SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

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