SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

A fellow Carmelite sent me this prayer-poem, with which I was unfamiliar, I thought I would share it. It has a very Carmelite tone. ‘I kiss the Wounds of Your Sacred Head, with sorrow deep and true, may every thought of my mind today be an act of perfect love for You.   I kiss the Wounds of Your Sacred Feet, with sorrow deep and true, may every step I take today be an act of perfect love for You.   I kiss the Wounds of Your Sacred Hands, with sorrow deep and true, may every

We have a meeting in my parish called ‘The Going Deeper’ meeting.  I run it on Carmelite lines (Evening Prayer, discussion of a Carmelite text, silent prayer).  It has been going a few years but numbers have dropped and I don’t know if it will last much longer. These things ebb and flow.  We were meeting in a room at the church but we are switching tonight to my house – I don’t know how that will work.  It is in the hands of the Good Lord.  One of the members said she was re

Very very occasionally a person comes to an OCDS group or community and it becomes apparent sooner or later that this person does not have a vocation to Carmel.  If that emerges sooner, it generally isn’t a problem unless it is ignored by the president or formator, or unless the person in question is very persistent in not taking the hint about leaving - in which case strains and stresses may arise.  It can happen however that a person spends three or four years or even five

Some years ago I met a marvellous Carmelite lady in the Holy Land and we became friends.  One of the things that impressed me about her was that from time to time she would remind me by email ‘I am praying for you’.  She loved to stress the importance of prayer.  Gradually it dawned on me that she really thought it was the most important thing in life.  And gradually it dawned on me that this should also be a basic principle for me – only it wasn’t.  Of course I did pray, but

I spent yesterday morning listening to the life story of an extraordinary man whose life has been given to God from his twenties.  He and his wife have devoted themselves to service of the Lord for these last thirty years - and it has taken them and their large family into a great deal of shocking suffering.  As I listened, I was reminded of how I offered myself to Jesus at the age of 17, fondly thinking that if a person surrenders his life in that way, all will be straightfo

Someone mentioned in an OCDS group the other day the book entitled Divine Intimacy, by Fr Gabriel of St Magdalen.   On the website entitled Goodreads I found the following description of it: ‘It is a book that shows how to join prayer and action and put the Catholic doctrine on the spiritual life into practice daily. [It] has been translated into all principal languages and has met with extraordinary success, bringing encouragement and spiritual profit to lay people as well a

Sometimes in search of inspiration for the day’s blog I like to search the net by combining the name of the saint of the day with the words ‘Carmel’ or ‘Carmelites’.  Today’s saint is the Frenchman St Hilaire, and by this means I found a story about a Carmelite community in the south of France.  The Abbaye Saint Hilaire in the Vaucluse is believed to have been founded in the 12th century and dedicated to one of the local Provençal saints, another Saint Hilaire.  It was built

Carmelite Formation has been somewhat on my mind of late.  ‘What exactly is it?’ asked a member of a new group recently.  The truth is that approaches to formation vary considerably.  I am aware that in the US formation can be rather more demanding than in the UK.  However, the truth is that formation is something of a mysterious process because it is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit and it is not accomplished by this or that method alone.  Lest this might be thought a

Another Carmelite Prelate is celebrated by the Church today.  After St Peter Thomas yesterday we have St Andrew Corsini (1302-1373/4).  After a Frenchman, an Italian who was actually a contemporary of his and just three years older.  Both men served as papal legates.  Corsini was canonised in 1629, Peter Thomas a year earlier, and both were canonised by Pope Urban VIII.  The story goes that when Pope Clement VI appointed him Bishop of Fiesole, St Andrew went into hiding.  The

Today we remember St Peter Thomas (1305-1366) who was an unusual kind of Carmelite saint.  Unusual in terms of his vocation, because he ended up serving as a papal diplomat.  He was a Frenchman from a very poor family who had to go begging to support the cost of his education; he also made money by teaching the younger pupils.  His early years were spent in Agen and the southwest of France.  After joining the Carmelites he was appointed a bishop and then a papal legate mainly