it, embrace it - ‘the night has eyes’. A new and different world is being born, what seem to be death pangs are in fact birth pangs, the soul in darkness is being renewed and transfigured; a new and terrible beauty is born. Painful though it may be, there is in fact no other way except the way of trust and surrender, and ultimately of belief in the creative and transforming power of love. John’s invitation to accept ‘the dark ray of contemplation’ may not be easy, but there is no other way.

Dark Night of the World

And yet John’s insight is wider than any individual, personal experience. John Paul II, in his letter to Carmelites, Master in the Faith, speaks of the relevance of the term dark night to our present age - a term, he says, that refers not just to a phase of the individual spiritual journey, but also has a collective character as well, a bearing on all life, especially for an age all too painfully aware of the silence or absence of God.[1]

It is no longer enough to speak of the dark night of the soul; we must acknowledge a deeper reality: the dark night of the world. Another Carmelite writer, Constance Fitzgerald, expresses this accurately, I think, by the term ‘impasse’. This she sees as an existential cry for deeper wisdom and enlightenment, something that is both personal and global. With profound insight she brings contemporary issues into dialogue with the classical teaching of John of the Cross: ‘In a true impasse,’ she writes, ‘every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted.’[2]

The whole experience of powerlessness, confusion, and the loss of meaning that characterise the spiritual journey are the very same realities evident in so much of our society today: the political, economic and social vacuum that pervades the modern world. Perhaps the radical breakdown of structures and the seemingly impossible problems in our society are nothing else but a harrowing cry for a different vision and new insight.

Contemplation lives on the frontier of human consciousness and calls out to us from the edges of human experience. It will bring you to a place you did not know you needed to go and confront you with a truth about yourself you really did not want to know. Contemplation is not seeing new things, but seeing things in a new way. True contemplation is subversive and always has been, it affects our understanding of the very nature of God and this in turn affects the character and quality of the way we live. Contemplation both challenges and undermines: Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King dared to see things in a new way and paid the ultimate price.

The temptation for those imprisoned within this impasse of darkness is either despair or indifference. A world that lacks imagination and creativity is a world that has lost the spirit of contemplation, ceased to look at new horizons, and has accepted the lies told by politicians, experts and global marketing, betrayed by a gospel of despair. We seem trapped into helplessness and a lack of vision: ‘Everything,’ John says, ‘seems to be working in reverse’ (1DN 8:3).

Yet it is precisely when we are broken, poor and powerless that we are most open to the dark mystery of God’s creative action. Contemplation is not just ‘waiting in the dark for something to happen’; it is a dynamic confrontation with the unexplored, hidden places in our lives. Things do not have to be as they are; there is another way. It is the way of faith, not just faith in God, but faith in a process that is bigger than ourselves: the way of contemplation.

The Way of Wisdom

If we deal with the dark impasse in our lives or in society, either by denial or repression, then we are closing our hearts to the life- giving wisdom of the Spirit; we have left no room for grace, for enlightenment or for alternative ways of responding. If we persist in ‘doing it our own way’, we close the door to new insights and fresh horizons; all we have is more violence, anger and confrontation.

Dark night shows up the ‘shadow’, contemplative listening reveals the ‘light’. Cold logic and the wisdom of this world will never give the answers or solutions that bring ultimate peace and fulfilment. ‘John of the Cross,’ John Paul II has said, ‘does not try to give a speculative answer to the appalling problem of suffering but sifts out something of the marvellous transformation which God effects in darkness.’[3]

Only those who know nothing of prayer, meditation or contemplation think that they are useless exercises, a waste of time and energy. Sitting in meditation, spending one’s time in what John of the Cross calls ‘the sweet idleness of contemplation’, places one at the very centre of the pulsating world. ‘The One who sits in meditation,’ the Zen masters remind us, ‘sits for the whole world.’ Nothing in the universe is more intensely alive and active than genuine prayer and contemplation. One act of pure love, John reminds us, is of more value to the whole world than all other acts put together.

There is a crisis of authority in our society today. We no longer believe the cliches and platitudes of our politicians and economists and the global giants of commerce and industry. We feel betrayed and abused. And yet people do listen today when spiritual leaders speak. Why? Because they speak with authority and with compassion. Why is it that the voice of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Pope Benedict XVI, Aung San Suu Kyi, Archbishop Tutu, Mother Teresa of Calcutta resonate with such clarity in our hearts in a way few, if any, of our political leaders do? Because they speak ‘in the spirit’, without self-interest and from within a centre of truth and compassion.

Compassion is the first fruit of contemplation, a compassion born out of a different worldview, a world where people matter and the voiceless have a voice. They look on the world with eyes of love, not of greed or control or power. There is integrity and a ring of authenticity about their words. Their actions are in tune with their words. In the unselfconscious words of one Sufi mystic: ‘I am what I do, I do what I am.’ On the day she died, in her Carmelite monastery, Therese of Lisieux - a woman with no political or social agenda - could say in all honesty and humility: ‘I have never sought anything but the truth.’ And her words, one hundred years later, touch and transform countless lives. Nothing conquers but the truth; and the victory of truth is love.

Harnessing the Energy of Love

One of the great insights of John of the Cross is that the best growth - perhaps the only growth - is downwards. It is one of the many paradoxes of his teaching: we grow, not by addition but by subtraction, not by having more but by having less, not by always saying ‘yes’ to ourselves but by learning to say ‘no’. ‘More’, ‘bigger’, ‘better’ may be the catchwords of the commercial world but they are not part of John’s vocabulary. He speaks much more about ‘letting go’, about not desiring, about detachment; it is not the things we possess that hinder us, it is the things that possess us. John invites us to travel light and with freedom of heart. As he says and I quote ‘Even as a ladder has steps that we may go up, it has them also that we may go down. Of such is the nature of secret contemplation. For on this path the way down is the way up and the way up is the way down’ (2DN 18:2).

But, once again, this growth downwards also has a collective character. The journey is not only personal, it is universal. When we truly find our own centre, we find the ‘still point’ of the turning world. Nothing is as life-giving as genuine contemplation. The contemplative gaze penetrates to the heart of all human reality; it is the deepest source of energy and compassion for the world. This is the greatest gift the contemplative can give to the world: to see clearly, and to share that vision with others.

Finally, contemplative prayer in the Carmelite tradition embraces the dark night and the living flame, the spiritual canticle and the ascent of Mount Carmel. Presence and absence, joy and pain, discovery and bewilderment, they are all there, a dark mystery full of light: a way of paradox and seeming contradiction; not afraid to be different, re-interpreting the past, challenging the present and opening new horizons for the future.

It was all of these things for John of the Cross, poet, mystic and contemplative. The totality of his experience erupted in a transforming vision of a world redeemed by Christ - the longings of every human heart, the cry of the restless spirit, and creation itself, all gathered into a unity of purpose and harnessed into an energy of love, as he cried out:

‘Mine are the heavens and mine the earth. Mine are the nations; the just are mine and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me. What then do you ask for and seek, my soul? Yours is all this, and all is for you.’[4]

[1] Master in the Faith: Apostolic Letter of John Paul II (December 14^th, 1990) 14.

[2] ‘Impasse and the Dark Night’, in Living with the Apocalypse, ed. Tilden Edwards (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984).p 94.

[3] Master in the Faith, op. cit., 14.

[4]John of the Cross, ‘Prayer of a soul enkindled with love’, Sayings of Light and Love 27.

Paul Radzilowski

It seems everyone has his own John Paul II. Even among highly committed Catholics there are many views on the lessons of his papacy. Indeed, he was pope for so long, and did so much in so many spheres, that a full account of his activities is perhaps nearly impossible, especially for those who were his contemporaries and have not the advantage of distance in perspective. I intend therefore not so much to describe the legacy of Bl. John Paul II in general, but to bring into focus just one aspect of the man: his formation in, and practice of the Carmelite way of Spirituality. Although officially never more than a member of the Carmelite Confraternity of the Brown Scapular, his attempts to enter Carmelite religious life, as well as his careful and long-lasting study of the masters of Carmelite spirituality, above all St. John of the Cross, are well known. These spiritual ties to the Carmelites began in his youth, when a pious tailor of mystical bent, Jan Tyranowski, introduced him to the masters of Carmel, and persisted throughout his life. It is worth therefore drawing up in order the ways in which this formation shaped his spiritual life, teaching, and view of the problems and prospects of the Church, especially in his activities as its chief shepherd.

It may seem that Bl. John Paul II was a strange candidate for special attachment to the ways of Carmel, given his outgoing nature, love of crowds, academic role as a philosopher rather than theologian, deep involvement in things of the world, and intense interest in social questions. It may therefore seem that Carmelite spirituality—with its emphasis on the internal life and contemplative prayer—must have had little relevance to his most significant activities, whatever intellectual interest it may have possessed for him. Such an impression however, would be mistaken.

It is worth remembering that the first foundation of Bl. John Paul II’s public acts was always prayer, with which he was accustomed to start not only the day, but in a special way all the major stages of his life. The same man who presided over World Youth Day, slipped unobtrusively into the Ursuline convent in Warsaw to spend many hours prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament when he first learned he had been selected to be a bishop, “because he had many things to discuss with the Lord.”  Soon after being elected pope, he created temporary consternation for a member of his household staff unfamiliar with his ways, when it seemed he had inexplicably vanished. As it turns out, he was lying prostrate before the sacrament in his private chapel, out of sight of any who looked for him casually there without looking down. As ordinary of the diocese of Cracow, his efforts on behalf of the religious rights of his people in face of communist attempts to erode them had been centered first of all on encouraging his people to conduct a prayer campaign for religious freedom. Indeed, even as pope, on a day-to-day basis he took whatever time he could between his activities for prayer.  For all his successes in the politics of the World over the years, Bl. John Paul II tried to compress the time each day he spent on its affairs—or any administrative tasks—to certain set times, in order to leave the gaps that could be filled in by praying.

Certainly Bl. John Paul II was not one of the “sullen saints” from whom St. Teresa of Avila prayed to God for deliverance. But his appreciation and practice of her spirit and teaching did not end at keeping a calm mien, free of resentment, regardless of the pressure of events. One of the interesting aspects of his devotion to the masters of Carmel was the ways he found lessons in them which were applicable to various aspects of the pastoral life of the Church as he saw it, and the needs of the times in which he lived.  He recommended especially to Catholics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century the example of St. Theresa’s constant prayer “with and in the Church in its time of crisis,” brought about in her case by the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century, but relevant also to the crisis of faith of recent generations. Crisis, though, is also interpreted by Bl. John Paul II as a time of special grace for those who are open to it, since God never leaves his Church alone in its trials.

Pope John Paul II also invoked St. Teresa of Avila’s work of love as a contemplative as an inspiration to work for the Church in its troubles, and a reminder that there is no genuine love for the Lord apart from the Church: “there is no love for Christ which does not result in self-dedication to the Church—and in the Church—and where there is not a willingness to be obedient children; that does not show itself in works performed with fervor, with vigorous force them obtained by prayer.”  Indeed, he insists that to follow in the footsteps of St. Teresa, one must realize that to love the Church, and those who are members of it, is to love the body of the beloved: the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Here we have the prayer, vigor, and personal dedication to the Church that were all major watchwords of his own way of conducting his pontificate. This is not to mention the simplicity in obedience to faith that so often characterized Bl. John Paul II, despite the strongly intellectual side of his nature. Finally, Bl. John Paul II sees St. Teresa of Avila as a beacon of understanding of the goodness and mercy of God, who speaks to the human heart and draws it to himself, dovetailing well with this pope’s own promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion.

Bl. John Paul II also saw the other great Carmelite Theresa, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, as an important guide to our age. To Bl. John Paul II, she teaches us especially today to lead a life of love in union with the Divine Love in the body of Christ. In this is to be discovered an antidote to the hedonism of our times. Likewise, the model of her contemplative’s fixation on Christ can counter our age’s fixation on passing things. In her also, in a special way, he finds the “convergence of doctrine and concrete experience.”  Concern for lived human experience, and the need for it to be “authentic” is something common in modern culture and thought, and of special philosophical interest to the late pope. To him, this is something potentially good in modern culture that needs to be put in relation to the philosophical heritage and faith of the Church, with St. Thérèse as a model. He praises St. Thérèse for her absorption in the hard work of prayer in support of missions as a special kind of union in love of both the active and contemplative lives, even if concretely the role of the missionary and contemplative are different.

But perhaps the Carmelite saint and doctor of the Church with which Bl. John Paul II had the longest and deepest intellectual and spiritual involvement was St. John of the Cross, about whose teaching on faith he wrote his theological doctorate. John Paul II’s own serious poetry was strongly influenced by St. John of the Cross’s verses, so it is suitable that the future pope’s own first published work was a poem that appeared in the Polish Carmelite magazine Głos Karmelu [Voice of Carmel].

It has been remarked by students of the thought of the late pope that his reading of St. John of the Cross left a strong mark on one of the landmarks of his pontificate: his cycle of catechesis known commonly as “The Theology of the Body.”  Christian conjugal life in this case is closely compared to the Love of God for the soul and vice versa, as well as the unreserved gift of self in love of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.  Now, St. John of the Cross sees the relationship of the devout human soul to its Creator as a kind of participation in God’s total self-love, for which the marriage bond is the most appropriate analogy, hence the Spanish saint’s language of “spiritual betrothal and marriage” to describe it. John Paul II sets out to apply this analogy “the other way around” to discover the meaning of the human body and sexuality in a deeper spiritual context. This spiritual root of human sexuality, of course, goes well beyond it, but at the same time in some sense animates its properly ordered dynamic of love. The unreserved giving of self in fertility is thus an integral part of a truthful relationship in a bodily sense, if its Trinitarian meaning is to be preserved. Likewise, the permanence of marriage in God’s original plan in the teaching of Jesus is closely proportionate to the constancy of love of the eternal God.

St. John of the Cross is perhaps best known for his doctrine concerning the “night of the soul.”  In fact, to St. John there are several kinds of night that a Christian soul can experience in its spiritual ascent to God.  Those who are attached to the senses must first purge their love of them through dark night of senses. As the future pope explains in his doctoral thesis, faith underlies this, but it is not necessarily in the leading place for the Christian soul at this stage of its spiritual journey, precisely because many faculties, including intellect, imagination, the ‘bright’ aspects of spirituality are of profit to it. Most spiritually inclined lay Christians can progress in this kind of abandonment of attachment-love for all passing things whatsoever, in order to pass over to a purer love God, for He cannot be possessed with anything else. This casts the all these things into a state of eclipse, or darkness, for the soul.  Following St. John, he first notes that faith leads the contemplative soul further toward God than even the night of the sense is capable, by helping it realize that he whom it loves, God, is beyond any form it can grasp in this life. Here faith leads alone. This can culminate in “the dark night of the soul,” that prepares the soul for the final union with God, as far it is possible in this life.

Bl. John Paul II suggests in some comments as pope on John of the Cross, that this spiritual theology of darkness is especially suited to modern people, since modern people experience an especial darkness, even at early stages of their spiritual journey.  This unique modern darkness is a result of the contemporary crisis of faith, aggravated by the totalitarian horrors of the modern age, from which Christians in St. John’s day were protected. This means modern Christians have potentially a paradoxical special means of faster spiritual advance. But they also have a special pressing need to be guided by an abandonment to faith, and its darkness, even at earlier stages of Christian life.

Bl. John Paul II will doubtless have a multifaceted and long-lasting influence in many spheres of the life of the Church, no doubt. But to people of our age this message may be most important: to doggedly let faith take the lead in our lives.

from Crisis Magazine

Flos Carmeli, vitis florigera,
splendor caeli, Virgo puerpera singularis.
Mater mitis, sed viri nescia,
Carmelitis esto propitia,
stella maris.

IN SOLLEMNITATE B.V. MARIAE DE MONTE CARMELO

Fernando Prior Generalis
Domusque Generalis Communitas
16. VII. 2015

*Immagine: Madonna del Carmine “della misericordia” Sec. XVIII
soffitto della Sagrestia del Carmine di São Cristóvão – Brasile
Foto: Maxuell Correia

Universal: Indigenous Peoples - That indigenous peoples, whose identity and very existence are threatened, will be shown due respect.

Evangelization: Latin America and the Caribbean - That the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean, by means of her mission to the continent, may announce the Gospel with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

Lectio Divina July - Julio - Luglio 2016

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• Friday, July 1, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 9,9-13
• Saturday, July 2, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 9,14-17
• Sunday, July 3, 2016
  Lectio Divina: 14th Sunday of ordinary time (C)
• Monday, July 4, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 9,18-26
• Tuesday, July 5, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 9,32-38
• Wednesday, July 6, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 10,1-7
• Thursday, July 7, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 10,7-15
• Friday, July 8, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 10,16-23
• Saturday, July 9, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 10,24-33
• Sunday, July 10, 2016
  Lectio Divina: 15th Sunday of ordinary time (C)
• Monday, July 11, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 10,34 - 11,1
• Tuesday, July 12, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 11,20-24
• Wednesday, July 13, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 11,25-27
• Thursday, July 14, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 11, 28-30
• Friday, July 15, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 12,1-8
• Saturday, July 16, 2016
  Lectio Divina: The B.V. Mary of Mount Carmel - John 19,25-27
• Sunday, July 17, 2016
  Lectio Divina: 16th Sunday of ordinary time (C)
• Monday, July 18, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 12,38-42
• Tuesday, July 19, 2016
  Lectio: Matthew 12,46-50
• Wednesday, July 20, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 13,1-9
• Thursday, July 21, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 13,10-17
• Friday, July 22, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Saint Mary Magdalene
• Saturday, July 23, 2016
  Lectio: Matthew 13,24-30
• Sunday, July 24, 2016
  Lectio Divina: 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)
• Monday, July 25, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Saint James, apostle
• Tuesday, July 26, 2016
  Divina Lectio: Saints Joachim and Ann, parents of Mary
• Wednesday, July 27, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 13,44-46
• Thursday, July 28, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 13,47-53
• Friday, July 29, 2016
  Lectio Divina: St. Martha - Lk. 10,38-42
• Saturday, July 30, 2016
  Lectio Divina: Matthew 14,1-12
• Sunday, July 31, 2016
  Lectio Divina: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Dear brothers and sisters in Carmel,

As we do every year, we get ready to celebrate the feasts in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our Mother and Sister as we like to call her among Carmelites, following the ancient tradition that comes down to us from the Middle Ages. First of all, I want to offer you my best wishes for the feast. May all the activities, celebrations, devotions and all that we are accustomed to do throughout these days by way of honouring the Blessed Virgin, be a sign of something very deep inside, and of a real desire to be close to Mary the Mother of Jesus, (Acts 1:14)  so that she, the first disciple and follower of the Lord, may be an inspiration to us on our journey. In view of that, each day we will offer, as we do every year through our website, an outline for a novena that is the work of a number of biblical scholars.  Here we have a number of reflections that are both simple and profound, that may be of some assistance to people in achieving a greater spiritual intensity at this time.  

*****

This year I would like to propose for your reflection the experience and doctrine of three great Carmelites of different periods in our history who for different reasons we remember this year. St. Mary Magdalene de'Pazzi, Blessed Baptist of Mantua and Blessed Titus Brandsma. All three  - each in a different language, with a distinct mariological background,  and with different sensitivities and emphases - underlined this fundamental dimension of the Carmelite charism: a filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, that is deep, and oftentimes poetic. They enriched that devotion and more importantly, they lived it, authentically, in a way that made it a spur to holiness. Would that we too might renew our understanding of that devotion to Mary so that it might give new energy to our Carmelite vocation at the service of the Church and of the world.  

*****

Last March 20th was the 5th centenary of the death of Blessed Baptist of Mantua, known also as “Spagnoli” on account of his father’s nationality. Baptist entered the Order as part of the Congregation of Mantua that was at the height of its splendour in those years. In addition to being an excellent religious and a prominent figure in the history of our Order (he became Vicar General of the reformed congregation and then at the end of his life, Prior General of the whole Order) he was also an important person in the life of the Church at that time, known as the “the Mantuan”, he was an important writer passing into history as the “Christian Virgil”.        

Throughout his poetic composition and his religious life, Baptist of Mantua continued to sing the praises of Mary. He dedicated to her the sublime verses that we find in his work called La Partenice mariana. He loved the title, Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel that Carmelites have been using from time immemorial. It is a beautiful title, which when properly understood, shows us a very important dimension of our mariology and devotion to Mary: Mary is our Mother and our Sister, who walks with us on the road to the Father. She stood by her Son, very often in the background, with deep humility, and also with the fidelity that led her to the foot of the cross and to remain with the nascent Church in waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

May Mary help us to be companions on the journey for the men and women of our times. May she, our Mother and Sister, help us to remain faithful to the following of Christ, as true and ever persevering and faithful disciples. And at the end of our journey may we be able to proclaim joyfully as Blessed Spagnoli did when he addressed these words to the Blessed Virgin: “Now your paths and mine are crossing …..”

*****

Throughout this year, there have been several events and celebrations to honour the 450th anniversary of the birth of St. Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi, the great Florentine Carmelite who reached the heights of mysticism. This Carmelite saint, in the course of her intense mystical life, developed a very deep Marian piety, that was both spiritually and theologically very solid. At various times, she uses the image of the “door” in referring to Mary and her role in the history of salvation.  Mary is “that door by which God came into the world and by which we enter the heavenly homeland” (Probations, 2, 202). What a beautiful image for this jubilee year in which Pope Francis invites us to pass through the door and come into the presence of the God of Mercy!

On other occasions she refers to her own monastery as the home of Mary, Mary’s house, thus proclaiming that Carmel, every Carmel, is to be a humble dwelling in which Mary accompanies and inspires us. Mary Magdalene, in words that are fiery, bold and poetic, recreates the beauty of Mary and invites all of us to come into that dwelling place, and to cross its threshold with great confidence, passing through the door that is Mary, and entering the place of divine mercy:

How pure and beautiful you are, Mary! By your gaze you make the Word bring joy to the angels, comfort to sinners and energy to pilgrims (...) From the heavens, with your gaze, it is like as if  God is no longer God, and his anger is lessened and his creatures here on earth begin to ask if God is really so powerful and just when they see so much mercy that every time a person turns to him, he is waiting, and still being God, just and pure, does not come across that way but shows his mercy much more. In the beauty of your eyes, the whole of creation rejoices and the throne of the Holy Trinity descends ….

May Mary help us to discover that merciful God who lovingly waits for us. May she help us also to be the planters and the conveyors of that mercy, especially towards those who need it most. May we Carmelites be able to radiate that mercy to the world that needs it so much, a world that so often is cold and hostile.

*****

As perhaps you already know, the case of a miracle is being examined, attributed to the intercession of Blessed Titus Brandsma in the diocese of Palm Beach in the U.S.A. Blessed Titus was faithful to that fundamental aspect of our charism. On many occasions he preached and taught the true sense of that Marian piety that leads to the depths of the Gospel. It was in line with this that in 1932, before announcing the events to mark the 15th centenary of the Council of Ephesus, he published an open letter addressed to Protestants in which he tried to explain the sense that we Catholics give to these celebrations and he showed his desire (sincerely ecumenical) not to offend the sensitivities of anyone.

Blessed Titus was adamant that a correct and healthy devotion to Mary could lead no where else but to the heart of Christian life and to the very mystery of Christ. In that way this Dutch Carmelite was ahead of his time in terms of what the dogmatic Constitution of the II Vatican Council, Lumen gentium would say many decades later, when, while strongly recommending devotion to the Blessed Virgin, it warned:

This most Holy Synod (...) exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously (...) from all gross exaggerations, let them rightly illustrate the duties and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which always look to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity and piety. Let them assiduously keep away from whatever, either by word or deed, could lead separated brethren or any other into error regarding the true doctrine of the Church. (LG 67) 

An idea that has deep patristic resonances, very dear to Blessed Titus, was the idea that we are all, like Mary, in some way, “bearers of God” (Theotokos)  In an analogous way, of course, as believers we have to try to ensure that Jesus and the Good News of the Gospel reaches everybody. With the witness that we give in our lives, with our prayer, and the words we say …. we are called to be bearers of God, out of our humanity and the authenticity of our lives. Blessed Titus lived like that, radically and heroically, right to the dramatic moments that preceded his death in Dachau.

May we, Carmelites of the 21st century, take on that same challenge, like Mary, generously, enthusiastically and creatively to be people who bear God for others!

*****

Inspired by these models, let us dispose ourselves to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. May she always be our companion and guide.  Happy Feastday!

With fraternal affection,

Fernando Millán Romeral O.Carm.
Prior General

The Carmelite Order is once again delighted to announce today, 28th June 2016, that the Holy Father, Pope Francis has nominated bishop of the diocese of Malang, in Indonesia, Fr. Henricus Pidyarto Gunawan, O.Carm., of the Province of Indonesia. Fr. Henricus was born at Malang in Indonesia, on 13th July 1955. Following his profession in the Order on 15th January 1976, he was ordained priest on 7th February 1982. Since 2012 he was president of the “Philosophical and Theological Higher Institute ‘Widya Sasana’”.

To Fr. Henricus we offer our warmest congratulations on behalf of the whole Carmelite Family.

On the 11th July 2016, at 14.00, at the Curia of the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, United States of America, the opening session of the diocesan inquiry into the presumed miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Titus Brandsma O. Carm, will take place. This opening session will be presided over by Msgr. Gerald Barbarito, Bishop of Palm Beach, who had agreed to introduce the Cause and appoint the Tribunal so that the gathering of the evidence regarding the alleged extraordinary healing may be effectively done and that the witnesses may be heard.

The Postulator General, who coordinated the preliminary stages, has appointed Fr. Mario Esposito O. Carm. Vice postulator of the Cause.

We invite members of the Carmelite Family to pray for the success of the Cause.

The Elective Chapter of the Carmelite Monastery of Guiguinto, Philippines, was held 21 June 2016. The following were elected:

• Prioress:  Sr. M. Rescelia Garcia, O.Carm.
• 1st Councilor:   Sr. M. de Cristo Rey Cruz, O.Carm.
• 2nd Councilor:  Sr. M. Carmeli Hilario, O.Carm.
• 3rd Councilor:   Sr. M. Josephine Faustino, O.Carm.
• 4th Couniclor:   Sr. Theresita A’Jose, O.Carm.
• Director of Novices:  Sr. M. Fatima Faustino, O.Carm.
• Treasurer:  Sr. Consuelo Sulit, O.Carm.
• Sacristan:  Sr. Cherrie Marie Vasquez, O.Carm.