SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

In a prayer group of which I am a member, we have been looking at extracts from the spiritual classic entitled The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence OCD. This is one of those rare books whose title is a treasure in itself. (Another, I like to think, is the famous mediaeval tract entitled The Cloud of Unknowing.) Isn’t each day a new opportunity for us to ‘practise the presence of God’? When we talk about what we are doing in our Carmelite groups I often

More on the remarkable Sister Clare Crockett, whom I wrote about yesterday. Members of the Sisters of the Home of the Mother were given a ‘a protector saint’, and Clare was given St Therese of Lisieux. Even before that, this saint was the patroness of Clare’s youth group in Derry. Ironically, Clare’s family prayed a novena to Therese when Clare left home to join the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, asking that Clare return home. We now know that Therese had oth

I have been reading a very moving biography of Clare Theresa Crockett (1982-2016), a young girl from Derry in Northern Ireland who was converted from a life of drinking and partying while still at school. (Clare Crockett. Alone with Christ Alone, by Sister Kirsten Gardner SHM). In 2001 Clare joined the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother (SHM) in Spain, where she took the name Sister Clare Maria of the Trinity and the Heart of Mary. She was killed in an earthquake in

I learned something new to me yesterday about the conferment of the Church’s doctorate on St John of the Cross, and it connects him even more closely with Therese of Lisieux. As I wrote in the blog recently, it was Pope St Pius X who launched the canonisation process for Therese, but he did not live to see her beatification and her canonisation, which took place during the reign of Pius XI. After her canonisation Fr William of St Albert, the Superior General of the Teresian

Some pearls of wisdom from the much-appreciated Carmelite Sister the late Ruth Burrows who died in this month in 2023. ‘A Christian must live by faith, not feeling. My feeling is that I am of little consequence, inferior to others, not a nice sort of person; so I long to be important, someone of real worth, loved and considered precious. I tend therefore to be unhappy, rather envious of others. I am on the defensive, for I have to guard this little self which is always threa

Among the blessings we owe to Pope St Pius X (1835-1914; feast day today) is the elevation of St Therese of Lisieux to the altars. Although her actual beatification and canonisation did not take place till after his death, it was he who decided to launch the process. ‘It was 1907. Pope Pius X was sitting at his desk leafing through a Carmelite nun's diary. It was the diary of Therese of the Child Jesus, who was born Therese Martin and who died at the end of the 19th century

One of the blessings associated with guiding others in formation is the repeated contact it brings with our Constitutions. One might expect this little book to be rather dry – does it not contain a set of rules? In fact there are many spiritual gems within it. People find number 14 on ‘the evangelical counsel of poverty’ challenging, it makes them feel guilty because they don’t live on the poverty line. But this number 14 actually defines poverty as ‘the desire to live in

‘The Frenchman St. John Eudes (1601-1680, feast day today) was an important promoter of devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, establishing the first feasts in their honour. Eudes entered the French Oratory founded by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, and in 1625 he was ordained a priest. A noted orator, he devoted 50 years to the preaching of parish missions in France. Most of his work was centred in Normandy. During several outbreaks of plague i

One of the privileges of my long years in Carmel has been that I have got involved in mentoring others. What I notice is how mature in their Catholic faith most of those who join us already are. We don’t have to catechise them or take them through the essentials of the faith, they are wanting to use the faith as a springboard enabling them to leap further into the arms of God. It’s such a joy to work with souls already so deeply in love with Him, it means that formation se

I came across a quote from a Carmelite Bishop which seems appropriate in the aftermath of the Feast of the Assumption: ‘God is still searching for men and women who, like Mary, will open up to him with infinite trust. He still needs people who are willing to collaborate with him in giving life to the world. He looks for men and women who are poor, who know how to hope and trust him, who take risks for others, and aren’t afraid to be docile to the action of the Spirit like Mar

I always love to read testimonies of the influence of the Carmelite saints. This one is from children’s author, writer, and podcaster Thomas J Salerno. ‘Not long ago, on a whim, I picked up a copy of St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography. I knew of this saint only as a famous Carmelite mystic and doctor of the Church. I was mostly unfamiliar with her writing and had expected ethereal meditations on her many raptures and visions. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find tha

I came across this account of today’s saint, John Berchmans SJ, one of a whole multitude of Catholic saints who died young, and I was interested because the author, a fellow Jesuit named Fr John Hardon (1914-2000), compares him to St Therese of Lisieux. ‘St. John Berchmans was born in 1599 in Berbont, Belgium and died in Rome in 1621 at the ripe age of twenty-two. Unlike Saints Stanislaus and Aloysius who were members of the nobility, aristocratic, wealthy – John was from a

Today’s feast day of St Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641), co-founder with St Francis de Sales of the Order of the Visitation, is a reminder of the miraculous spread of Carmel in seventeenth-century France. Jane Frances was counselled and mentored by Francis de Sales and he was intimately involved in the establishment of Carmel in their country. On the face of it, we might think that this was not a particularly difficult task to complete, but there were all kinds of compl

This feast day of St Clare of Assisi (1193-1253), foundress of the Poor Clares, reminds us of her influence on St Teresa. In Chapter 33 of Teresa’s Life we read the following: “On Saint Clare's [feast] day, as I was going to Communion, that Saint [Clare] appeared to me in great beauty and told me to put forth all my efforts and proceed with what I had begun and she would help me. I conceived a great devotion for her and her words turned out to be the exact truth, for a conve

We had an extraordinary meeting in Manchester last week. The group is just one year old and there were fourteen of us - including a member who actually lives in Austria; he attends meetings onscreen via Teams. It’s not often that an OCDS meeting attracts such a large number. Some of them of course were what we call inquirers or aspirants or visitors. What struck me was that the key factor in this is the contagious enthusiasm of the Seculars for the meetings and for the Or

We have received a report from American Catholic broadcaster EWTN on the recent World Meeting of Discalced Carmelites, and I have extracted a few passages from it below: ‘The first world meeting of OCDS Carmelites in the history of the order was held July 23–26, 2026, in Ávila, Spain, where the leaders of the Order of Discalced Carmelites called upon their almost 33,000 Seculars to fully embrace their vocation as coequal members of the order. This historic call was enthusias

I found this inspiring quote on the website of the Australian Carmelites; it is particularly appropriate on today’s Feast of the Transfiguration and it speaks volumes about our Carmelite vocation. ‘Transfiguration means to be shot-through with the presence of God. Being transfigured is about allowing the presence of God to completely transform us; it’s a revolution of mind and heart driven by God’s Spirit and enabled by our open heartedness. Our life as Christians is about

The state of play regarding OCDS in England and Wales is very mixed at the present moment. It is true on the one hand that new groups have been springing up in various areas, but on the other hand some older groups have been shrinking or simply ageing. The fresh shoots are very encouraging but in some cases they do present an appearance of fragility – one of them has been stuck on a membership of only three for a couple of years. However the quality of commitment of those

I came across this delightful story that reminds us of the great love St John Vianney – whose feast day is today – had for the scapular. ‘Abbé Francis Trochu, in his book, ‘The Curé d’Ars’, relates a story of a young lady who, having decided to consecrate her life to religion, sought the holy pastor of Ars, Saint John Vianney, for a general confession. When she finished relating her sins, St. John Vianney asked her if she was not forgetting something. The girl, upon recolle

Although I myself did not have the privilege of attending the recent World Meeting of the Secular Carmelites in Avila, I have heard reports from one or two who were present, and they have been deeply moved by the experience: their excitement is palpable. However, coming back from a period of exceptional inspiration to immerse oneself again in the humdrum realities of daily living can itself be a bit of a struggle. I have never forgotten a beautiful fortnight I once spent in