When I first met and read the inspired and inspiring words of St Teresa of Jesus, my soul was deeply moved with profound gratitude to God for this astonishing woman. In her teachings, Teresa of Avila was presenting to me a radical understanding of friendship with God which did not distinguish my struggling, yearning for holiness as an ordinary lay person from that of the great saints or the holiness of clergy and religious. St Teresa of Jesus, Doctor of the Church, became my greatly loved Madre in Carmel when I was drawn by Spirit Lord and finally accepted into Carmel into the Secular Discalced Order. In the smallest of ways, St Teresa’s astonishing mission has become my own: to try to proclaim to everyone I meet, in my words or my actions, in my family, my Carmelite community and beyond, wherever I live or work, that Jesus Lord, God, Blessed Redeemer, longs for friendship with all. I am one of His ‘all’.
This is my Carmel.
During my years in Carmel which have been necessarily spiritually challenging, I have met and been taught by one of our Madre’s true daughters, St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Doctor of the Mystical Life. My beloved Thérèse helps me as I stumble through the brambles and thorns of my ego on this Way of Perfection into the burning love of Christ’s Great Heart. She has laid out a table for me with a feast of ‘little ways’ where prayer, offered in small sacrifices, hidden from the eyes of everyone but God’s alone, can snatch souls for Christ Jesus Who ‘thirsts’ for every one of them. This mission was Thérèse’s vocation and passion in Carmel. It became my own mission in a most personal way. My brother was one for whom the Savior thirsted and with Thérèse as my spiritual director, she was to reveal to me the power of her ‘little way’ to touch the heart of my dying brother.
St Thérèse teaches me that her ‘… strength lies in prayer and sacrifice; they are invincible weapons, and touch hearts more surely than words can do, as I have learned by experience.’
During those sorrowful weeks before his death, I prayed through Thérèse’s wisdom because my brother’s decades-long estrangement from Our Saviour was deep and, as Thérèse made clear, my own words would not touch his heart. I united with many others in the Body of Christ in petition for my brother. Through fasting and prayer, Thérèse’s ‘invincible weapons’ began to present themselves to me. Multiple suggestions of ‘little ways’ of self-sacrifice and opportunities to offer hidden prayer for his soul were gradually laid before me.
‘The Creator of the universe awaits the prayer of one poor little person to save a multitude of others, redeemed like her at the price of His Blood.’
Spirit Lord then graciously permitted me to be one of those ‘poor’ ones to offer unseen sacrifices to pray my brother into Heaven. He reunited with our Savior just before he died.
Winning souls for Christ Jesus Whose Heart thirsts and burns with love for each of God’s children; hidden, sacrificial prayer and acts offered in ‘little ways’ …
This is my Carmel.
When I’m struggling in the darknesses of desolation, that treasured gift from God, St Thérèse encourages me, ‘I know that He is better pleased to see you stumbling in the night upon a stony road, than walking in full light of day upon a path carpeted with flowers, because these flowers might hinder your advance.’
My disordered senses are some of those ‘flowers’ and they are being purified.
In the darkest of nights of purification, when nothing makes spiritual sense and everything is that shouldn’t be, I feel as though I have nothing to give to God. In those times of my soul’s de-formation when my soul is being re-formed into His Likeness, Little Thérèse moves quietly into my thoughts when she tells me what she did at such times….’when I have nothing to give Him, I give Him my nothing.’
I echo her words. Very often.
And my soul is quieted, my hope strengthened, and I embrace my nothing.
This is my Carmel.
St Teresa, St Thérèse, are among legions of the children of Our Lady, Queen of Carmel.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our own Blessed Mother, ever possessed by the Holy Spirit, the Pre-Redeemed one, the perfect model of loving, intimate union with God, the one filled with grace, the one whose self-emptiness was filled with God, the one who is mighty in her powerlessness.
This is my Carmel.
Mary, much more Mother than Queen.
Teresa of Jesus teaches me how Mary’s true joy lies in having listened to God, keeping His Word in her heart, meditating on it, and faithfully putting it into practice. She is the Woman made Prayer.
This is my Carmel.
Our Little Flower, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, beautifully directs my thoughts away from herself and invites me to give love and honor to Our Blessed Mother when she describes how Mary was the living embodiment of ‘The Little Way.’
This is my Carmel.
