SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

We had a happy meeting of the young Manchester OCDS group last night. Four in the group already in formation and several due to take the step in December. Such love for Our Lord evident and such enthusiasm to share. We were looking at Teresa’s Life where she talks about her early illness and her close encounter with death – they had even put wax on her eyes and prepared a grave for her, and her recovery was well-nigh miraculous. Somebody spoke about how people don’t know

I have found a reminder of how our Carmelite saints nourish the Church at large way beyond the Carmelite Order in the attractive website run by the Congregation of the Apostolic Carmel. This congregation (I have mentioned it before) was founded in Bayonne, France, by an English convert named Sophie Leeves (1823-1906 who became Mother Mary Veronica of the Passion) under the guidance of Bishop Marie Ephrem OCD. Both of these individuals moved to India and the Congregation flo

It is always a delight to encounter a Third Order saint like the Italian Franciscan St Mary Frances of the Five Wounds (1715-1791, feast day today) who devoted herself to prayer and care for the poor in Naples. As a tertiary (equivalent to 'secular' in our usage) myself, I feel some kind of kinship with other tertiaries. Moreover Mary Frances was a member of the Tertiaries of St Peter of Alcantara, a major influence on St Teresa. This man (1499-1562) performed a role among

It is astonishing to see how the Divine Mercy picture has appeared in so many of our churches, the picture associated with St Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), whose feast day is today. I found this passage about her devotion to Therese online: ‘At one point when St. Faustina was a novice, she was going through some interior struggles. She began to make novenas to various saints, but instead of getting better the situation grew worse and was affecting her exterior life. In a b

Part of my role in Carmel is to be the gateway into the groups. When inquiries come to our website about the Seculars I am tasked with forwarding them to the appropriate Regional Representative for their geographical area. We receive an increasing number of inquiries about our Virtual Carmelite meeting, which gathers on zoom once a month. This functions as a kind of Carmelite Spirituality group and it has not been doing formation. However, in response to a growing number o

I don’t always blog about the Carmelite saint of the day but who could pass this day without speaking about St Therese? She is an incomparable treasure, her little book feeds and nurtures the spiritual life of many thousands of believers today, as it has done ever since she died. I have a friend for example who was a Baptist, and his Pastor at the time actually gave him a copy of Story of a Soul. Tony credits that book with marking the start of his journey to the Catholic

Carmelites should feel most indebted to the Spanish priest St Francis Borgia SJ (1510-1572, feast day today), for St Teresa herself tells us what a help he was to her in her spiritual journey. ‘For almost two months I was trying to resist with all my might the gifts and favours of God. In resisting these consolations and favours of God, I gained by learning something from His Majesty. For in the past I had thought that to receive favours in prayer much seclusion was necessar

I just came across a Carmelite Secular movement new to me while surfing the net: ‘ The Secular Missionary Carmel (CMS Carmelo Misionero Seglar) was established in 1994 on the initiative of Morelia Suárez, a young lay Catholic, attracted to Carmelite spirituality and the missionary dynamism of the Blessed Francisco Palau, founder of the Carmelite Missionaries. She put a proposal to the Sisters in Colombia to set up a lay association to share the Palautian charism. In 1996 the

We had a marvellous Regional Day at Boars Hill Priory on Saturday last. It was a very happy occasion and there was great joy on the faces of those who made their promises during the day. One of the highlights of the meeting was the reports from those present who had attended the World Meeting of Secular Carmelites in Avila earlier in the Summer. Their faces as they described the delight of sharing in a sense of oneness with fellow Seculars from all over the world were a si

We have our Central Region Regional Day at the Boars Hill Friary tomorrow. It reminds me that I had to make a long journey in Carmel because in my first years I was only interested in my own spiritual development. I was only interested in how my own OCDS group could help me. I heard about Regional Days, but somehow I thought of them as being for other people who ‘liked that sort of thing’. I have always distinguished between ‘being interested in spirituality/spiritual thi

We are making preparations to found a new OCDS work in Cambridge. The first meeting is scheduled for Sunday 4 October at 5.15pm. This is humanly speaking a nervous time, imagining scenarios when no-one turns up, imagining how things might 'go wrong', and so forth. All of course is ultimately God’s work and not ours, but I do know that in reality some groups come to an end and fold, so He does not always will success in human terms. The groups in Wolverhampton and Birmingh

I have always felt a deep attraction to St Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968, feast day today). Years ago, learning about the Catholic Church for the first time, I was fascinated by the fact that this extraordinary man was actually alive in my own lifetime, for I had assumed that saints (he seemed surely to be one) were figures from the past. Today I discover that he had more affinities with Carmel than I knew about before. ‘The word “transverberation” means a wounding of love

I visited the Spirit of Carmel OCDS community on Saturday in Preston, Lancashire. Preston was for many decades one of the most Catholic towns in the country. I was struck by the challenges the Spirit of Carmel community has faced in recent times, for they once had the support of OCD Sisters and Friars based in the town. Both have now pulled out – and that is quite a bereavement for the local Seculars. A member of the Spirit of Carmel commented that the Seculars now have t

I found this passage by a Secular Carmelite named Carmel Semple that I have excerpted for St Matthew’s day. ‘Matthew 4:11–23 is a deeply Carmelite Gospel. It recounts how Jesus spent most of his life hidden quietly in Nazareth until he was baptised in the river Jordan by his cousin John the Baptist. He then withdrew to the desert where he fasted for forty days and was tempted by the devil. … Each temptation tested Jesus’ trust, obedience and loyalty to God. In contrast, Adam

I was always fascinated by the Italian Conventual Friar St Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663, feast day today). He had something in common with our St Teresa – the experience of levitation. ‘He was accused by his fellow Franciscans of deception and fraud and they forbade him to say Mass in public or take any part in public ceremonies. But people came to consult him and, although wonders seemed to surround him, he felt God had deserted him. … Even on his deathbed, when he hea

Just back from a splendid retreat run by the American-based Coming Home Network. They exist to help converts struggling to find their way in the Catholic Church or inquirers about the Church. They have organised retreats in the US for many years but they have garnered so many contacts in the UK through their podcasts and their presence in the media that they decided to organise retreats for us over here. The retreat was held at the Ladywell Franciscan Centre in Godalming, S

I am off today to a mini-retreat for convert Catholics run by the Coming Home Network. This society based in the USA has been receiving so many contacts from the UK that last year it launched a UK retreat at Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, which I attended. This year's is at Ladywell Franciscan Friary in Godalming. The CHN website hosts numerous podcasts and videos helpful for Catholic Apologetics. Back Wednesday, so I will resume the blog on Thursday.

Yesterday in a Secular Community we were discussing Pope Leo’s recent Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. This is talked about as if it were ‘about AI’ but it’s about much more than that – there is a substantial portion on the development of Christian Social Doctrine before he tackles recent issues in the arena of artificial intelligence. In the second part of the Encyclical the Holy Father hints at the enormous differences between machines and humans (upon which books could be

Last night I was talking to a lady taking her first steps into Carmel and she spoke about something or someone ‘pulling’ her in that direction. This is a good word, a powerful word for our experience as we sense an inward longing – surely the Holy Spirit – to go deeper and draw closer to God. It's almost like the power of the magnet over the metal close to it. To us in Carmel that longing is fostered and encouraged by our acquaintance with our saints in their writings. The

Today’s saint, Peter Claver SJ (1580-1654), was born two years before St Teresa of Avila died. He devoted his life to the service of slaves in what is now Colombia. The slaves were brought from Africa in horrendous conditions, so bad that many died on the way. It is little known that Popes condemned this slave trade. The city magistrates in Cartagena where he was based regarded him as a nuisance for his persistent advocacy on behalf of the slaves, and ‘in the last years