SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

A very powerful message on prayer from the Early Church Father Tertullian in this morning’s Office of Readings.  ‘ Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God’, he writes.   This alone is a very beautiful thought – that we have the power to ‘conquer God’.  Then he goes on to a very beautiful paragraph: ‘ All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look out to heaven and call out, lifti

‘What does it profit you to give God one thing if He asks of you another?  Consider what it is God wants, and then do it.’  This reflection is taken from Sayings of Light and Love by St John of the Cross, and it certainly resonates for me in my life.  I spent many years offering my life to God in the context of a certain vocation only to have it borne in on me that this was not to be my vocation.  Gradually I had to accept that God had other plans for my life; offering my lif

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with E for lunch.  We first met many years ago as students.  At that time we were acquaintances and nothing more, though we shared an enthusiasm for the Lord as evangelical (born-again) Christians.  Our paths crossed again some years later after we had graduated, but still as acquaintances.  I had become a Catholic by then.  Years later our paths crossed yet again on one particular day when I happened to be giving a talk and E turned

A great day in the Coventry OCDS group on Saturday.  We recently celebrated our second birthday, and our present on Saturday was a visit to the group from Fr Matt Blake OCD, Delegate from the Friars to the Seculars.  Our Coventry meetings begin with our participation in the 9.30 mass for the parish followed by a Holy Hour with Adoration and Confessions.  Fr Matt celebrated the mass at the kind invitation of the parish priest.  We gathered in the parish room at 11 and Fr Matt

At a recent OCDS meeting we got to discussing retreats and how they helped in our spiritual development.  One member observed that her journey to Carmel had actually begun with a retreat in which she became aware of her spiritual hunger.  Another member spoke about attending ‘really severe’ Buddhist retreats (fasting and solitude) in the days before she became a Catholic.  She recalled how these retreats focussed on helping individuals to go inwards and face up to the violenc

These first few months of the year our meetings are sometimes diminished because of the ravages of the sicknesses of the season among the members.  This brings an element of unpredictability to our programmes but we get through.  Coping with unpredictability is one of the graces we receive as Carmelites.  It’s wonderful the way that the Holy Spirit works in us as individuals but also in our meetings.  From the beginning when I first joined Carmel I have been aware of this gra

Today we are directed by the Church to celebrate the memory of St Casimir (1458-1484), a Prince of Poland and Lithuania.  Casimir was known for his love of God in the midst of the life of a Court with all its accompanying temptations.  I found out about a rather special Carmelite community in Lithuania, the Mary Gate of Dawn and Little Theresa Community, founded in 1994.  At the request of several young women, the idea of founding a non – cloistered Carmelite convent for publ

I met with someone who is planning to come into the Church at Pentecost yesterday.  He has quite a few material difficulties in his daily life as he has a large family, but I am struck by his courageous attitude.  He and his wife have been living a very sacrificial life for years. We talked about many things and I was reminded of the question I was faced after my conversion.  I said to myself, ‘OK, I am now a Catholic, but what sort of Catholic am I going to be?’ I decided I

Today is the feast of yet another one who was thwarted in her desire to become a Carmelite, St Angela of the Cross (1846 – 1932), foundress of the Sisters of the Company of the Cross, a religious institute dedicated to helping the abandoned poor and the ill with no one to care for them. She was born in Seville and at the age of 12 had to go and work in a shoe repair shop as her family were so poor. Guerrero's supervisor at the shop was Antonia Maldonado, a devout lady who enc

Today’s saint, Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows (born Francesco Possenti 1 March 1838 – 27 February 1862) was an Italian Passionist seminarian. Born to a professional family, he gave up ambitions of a secular career to enter the Passionist congregation. His life in the monastery was not extraordinary, yet he followed the rule of the congregation perfectly and was known for his great devotion to the sorrows of the Virgin Mary. He died from tuberculosis at the age of 23 in Isola