HOLY WEEK

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

no hands, no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which  

Christ looks out His compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which 

He is to go about doing good. 

Yours are the handswith which 

He is to bless us now.

St. Teresa of Avila.

ELIJAH - FATHER OF CARMELITES.

" Lord teach me to seek Thee, and reveal Thyself to me when I seek Thee. For I cannot seek Thee unless Thou teach me, nor find Thee except Thou reveal Thyself. Let me seek Thee in longing, let me long for Thee in seeking, let me find Thee in love, and love Thee in finding."

                                                                                                                            St. Ambrose.

Elijah as we know was a great prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel in the 9th century B.C. during the reign of  king Ahab. The name Elijah means THE LORD IS MY GOD.The desert Fathers who took a radical decision to follow Jesus in silence and solitude in the third century, took Elijah as their model and inspiration. The hermits who lived on Mount Carmel naturally took him as their model and 'first monk' and Founder.

Carmelites understand contemplation as seeking the Face of God by standing before Him with an open heart. What does this imply? Elijah did everything at God's command. He was a man burning with zeal, - "With zeal I have been zealous  for the Lord God of Hosts." (1 King, 19:10) Elijah stands for a passionate love for God and a Carmelite is called to be aflame with the "Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God." (Rule of St. Albert.)

The Bible places before us a series of dramatic events in little snapshots. In fighting the cause of Yahweh, Elijah called a drought to befall the nation, called down fire, rebelled against authorities and ran away like a coward at Queen Jezebel's retribution, he was down in utter desolation and wished that might die... He will finally be awakened to fulness of life as the gentle breeze sweeps over his soul. He was a man capable of both extremes.

In the final analysis Yahweh-Elijah encounter is a great love story. A contemplative is the one who fights it all out with God. Elijah encourages us to take up our journey with confidence. The God of Elijah is not some one up above. He is the One with Whom we can identify. God of Elijah is One Who will feed him and chide him, talk to him and walk with him, put him to sleep and wake him up and finally will carry him in His bosom and fly away to the Fatherland.

EDITH STEIN

            “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.” These words of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross best describe her: a true seeker of the TRUTH. 

            St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was born in a Jewish family on 12^th October 1891,which happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) that year and was named Edith Stein. From her early years, Edith showed a superior intellectual acumen and pursued a career in Philosophy, eventually earning a doctoral degree in Phenomenology.  Her intellectual pursuits, however, were not concentrated on acquiring prestigious academic positions but on a genuine search for ultimate truth.

            Around the age of 13 she not only gave upthe practice of her Jewish faith but also renounced her belief in the existence of God. Years later she would attest, “What did not lie in my plans, lay in God’s plans.” Living through a series of contradictory and mystifying experiences as well as the dark era of the First and Second World Wars, Edith kept on her pursuit for truth and ultimately found it on reading the Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She realized that truth is found in a great love and friendship with God. She would say, “Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love, which lacks truth.”

            On the 1^st of January 1922, which was then celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus signifying the entrance into the Jewish Covenantal relationship with God, she was baptised and entered into the New Covenant with the Triune God. She eventually became a Discalced Carmelite Nun taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross after the Mystical giants St Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

            Her life was spent, thereafter, in deeply living out the “Science of the Cross”. She believed that there are no coincidences, only the hand of God at work in the world. Her birth on the feast of the Atonement was,thus, no coincidence. She was chosen, like her spouse, as atonement for her Jewish people. Their destiny became her own. Having been an active Women’s rights advocate, while in the world, she was belligerently sought after by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She died in the gas chamber, on 9^th August 1942, along with her sister Rosa (who also embraced Catholicism and became a Carmelite Nun).

            

Another flower has bloomed in the Garden of Pune Carmel… and this one is none other than a beautiful ROSE.

Miss Lyan Rodrigues was born and grew up in Mumbai. She completed her Graduate and Post Graduate studies in Human Development from Nirmala Niketan College of Home Science, Mumbai. Apart from that she has specialized in Intellectual disabilities by acquiring an M. Ed degree in Special Education- Mental Retardation from SNDT University, Mumbai. She is also the Grand-Niece of Br. Baptist Rodrigues, OCD of Mangalore Monastery.

Lyan has aspired to be a Carmelite since childhood. She came for a come and see experience to Pune Carmel in April 2016 for a period of one month. There she felt that Carmel was her home and God was calling her to live a life in deep union with Him. She returned home after the come and see experience and joined Carmel after a month as a Postulant, having said her good-byes to everybody; never to return back to the world.

Lyan was vested on the eve of 17^th of January 2017 and has been given the religious name Sr. Rose of Infant Jesus.

ST. THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS. (DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH)

When we look for one word to sum up Therese of Lisieux, the word LOVE comes to mind. Love was her spirituality, love was her life. She spent most of her time plumbing its meaning, savoring its beauty and searching out its implications. Eventually she saw love as her total vocation, the gifted way to fulfill all her desires, to be everything and to do everything for God, in the Body of Christ. She would be the heart of that body; she would be love. In this way she would be associated with every activity of Christ's body, since the heart animates every organ and participates in every action.

Therese dealt in absolutes. Everything and nothing, God and Therese, Merciful Love and her littleness; these are the two poles of her spirituality. The force that got her going between her poverty and God's love, was confidence, casting herself into the arms of God. The formula came to be described as her LITTLE WAY. Her discovery came out of a life time of experience. She lived the ' Little Way ' before she put it into words.
Therese learnt well the lesson of St. John of the Cross about emptiness and fullness. She would go to God with 'empty hands', with nothing of herself and everything from her Spouse Jesus. 'Merit does not consist in doing or in giving much, but rather in receiving, in loving much.' 'Jesus does not ask for great actions, but only abandonment and gratitude. The reason is simple: pleasing God is God's work in us, and this work thrives in poverty and littleness.' Therese wrote to her sister Marie: ' Let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, then Jesus will come to look for us...and transform us into flames of love.'

Therese knew she was not a great soul. She was too little for anything but ' little actions and desires'. Little nothings, the strewing of flowers cast at the Lord's feet to soften His passage, were her way of showing her immense love. This had been her practice since childhood. Were these little acts sufficient? Was the Good God content with these fervent acts and aspirations as He was with the heroic accomplishments of the Saints?... All God asks is that we live in the truth, recognizing our indebtedness and God's loving kindness; the rest is simply acting out this new life as God leads. 
Therese learnt that great love can be delivered in small packages. Her vocation was precisely love, to be the heart of the Mystical Body, a vocation that was lived out precisely in the humble, unpretentious, matter of fact doing God's Will, moment to moment in her daily life. This was the work of God, the law of God's love discovered by Therese.
St Therese writes, "Yes my Beloved this is how my life will be consumed. I have no other means of proving my love for you other than that of strewing flowers, that is, not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love. I desire to suffer for love and even to rejoice through love; and in this way I shall strew flowers before your throne. I shall not come upon one without unpetalling it for you. Her poem "Strewing Flowers" identifies the flowers as "my slightest sighs, my greatest sufferings, my sorrows and my joys, my little sacrifices." A later poem describes how the petals are to be tossed with abandon, "blown away" in the total gift of self. 
She wrote to Celine that "Jesus was teaching her to do all through love, to refuse Him nothing, to be content when he gives me a chance of proving to Him that I love Him. But this is done in peace and abandonment, it is Jesus Who is doing all in me and I am doing nothing". Her life was simply response to the moment to moment Presence of God.

November 14^th

Feast of all saints of carmel.

                   On November 14^th the Carmelites celebrate the feast of all 

“SAINTS OF CARMEL”. In this blog we wish to share short life histories and specially the spiritualities of the SAINTS OF CARMEL. Excerpts from the writing s of St. Teresa of Avila has already been posted – and will be continued – as well as quotations from the Letters of the recently canonized St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. The best known and loved among the SAINTS OF CARMEL is St. Therese of Lisieux also known as the Little Flower. St. Teresa Margaret Redi, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, St. Mary of Jesus Crucified and St. Teresa of Los Andes … most of these Saints of Carmel are our own contemporaries. In their short span of lives, these Saints of Carmel lived simple lives which all of us can easily imitate. Yet they reached intimate union and transformation in God by doing just little things with great love and total gift of themselves to God.

St. John of the Cross and St. Raphael Kalinowski are the 2 canonized men saints of Carmel. Among the saints of Carmel can also be included the parents of St. Therese, Zelie and Loius Martin, the first couple to be canonized.

MAY ALL THE SAINTS OF CARMEL INTERCEDE FOR US AND HELP US TO REACH THE HEIGHTS OF PERFECTION WHICH THEY HAVE ALREADY ATTAINED.

“Let us live with God as with a friend, let us make our faith a living faith in order to be in communion with Him through everything, for that is what makes saints. We possess our Heaven within us, since He who satisfies the hunger of the glorified in the light of vision gives Himself to us in faith and mystery, it is the Same One. It seems to me that I have found my Heaven on Earth, since Heaven is God, and God is [in] my soul” (L. 122).

“I am never alone; my Christ is always there praying in me, and I pray with Him … Ah, if you got to know Him a little, prayer wouldn’t bore you any more; to me it seems to be rest, relaxation. We come quite simply to the One we love, stay close to Him like a little child in the arms of its mother, and we let our heart go…The life of a Carmelite is a communion with God from morning to evening, and from evening to morning. If He did not fill our cells and our cloisters, ah! how empty they would be! But through everything, [we] see Him, for we bear Him within us, and our life is an anticipated Heaven” (L. 123).

It seems to me that the souls on earth and those glorified in the light of vision are so close to each other, since they are all in communion with the same God, the same Father, who gives Himself to the former in faith and mystery and satisfies the other in His divine light.…But He is the Same One, and we carry Him within us. He bends over us with all His charity, day and night, wanting to communicate with us, to infuse us with His divine life, so as to make us deified beings who radiate Him everywhere. Oh, how powerful over souls is the apostle who remains always at the Spring of living water; then he can overflow without his soul ever becoming empty, since he lives in communion with the Infinite! I am praying fervently for you, that God may invade all the powers of your soul, that He may make you live in communion with His whole Mystery, that everything in you may be divine and marked with His seal…I want to be an apostle with you, from the depths of my dear solitude in Carmel…”Apostle, Carmelite,” it is all one!…” (L. 124).

 “We must not stop before the Cross and regard it in itself, but, recollecting ourselves in the light of faith, we must rise higher and recognize that it is the instrument that is obeying Divine Love. “One thing alone is necessary: Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her”. This better part, which seems to be my privilege in my beloved solitude of Carmel, is offered by God to every baptized soul. He offers it to you, dear Madame, in the midst of your cares and maternal concerns. Believe that His whole desire is to lead you ever deeper into Himself. Surrender yourself and all your preoccupations to Him and since you find me a good advocate to the Court of the King…” (L. 129).

“I love Him passionately and in loving Him, I am transformed in Him. And then it’s so good, for He is always with me, He consumes me into One with Him, and we love each other so much!! Ah, if it weren’t for that I would still be with you” (To her mother, L. 130).

“Oh, won’t you please place me in the chalice so my soul may be wholly bathed in this Blood of my Christ for which I so thirst! so as to be wholly pure, wholly transparent, so that the Trinity can be reflected in me as in a crystal. The Trinity so loves to contemplate its beauty in a soul… I love Him with His own love, it is a double current between Him who is and she who is not! Ah, when I feel my God invade my whole soul, as I pray to Him for you, it seems to me that it is a prayer He cannot resist, and I want Him to make me all-powerful” (To Canon Angles, L. 131).