An Explanation of Carmelite spirituality~

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Our Holy Mother St. Teresa aspired as a passionate bride deeply in love with her Divine Spouse, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to live the Carmelite life with totality. She was interiorly persuaded that the essence of the Carmelite Charism was to imitate the way of life of the first Hermits of the Order on Mount Carmel in Palestine. Our Holy Mother St. Teresa often said: "Let us remember our holy fathers of past days, those Hermits whose lives we attempt to imitate. What sufferings they bore, what solitude, cold, thirst and hunger, what burning sun and heat! And yet they had no one to complain to except God." In intimate confidence with her daughters she extended this line of thought as she sought to clarify: "The manner of life we are to strive to live is to be not only Nuns, but Hermits."

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Through the spirituality and the Carmelite heritage bequeathed to us by the irreplaceable teachings of Our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus and Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross, we have been given in Carmel, as their daughters, the ideal patrimony to live the pristine charism of our forefathers, the first Hermits on Mount Carmel. A life of singular focus on divine union using the means of ~ solitude, silence, recollection in the Divine Presence, poverty of spirit, simplicity of life, detachment, authentic charity, all within the context of  a joy-filled fraternal bond of communion.  

 

Joined with the teachings of Our Holy Mother St. Teresa is that of her great collaborator ~ our Holy Father St. John of the Cross. According to his esteemed spiritual theology, Carmel is essentially a life of striving for union of the soul with God. A total self- surrender to the Divine Majesty for the sake of becoming one with His holy will to obtain union of hearts in the ultimate mutual self-gift of mystical marriage. Therefore, as a close cooperator cwith our Holy Mother St. Teresa in the development of the Carmelite Charism and as the principal Confessor to her Nuns in Beas, St. John of the Cross declared “My principle is not to address all, but certain persons of our sacred Order of Mount Carmel . . . to whom God is granting the favor of setting them on the road to this Mount.” Our Holy Father particularly addressed the Carmelites in his abundance of spiritual writings because attainment of union of the soul with God is the essence of the life of a Carmelite, our primary focus, and very reason for being.

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For as Our Holy Mother St Teresa of Jesus said so very well ~

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“O my Lord, of all the millions of people you have created, shouldn’t just a few of them give

their complete attention to You?”   

St. Teresa of Jesus

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What actually is this union with God that is so fundamental to St. John of the Cross’s spirituality? It is a complete dying to the old self, so wounded by original sin, and living anew in perfect docility to God and His movements in the soul. St. John said in The Living Flame of Love, “Let it be known that what the soul calls death is all that goes to make up the old self . . . In this new life that the soul lives when it has arrived at the perfect union with God here being discussed, all the inclinations and activity of the [soul] . . . become divine. Since . . . the soul’s operations are in God through its union with him, it lives the life of God.” The soul in union is perfectly docile to grace, and so the soul is moved by God alone and not by its own desires or thinking. He explains, “For the soul, like a true daughter of God, is moved in all things by the Spirit of God.” The will of the soul is lost in the will of God and the two become one, in the gift of mystical marriage by the free act of His elevating grace.

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St John of the Cross explains that the soul in union with God has a greater effect on the mission of the Church simply by its love, than it ever it did before by its works. He says in The Dark Night of the Soul, "In the state of union, however, they will work great things in the spirit, even as grown men, and their works and faculties will then be Divine rather than human." He says in The Spiritual Canticle, "An instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together." An act of pure love from a soul in union with God, does more for the mission of the Church than all other works because it gives grace to those works and sustains them."

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The path to the heights of the mystical life for St. John of the Cross is an arduous and difficult road full of abnegation and purgation, when accepted in love, should lead to the inestimable grace of self-emptying which should open the soul to the divine invasion. In The Ascent of Mount Carmel he speaks thus, "This perfection consists in voiding and stripping and purifying the soul of every desire." The soul must be purged of everything less than HIM.

"In the happy night, in secret, when none saw me, nor I beheld aught, without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart . . . Oh night that guided me, Oh night more lovely than the dawn, Oh night that joined Beloved with lover, lover transformed in the Beloved!"

 

Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross carefully and invitingly explains that when the soul is free from other loves, it is impossible for God not to communicate Himself to the soul. “What God communicates to the soul in this  intimate union is totally beyond words. One can  say nothing about it, just as one can say nothing  about God Himself that actually bears likeness to Him. For in  the transformation of the soul in God, it is God  who communicates Himself with admirable  glory. In this transformation, the two become  one, as we would say of the window united  with the ray of sunlight, or of the coal with the  fire, or of the starlight with the light of the Sun.” It is because God is so good and generous, that he wants to exalt souls who are very little to such an exalted state, where they can radically assist the whole Church by their Union with God. Therefore the question understandably arises ~Is this effect on the Church of a prefect soul in Union with God important? St. John affirmatively answers ~Yes! It is indeed more important than many other great works done in the active apostolate. By means of this divine union the contemplative soul obtains many graces for the active apostolate and through its Union with God, becomes a large channel of grace for all of the works carried out in the Church. That is why the path to Union with God is so very important.

 

The smallest act carried out with pure love is beyond price in God’s eyes; a small act of pure love is more valuable to the Church and to the soul itself, than all other works combined.” 

                                                                                                 St. John of the Cross+

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