A Vocation to Love
Our Carmelite life raises a question to you. “Why this waste?” We will try to explain to you something about why we have chosen this life. But fundamentally, the choice is a response to a call from God. And why God has led us to the Mount of Carmel is His secret…
Contemplative life is a wellspring of grace in the Church. St. John Paul II said, “It is necessary that Carmelites, faithful to a life of prayer and its exercise, persevere in their vocation in order that they may attain that knowledge of the living God which must be their title to glory, their specific vocation, and their providential mission.”
We are blessed with many saints since the time of our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus, even until our present day with the canonization of St. Mother Maravillas of Jesus in 2003, St. Miriam of Jesus Crucified in 2015 and Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity in 2016. These Carmelites, hidden from the eyes of the world, through a life of love and fidelity, were raised to the heights of sanctity. We recall St. Therese of the Child Jesus, patroness of the missions, whose influence has reached the ends of the earth. She desired to love Jesus more than He had ever been loved before. Feeling her littleness, rather than becoming discouraged by this obstacle, she was content to love her littleness, and with complete confidence and total abandonment, called upon her Beloved to be Himself her sanctity, thus revealing to the world the way of spiritual childhood, which is the way pointed out by Jesus Himself in the Gospel: “Unless you be converted and become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 18:2-3).
In our day, more than ever, Our Holy Mother St. Teresa’s words, ring down to us through the ages, with the same love and zeal with which they were uttered, spurring us on to ever greater generosity and a total gift of self, “Take up that cross daughters; never mind if the Jews trample upon you, if His pain can there-by be lessened. Pay no attention to what they say to you; be deaf to their murmuring; stumbling, falling with your Spouse, do not draw back from the cross or abandon it.” (Way of Perfection, 26,7) Certainly, whoever dedicates her entire life in this way to the consideration of the life of Jesus Christ and to follow Him, lives more and more for Christ and for His Body which is the Church.
The goal of all formation is a gradual transformation into the likeness of Christ, through the action of the Spirit aided by the maternal solicitude of Our Lady, Mother of Jesus and of the Church, and who as the Queen and beauty of Carmel is our model in following Christ.
Whether Postulant, Novice, Professed — the life of a Carmelite remains simple in its beauty and joy. It is a life of poverty, chastity and obedience, humility, silence, and solitude—a life of union with God through prayer and sacrifice for the needs of the Church and the world. “This is why the Church has shown such special care in safeguarding Nuns’ withdrawal from the world and the enclosure of their convents.” (Statute on Enclosure)
