Displaying items by tag: Calendar of Feasts and Memorials

1 September Optional Memorial

St. Teresa Margaret Redi, OCD., was recognized as an intensely spiritual religious with a profound devotion to the phrase "God is love." She was also noted for her humble service to the sick.

One of the girls who had graduated from the boarding school several years before approached one of Anna Maria’s teachers to thank her for the education and the Christian formation, as she was entering the Carmelites. Anna Maria saw the deep joy on this young woman’s face and instantly knew that she, too, desired to enter the Carmelites.

In the spring of 1764, she applied to the Monastery of St. Teresa in Florence and was admitted in November. She took the name Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart and professed her vows in March of 1766.

Teresa was assigned the role of community nurse, and she tenderly cared for the suffering sisters in her care, particularly those experiencing mental illness. Teresa devoted herself to caring for her fellow sisters and cultivating her robust interior life. As a Carmelite sister, Teresa maintained the disposition of joy that drew her to the Order, despite rebukes and harsh treatment.

Teresa died at the age of twenty-three, on March 11, 1770, in the midst of an outbreak of a disease in the monastery. She continued caring for other ill nuns until she reached her deathbed. Teresa’s body, swollen from disease, at the time of her funeral, had miraculously been restored to its healthy form.

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26 August Optional Memorial

Excerpts from the Homily of St. John Paul II at the Beatification of 110 Victims including Carmelite Jacques Retouret

Martyrdom is a special gift of the Holy Spirit: a gift for the entire Church. It finds its culmination in today’s liturgy of Beatification, in which we give special glory to God: “Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus.” God, who through a solemn act of the Church—Beatification—crowns their merits, at the same time reveals the gift of grace bestowed upon them, as the liturgy proclaims: “Eorum coronando merita, tua dona coronas” (Missale Romanum, Praefatio de Sanctis I). 

The new Blesseds, faced with the choice of abandoning the demands of the faith or dying for it, strengthened by God’s grace, placed their own fate in His hands. The martyrs renounced defending themselves not because they held life in low esteem, but because of their total love for Jesus Christ. 

9. This morning, dear Brothers and Sisters, our thoughts turn to the sixty-four French priests who died along with hundreds of others on the “pontoons of Rochefort.” As Saint Paul exhorted Timothy, they “fought the good fight of the faith.” They even endured a long ordeal for having remained faithful to their faith and to the Church. They died because they remained steadfast to the very end in affirming their close communion with Pope Pius VI. 

In profound moral solitude, they were committed to maintaining a spirit of prayer. “Tormented” by hunger and thirst, they uttered not a single word of hatred toward their tormentors. Slowly, they allowed themselves to be identified with the sacrifice of Christ, which they celebrated by virtue of their ordination. Here they are, then, presented to our gaze as a living sign of the power of Christ at work in human weakness. 

In the depths of their distress, they retained a sense of forgiveness. The unity of the faith and the unity of their homeland appeared to them as more important than anything else. We can therefore joyfully echo the words of Sacred Scripture: the souls of these righteous ones are in God’s hands. “They seemed to perish. Their departure was regarded as a misfortune, but they themselves are at peace.” 

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17 August Optional Memorial

Bl. Angelo Mazzinghi was a noted preacher, prior, and reformer, teacher of theology and was known for his pious devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Carmelite Rule.

The exact date of his birth is unknown but was certainly before 1386. He is sometime referred to as Angelo Agostino but Agostino is his father’s name. He was received into the Carmelite Order in 1413.

He was the first member of the reformed observance of Our Lady of the Woods (S. Maria delle Selve) and served as the prior of several of the Carmelite communities. Around 1415 he was already ordained and was assigned to preach at the Selve in the years 1435-1430 and 1437 and then he was prior at Florence in the years 1435-1437.

He taught theology in both Florence and Frascati but was noted for his preaching. On one particular occasion of preaching, according to fellow Carmelite Nicholas Calciuri who was a witness, roses and lilies poured from Angelo’s mouth, which two angels wove into a crown. In his iconography, he is often shown with flowers falling from his mouth as he preaches.

Before his death he retired to a Carmelite house where he spent the remainder of his life in contemplation and meditation. Bl. Angelo died in Florence in August 1438 at the age of 53. He was buried in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. His relics were moved to the Brancacci Chapel in 1739 and to the main altar in 1930.

Pope Clement XIII approved of his devotion and beatified Blessed Angelo on March 7, 1761. The Florentines called him “Blessed Angiolino.”

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12 August Optional Memorial

On the surface, Bakanja was a simple, unassuming boy from one of many Congolese villages. But he stood out for his goodness of character. Those who knew him, like Remacle Linganga, the labor leader of Coquilhatville, remembered him as a very affable and sweet person, who did not like unnecessary disputes, friendly with anyone regardless of color, and devoid of malice. However, he was by no means just an accommodating person. For he was intelligent and knew what he wanted, what was good to accept and what was to be avoided. He was loyal and of good character, a real man despite being still very young. Without getting lost in idle chatter he willingly dialogued with other workers from whom he learned many things. Above all he was sure to listen especially when talking about useful and interesting things.

There was one topic that particularly captured his attention, and that was when the talk refered to the God of Jesus. He would listen, reflect, and ask questions. So he learned that those speaking about this Jesus were men called missionaries, who had come from Belgium. Bakanja already had a faith of his own but it was somewhat confused. Wanting to better understand who this God these missionaries came to talk about is, he decided to go to them in Boloko-Nsimba, a village quite close to Coquilhatville. The missionaries gave quite satisfactory answers to his questions, answers capable of giving a new and decisive turn to his life.

It was no small point for him to learn that God, creator of heaven and earth and everything that exists, cared for human creatures, without exception, regardless of race or color, and that, moreover, he sent his Son Jesus for them. It was even amazing, almost unbelievable, that God even cared for him, just for him, and that God loved him personally, that Jesus his Son became man out of love for human creatures.

Soon Bakanja literally fell in love with Jesus and also with his Mother Mary. He was just delighted with everything he was learning. His state of mind was like that of one who had discovered a treasure. The treasure he discovered was greater-than anything he could have imagined, so it was worth striving for. It was Jesus himself who compared the Kingdom of God to a treasure whose discovery filled those who find it with joy to the point that they are willing to leave everything else behind in order to possess it. Then, and this was the best discovery, Bakanja was able to discover that he himself was God's treasure, because Jesus gave his own life even for him.

Isidore Bakanja lived his faith simply, but with great intensity and joy. He cultivated it with catechesis that made him discover on an ever more profound level the great things of God. Christianity, taken seriously, gives the right flavor to life. Isidore cared deeply about knowing God and also about praying to him. After all, praying, for Bakanja, is nothing more than being in a relationship as friend with his Lord with whom he knows himself to be heard, and with his mother Mary whose garment he wears. The faith of this adolescent seeps out from the serenity that pervades him and his desire to share it; he decided that the gift he received is not only for himself, but is for others as well, perhaps for everyone. The mother of Jesus, through her scapular, will be like a flag pointing to the treasure she carries in her heart. For, in truth, it is too great to keep only for herself.

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25 August Optional Memorial

Selection from the Homily of Pope Francis for the Canonization of Mariam of Jesus Crucified Baouardy

The Acts of the Apostles have set before us the early Church as she elects the man whom God called to take the place of Judas in the college of the Apostles. It is has to do not with a job, but with service. Indeed, Matthias, on whom the choice falls, receives a mission which Peter defines in these words: “One of these men... must become a witness with us to his resurrection”, the resurrection of Christ (Acts 1:21-23). In this way Peter sums up what it means to be part of the Twelve: it means to be a witness to Jesus’ resurrection. The fact that he says “with us” brings us to realize that the mission of proclaiming the risen Christ is not an individual undertaking: it is to be carried out in common, with the apostolic college and with the community. 

An essential aspect of witness to the risen Lord is unity among ourselves, his disciples, in the image of his own unity with the Father. Today too, in the Gospel, we heard Jesus’ prayer on the eve of his passion: “that they may be one, even as we are one” (Jn 17:11). From this eternal love between the Father and the Son, poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 5:5), our mission and our fraternal communion draw strength; this love is the ever-flowing source of our joy in following the Lord along the path of his poverty, his virginity and his obedience; and this same love calls us to cultivate contemplative prayer. Sister Mariam Baouardy experienced this in an outstanding way. Poor and uneducated, she was able to counsel others and provide theological explanations with extreme clarity, the fruit of her constant converse with the Holy Spirit. Her docility to the Holy Spirit made her also a means of encounter and fellowship with the Muslim world.

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9 August Memorial (Feast in the provinces of Europe: Patron of Europe)

Selection from the Homily of St. Pope John Paul II for the Canonization of Edith Stein

Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholic Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: “Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.”

From now on, as we celebrate the memory of this new saint from year to year, we must also remember the Shoah, that cruel plan to exterminate a people — a plan to which millions of our Jewish brothers and sisters fell victim. May the Lord let his face shine upon them and grant them peace (cf. Nm 6:25f.). 

For the love of God and man, once again I raise an anguished cry: May such criminal deeds never be repeated against any ethnic group, against any race, in any corner of this world! It is a cry to everyone: to all people of goodwill; to all who believe in the Just and Eternal God; to all who know they are joined to Christ, the Word of God made man. We must all stand together: human dignity is at stake. There is only one human family. The new saint also insisted on this: “Our love of neighbor is the measure of our love of God. For Christians — and not only for them — no one is a ‘stranger.’ The love of Christ knows no borders.”

5. Dear brothers and sisters! The love of Christ was the fire that inflamed the life of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Long before she realized it, she was caught by this fire. At the beginning she devoted herself to freedom. For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All. Looking back as a Carmelite on this period of her life, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

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7 August Feast

The word of the Lord came to Elijah saying: Depart from here and go eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith near the Jordan, and there you will drink from the brook. Now these salutary commands which the Holy Spirit prompted Elijah to obey, and this promise of good things which he was moved to desire, ought to be weighed word by word with the greatest care by us, monks and solitaries, and this in a mystical sense, for they contain the full meaning of our vocation. Indeed they point the way to prophetic perfection, which is the goal of our religious, eremitical life.

It will be seen that this type of life has two aims. One of them we can, with the help of God’s grace, achieve by our own efforts and the practice of virtue. This aim is to offer God a heart holy and pure from all actual stain of sin, and we achieve it when we become perfect and hidden in Cherith—that is, in charity, of which the Wise Man says: Charity covers all offenses. It was to bring Elijah to this state that God said to him: Hide yourself by the brook Cherith.

The other aim of this kind of life is something that can be bestowed on us only by God’s generosity: namely, to taste in our hearts and experience in our minds, not only after death but even during this mortal life, something of the power of the divine presence and the bliss of heavenly glory. And this is to drink from the brook of the enjoyment of God—the reward God promised Elijah when he said: There you will drink from the brook.

The prophetic, eremitical life must be undertaken by the monk with both these aims in view, as the Psalmist makes clear when he says to God: In a desert land where there is no road and no water I have come before you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. By choosing to live in a desert land where there is no road and no water as the means of coming before God in the sanctuary—with a heart, that is, free from sin—he demonstrates the first aim of the solitary life he has chosen, which is to offer God a heart that is holy, or pure from all actual sin. By adding the words to see your power and your glory he declares the second aim, which is in some measure to experience or see the power of the divine presence mystically in one’s heart and to taste the bliss of heavenly glory here already in this life.

The first aim, purity of heart, can be achieved with the help of God’s grace by effort and the practice of virtue. The second aim, experimental knowledge of divine power and heavenly glory, can be realized through purity of heart and perfect love; for our Lord said: Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.

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July 27 | Obligatory Memorial (Feast: Ger, Phil, Del Colombia)

A noted writer and journalist, in 1935, St. Titus was appointed adviser to the Dutch bishops for Catholic journalists. In the period leading up to and during the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, he argued passionately against the National Socialist ideology, basing his stand on the Gospels. He continually defended the right to freedom in education and for a free the Catholic Press. As a result, he was imprisoned.

He passed from one prison or camp to another until he arrived in Dachau where he was killed on July 26, 1942. He was beatified as a martyr by Pope John Paul II on November 3, 1985 and was canonized by Pope Francis on May 15, 2022, in St Peter’s Square.

The Order’s petition to have the celebration of St. Titus Brandsma changed from an optional memorial to an obligatory memorial for the whole Order was accepted. The Provinces of Germany and the Philippines as well as the General Delegation in Columbia who have St. Titus as their patron celebrate the day as a feast.

Read more about the life of St. Titus Brandsma

Edizioni Carmelitane offers an incredible collection of writings, speeches, and letters by Tito Brandsma, the Carmelites’ most recent saint, including a play, a professional television production on DVD, and books in various languages.

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26 July Memorial

The names of the parents of Mary are known from the apocryphal “Proto-Gospel of James” (II century). The cult to Saint Anne is documented in the East in the VI century, in the West in the X century; that of Saint Joachim in the XIV century. In the Byzantine rite the 25 of July reminds us the dedication in Constantinople of a Basilica in honour of Saint Anne.

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July 24 | Memorial

John Soreth was unflagging in his efforts at renewal, during what was an especially critical period for both the Church and the Order. He dedicated himself entirely to the reform of the Order, travelling across Europe, making canonical visitations and promoting a more faithful observance of religious life both in the older Provinces and convents and in the Mantuan Reformed Congregation.

He was instrumental in the development of the Lay Carmelite Third Order.

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Books on John Soreth (in Italian) from Edizioni Carmelitane, the Carmelites' online bookstore:

Expositio paraenetica in regulam carmelitarum: Un commento alla regola del Carmelo
Giovanna D’Aniello, O. Carm.

Il B. Jean Soreth (1394-1471). Priore generale, riformatore e maestro spirituale dell’Ordine Carmelitano
Giovanni Grosso, O. Carm.