SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

As the years pass, I am very aware of the power of those inner promptings of the Holy Spirit which have moved me at so many moments of my life to take life-changing decisions, and today’s Office of Readings particularly touches me.  For example the decision to go to the meetings of my Secular community, the decision to keep on going, the decision to ask for formation and then to ask for the Promises, all of these prompted by the Spirit.  In today’s Office of Readings I find t

By coincidence, today is the feast of St Winefride of Holywell.  The coincidence is that yesterday in the OCDS National Council we were discussing various Marian shrines as alternatives to Walsingham - because there is a possibility that we may not have the annual Walsingham Carmelite pilgrimage in 2026 and we are thinking about an alternative.  One of my early memories as a young teenager is of a visit to the shrine of St Winefride.  My family were on holiday just outside Ho

I found this quote from St Teresa of Calcutta on the catholicireland  website. ‘God is the friend of silence. S ee how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; s ee the stars, the moon and the sun, see how they all move in s ilence.’ I think it is very beautiful, a commentary on something we absolutely take for granted.  Our preoccupation with silent contemplative prayer puts us in harmony with nature in a very special way. In plunging ourselves into the supernatur

On this feast of SS Simon and Jude I find my thoughts turning to the O.Carms, who built the National Shrine of Saint Jude at Faversham in the 1950s. According to their website, ‘ Carmelites try to nurture a close relationship with Christ and his family - especially Mary the Mother of God - and so perhaps it was natural that devotion to Jude, Apostle and Kinsman of Christ, should have become popular in Carmelite communities, not only in Faversham but around the world. Today th

I am looking forward to the first meeting of the new OCDS National Council on Wednesday.  Several former members of the Council retired at the Presidents’ Conference last month, including myself, but I have been retained in a new capacity.  The members of the Council have normally been the Regional Representatives plus the National President, Father Matt Blake, our Delegate from the Friars, and our National Treasurer, but this time although I have resigned as Regional Represe

I looked up today’s saint Anthony Mary Claret and discovered a long list of religious institutions associated with him and with the Claretian Order he founded, including the Carmelite Sisters of Charity.  The Carmelite Sisters of Charity is a religious institute of pontifical right whose members profess public vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and follow the evangelical way of life in common. Their mission includes education of youth and care of the sick and aged. This

A Carmelite friend has drawn to my attention to the beautiful story of Our Lady of the Bowed Head. This story begins in Rome in 1610 when a Carmelite friar by the name of Dominic of Jesus and Mary, was charged with inspecting an old property to see if it might be suitable for conversion into a monastery. As he walked around the grounds, he passed a pile of trash. In this pile he found an old oil painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He could not believe someone had thrown su

Since today is the feast day of St John Paul II, here is a quotation from an O Carm website about his love for Carmel: During the Angelus celebrated at Castelgandolfo on July 24, 1988, the Pope recalled that Carmelite mystics experienced God in their lives as "the way of perfection" and "ascending Mount Carmel" – always in the presence of Mary as Mother, Patroness, and Sister. He said that for those in Carmel and in every soul which is deeply Carmelite, a life of intense com

I spent last week in the delightful Monastery called Termonbacca which houses the Carmelite friars in Derry.  Although in the past I frequently used to visit Belfast because it was where my late wife came from, I have never been to Derry.  The monastery overlooks the river Foyle and the views are splendid.  The week was devoted to a Symposium on ‘Carmel and human and Christian development’, a topic to which many of our discussions in our OCDS groups are devoted, since we talk

My thanks are due to my fellow Secular Carmelite Vivien for this thoughtful and encouraging blog contribution. 'The Carmelite tradition has produced an extraordinary number of youthful saints. Women such as St Therese of Lisieux, St Elizabeth of the Trinity, St Teresa Margaret Redi, and St Teresa of the Andes all died between the ages of 20 to 26 in the odour of sanctity. For those of us who may feel that we are living life in the spiritual slow lane, such precocity is both

This blog will be suspended until Monday 20 October.  I will be going to Derry to take part in a Symposium organised by the Carmelites at...

On this the feast day of our newest Doctor of the Church, John Henry Newman, I discover that there is a recent book which compares Newman...

I have been working for a long time now on a book on the legacy of St Teresa, and one of the most interesting parts of this book concerns...

“ T he Rosary is the best therapy for these distraught,unhappy, fearful, and frustrated souls,precisely because it involves the...

The Office of Readings for today contains some pearls from the wonderful St Ambrose (c.339-397), Bishop of Milan.  I often remember him...

Fr Matt Blake shocked us all when he was addressing our Central Regional Day last Saturday:  he told us that when someone complained to...

‘ When one loves, one does not calculate’.  My thanks to S, a Secular I saw last Saturday at the OCDS Central Regional Day, for this...

When I first came to Carmel it was St John of the Cross and St Teresa who inspired me most.  I had read Story of a Soul by St Therese...