SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

Sometimes I like to google ‘saint of the day’ followed by ‘Carmelites’ or ‘St Teresa’ and it can yield surprising results. Today for example we have the feast of St Pancras, said to have been a 14-year old boy martyred in 304 together with his uncle for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. (A word of warning – there is another St Pancras/San Pancrazio, greatly honoured in Sicily, said to have been sent by St Peter himself to the island). I find that ‘the basilica of San

At the Cardiff OCDS meeting on Saturday we were discussing the problem we often have in relinquishing control over our lives – abandoning the tiller to God, letting Him gently prise it out of our hands. Today I came across a quote from a book by Gerald G May (The Dark Night of the Soul) which is helpful because the author makes explicit how our experience of the dark night can help us to let God lead us. “One of the biggest lessons-and another gift of the dark night-is the

Last night we had an OCDS meeting in Northampton, around forty minutes away from me. We use a parish room in the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. The church is locked when we arrive and the keys are kept in a coded box. When we leave, we lock up and put the keys in the box. Through a combination of circumstances I forgot to put the keys back in the box and discovered them in my pocket when I reached home. Nothing for it but to make the journey all the way back to

In the News Section on the first page of our website three events are currently announced for this Summer in connection with the big anniversaries of St John of the Cross – 100 years since he was made a Doctor of the Church and 300 years since he was canonised . Two of these events are in the conventional conference style but the third is a concert with a John of the Cross theme: Within God Concert (11 July, 7:30 pm, online and in person) · Five original pieces inspired by