Category: Carmelite saints & blesseds

St Teresa of Avila on contemplative prayer

The Church gives us Teresa of Avila to lead us into the arms of Jesus. Fr. Matthew MacDonald expounds on some of the ideas given by Saint Teresa. He states,

“…we celebrate the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila, founder of the Discalced Carmelite Reform, mystic, and Doctor of the Church. Teresa’s life and spirituality are at the heart of the call that the Lord has placed upon our hearts – to live, light, and lead the way of contemplation for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Teresa of Avila, in her life and her teaching on prayer and contemplation, reminds me of the importance of allowing my entire life to abide in the true vine, Jesus Christ.

“Teresa lived during a time of great chaos in the Church and the world not unlike our own. The Protestant reformation was raging in Europe. Evangelization and colonization efforts were being launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish Empires in the Americas. Souls were falling left and right from the faith. Ignorance and corruption were in abundance. The joys and trials of her age and her own life offered Teresa motives for prayer, love, and sacrifice. It was in this desire for intimacy with Jesus that she became a branch of He who is the true vine (Cf. Jn 15:1). Teresa’s life and teachings would become an inexhaustible fountain of joy, intimacy, and salvation through the contemplative life that would become a bedrock in the mystical tradition of the life of the Church. How then did Teresa seek to bring souls to Christ? Through the spousal union of prayer and the sanctification of her soul. This divine intimacy and union with Christ was the desire of Teresa’s heart above all else and was the fuel behind the Discalced Carmelite reform:

Anyone who has not begun to pray, I beg, for the love of the Lord, not to miss so great a blessing. There is no place here for fear, but only desire. For even if a person fails to make progress, or to strive after perfection, so that he may merit the consolations and favors given to the perfect by God, yet he will gradually gain a knowledge of the road to Heaven. And if he perseveres, I hope in the mercy of God, whom no one has ever taken for a Friend without being rewarded; and mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but a friendly way of dealing, in which we often find ourselves talking in private with Him whom we know loves us. (Vol. I of Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers (Sheed & Ward, London, 1950) ch. 8, p. 50.)

“For Teresa, prayer begins and is fruitful by abiding in Jesus. It starts with vocal prayer and passes through the heart and our way of living our faith by means of meditation and contemplative recollection until it attains perfect loving union with Christ and with the Holy Trinity (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, “St. Teresa of Avila,” February 2, 2011).

“This call to prayer is at the heart of being a disciple of Jesus and is meant for everyone.  Teresa then goes on to describe how prayer grows in the normal life of faith:

Oh Lord of heaven and earth, how is it possible that even while in this mortal life one can enjoy you with so special a friendship?… May you be blessed, Lord, because we do not lose anything through your fault. Along how many paths, and how many ways, by how many methods you show us love! With trials, with a death so harsh, with torments, suffering offenses every day and then pardoning; and not only with these deeds do you show this love, but with words so capable of wounding the soul in love with you that you say to them in this Song of Songs and teach the soul what to say to you…My Lord, I do not ask you for anything else in life but that ‘you kiss me with the kiss of your mouth,’ and that you do so in such a way that although I may want withdraw from this friendship and union, my will may always, Lord my life, be subject to your will and not depart from it ( Meditations on the Song of Songs 3:14-15. Taken from Drink of the Stream: Prayers of Carmelites. Translated by Penny Hickey, OCDS (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002) 73-74.).

~Fr. Matthew C. MacDonald, homily for a Mass for the Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila for the Apostoli Viae Connecticut Chapter at Saint Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut, October 15, 2021.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Today in the Latin Church is the commemoration of Carmelite St. Teresa Benedicta – Edith Stein. Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization in 1998, Pope John Paul II recounted the saint’s decision to reject a possible “way out”…”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.”

The image by Father Peter Willm Gray.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us.

Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne

I didn’t know of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne until several years ago when a friend of mine, Father Ambrose, gave me a tutorial these great nuns. For him, the death of these Carmelites are an example of demise of the Gospel in culture and in the personal life the baptized. The courage and faithfulness of the nuns in the face of terrifically sinister men is quite striking. In every period of time, martyrdom always seems to catch the heart. Here is another example of the persecution of Christians.

Another friend, Jeffrey said the following:

The anniversary of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne, interestingly falling so close on the heels of Bastille Day, a reminder, perhaps that we must resist similar movements in our present age. One of these martyrs wrote eloquently, not long before their execution, and we can live by these words today, as it puts things in proper perspective.

“We are victims of our century and we must sacrifice ourselves that it be reconciled to God. An eternity of happiness awaits me. Let us hasten then, let us run toward that end and suffer willingly during the brief moments of this life. The storm rages today, but tomorrow we shall reach the harbor”

~Sister Julie Louise, Carmelite martyr of Compiegne.

St Elizabeth of the Trinity

A very Happy Feast of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity! In this longer post we wanted to share a little about Carmel’s newest saint for those who don’t know her and then also share an except from one of her beautiful letters. “Laudem Gloriae”!

Saint Elizabeth was born as Elizabeth Catez on July 18, 1880, in a military camp near Bourges. Her mother gave birth just at the end of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which her father, Captain Catez, had arranged to have offered for his wife and child, whom he feared he was losing during a difficult delivery. At the age of two, she was taken to Dijon where her father had been transferred and there St. Elizabeth had the joy of gaining a little sister when Marguerite was born on February 20, 1883.

St. Elizabeth was difficult and temperamental as a child and very hard to manage. Her mother persevered in loving yet strict discipline. It was Jesus, however, who provided in her first sacramental confession the grace she needed to grow. After that great event which profoundly affected the saint her efforts at self-control began to bear fruit.

April 19, 1891, she made her First Holy Communion. Tears of happiness poured down her face. To a little friend she whispered as they left Holy Mass: “I’m not hungry; Jesus has fed me.”

That evening her mother took her to the Carmel and the Prioress told her that “Elizabeth” meant “the house of God.” The meaning of her name took root in her soul. In time, the Mystery of the Divine Indwelling became the central theme of her entire spiritual life.

Her entrance into Carmel was delayed for quite some time because of the great reluctance of her widowed mother, for she did not wish to give up her beloved daughter. Finally, St. Elizabeth was permitted to enter at the age of twenty-one on August 2, 1901. On December 8, 1901, she received the habit, and she made her profession on the feast of the Epiphany, January 11, 1903.

Eight days after entering Carmel, St. Elizabeth and the nuns discussed religious life at recreation. When asked what her ideal of sanctity was, she replied: “to live for love” Pressed further as to how she would attain her ideal, she answered: “I would endeavor to become very little and give myself irrevocably.”

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity lived her Carmelite life with great fidelity, entering ever more deeply into the mystery of the indwelling Trinity. In Saint Paul, she found her “new name”, “Laudem Gloriae” that is, “the praise of His glory.”

In early 1903, she began to show the first signs of Addison’s disease. In Lent of 1906 she became so ill that she was moved to the infirmary.

St. Elizabeth endured her great sufferings with joy and with heroic fortitude. She died, only twenty-six years of age, on November 9, 1906, the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, her last words being: “I am going to light, to love, to life.”

St. Elizabeth was canonized on 16 October 2016.

The following is an excerpt from Letter 185 to l’Abbé Chevignard dated 28 Nov 1903.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,
Thank you for your good prayers, thank you for your letter. What you tell me about my name does me much good; I love it so much, it expresses my entire vocation; when I think of it my soul is carried away in the great vision of the Mystery of mysteries, in the Trinity that even here below is our cloister, our dwelling, the Infinite within which we can pass through everything. At the moment I am reading some very beautiful pages in our blessed Father Saint John of the Cross on the transformation of the soul in the three Divine Persons. Monsieur l’Abbé, to what an abyss of glory we are called! Oh! I understand the silence, the recollection of the saints who could no longer leave their contemplation; thus God could lead them to the divine summits where union is made perfect between Him and the soul who has become His bride, in the mystical sense of the word. Our blessed Father says that then the Holy Spirit raises it to so wonderful a height that He makes it capable of producing in God the same spiration of love that the Father produces in the Son and the Son in the Father, the spiration that is the Holy Spirit Himself! To think that God calls us by our vocation to live in this holy light! What an adorable mystery of charity! I would like to respond to it by living on earth as the Blessed Virgin did, “keeping all these things in my heart,” burying myself, so to speak, in the depths of my soul to lose myself in the Trinity who dwells in it in order to transform me into itself. Then my motto, “my luminous ideal” as you said, will be accomplished: it will really be Elizabeth of the Trinity!”

May we all grow in the loving awareness of and be transformed in Love by the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity! Happy Feast!

(courtesy of the Discalced Carmelites, Washington Province)

St Teresa of Avila

St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), has fascinated me for years. I often feel unworthy in saying that I follow her apostolic, contemplative zeal and desire for God. And yet, her powerful witness has educated me through the years. She was a strong and important female woman of the Church. St. Teresa of Avila was named the first female Doctor of the Church.

Teresa’s own history reveals her experience and motivations in the monastic life when she speaks of a mediocre prayer life, lax discipline and a loss of zeal for redemptive penance caused by too much socialization with visitors. The Lord in His infinite Wisdom called Teresa to give Him her heart and a desire to live differently through an intense experience of prayer experience to renounce worldly attachments and enter deeper into a life of prayer. An experience, not a discourse, moved her to making this a way of life and a teaching. It is reported that she was being encouraged by a mystical vision of her place in hell if she was unfaithful to God’s graces. 

The mystical life of contemplation became a source of trouble for Teresa as many didn’t understand the new horizons she had embraced. What she wanted was to reform her own life for the sake of the Kingdom. How much can we learn from her on this score? Too often we give into sin and mediocrity, we give ourselves “a pass” to excuse us from the right path, and we settle for gravel instead of silver and gold.

Read her works the Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. Pick up a good biography. Ask Saint Teresa of Avila for intercession before the Throne of Grace.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

The Latin Church observes the liturgical memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in history and professionally as Edith Stein. A woman of great import for us today.

Stein was born a Jew and was killed at Auschwitz because she was a Jew.

She was a brilliant philosopher, studying phenomenology with Husserl. One of her academic accomplishments was making a translation into German John Henry Newman’s works, which the young Ratzinger brothers read at seminary after the war. After studies and a period of teaching and research, Stein became a Carmelite nun because she read the life of St. Teresa of Avila. Leaving Germany she fled with her sisters to the Netherlands.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died as a Christian Martyr because of retaliation against the Church in the Netherlands, which opposed Nazi racist attacks against Jews and other minorities. As one said, “She is a bridge between Jews and Christians and our faithful opposition to fascist racism then and now.”

Ora pro nobis, on this your feast, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

St Therese of Lisieux–the Little Flower

little-flowerSome thoughts from The Little Flower:

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.”

“If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient, but I only look at the present, I forget the past, and I take good care not to forestall the future.”

“Our Lord does not come from Heaven every day to stay in a golden ciborium; He comes to find another heaven, the heaven of our soul in which He loves to dwell.”

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

edith steinSaint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (in history she is known as Edith Stein). The Church honors her with the title of  Virgin and Martyr due to her vocation as a nun and one killed for belief in Christian faith.

Stein was born on October 12, 1891, in Breslau, Poland. Her family was Jewish. By 1922, after reading the saints, in particular, Saint Teresa of Avila, and on matters in the Catholic faith, she was baptized at the Cologne Cathedral. Eleven years later she entered the Carmelite Order in Cologne before being sent to the Carmel in Echt, Holland. With her sister Rose, Teresa was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. There she died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of fifty-one. Stein was beatified in 1987 and canonized on October 11, 1998.

It is said that she made a claim about Husserl that “Whoever seeks truth seeks God, whether he knows it or not.” Professor Husserl was not one to speak about his religious faith because he wanted to maintain a separation between faith and reason. Yet, we know from experience, that faith and reason go hand-in-hand. Catholics ought to take a lesson here: a person who claims Christian faith faith can not be diffident reading the same. One can say with a degree of certainty that Stein’s philosophical research was one of a constant quest for God. Saint Teresa Benedicta’s witness is that whoever seeks truth through philosophy seeks God, because God is Truth. We therefore hold that that whoever seeks truth is, in fact, seeking God. There is a primacy of faith and reason in the Catholic mind.

Saint John of the Cross

Juan de la CruzToday, we mark the liturgical memorial of a magnificent saint (all saints are magnificent!), the 16th century Carmelite friar, John of the Cross.

A friend posted the following on contemplation:

“Contemplation is nothing less than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God. The road of contemplation is where God himself feeds and refreshes the soul directly, without the soul’s help or meditation.

There is a remarkable transformation of the heart’s desires as a result of surrendering to God in our soul’s center. Our desire and God’s desire now join in a consonance of desire.

The nature of love is to be united, linked up with and at one with the object of its love. Only love unites and cements the soul with God. The soul lives in that which it loves.

Prayer, by its nature, involves a sense of incompleteness and thus of longing in truth.

The more God wants to give us, the more He makes us desire–even to the point of leaving us empty in order to fill us with goods. Be careful that you do not lack the desire to be poor and in want.

In following Christ in the contemplative way, without laying down one’s own ground rules and conditions, we grow into dimensions of the reality of God’s love which lie beyond what we can comprehend, experience or place in any systematic order. We are stripped of all guarantees which are rooted in the self, and we begin to live on the faith, trust and love that we have for God. We now experience God more as he is–as sheer Mystery.

Prayer ultimately leads us to go beyond anything that can be known. We travel unknowing into an unknown land and we learn how to stay there, knowing naught.”