SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

Yesterday I wrote a few lines comparing the physical and the spiritual ascent (cf. John of the Cross). There is a famous remark...

I was having coffee with a friend after mass yesterday and we were talking - as you do at this time of year - about holidays. She...

These words are said to have been spoken by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross OCD (Edith Stein) as she was forcibly removed from the...

Today's feast of St Dominic set me thinking about those periods in history which seem to produce spectacular lives of sanctity, lives of...

If you have ever been to Sicily, you might have taken the ferry from the mainland to the port of Messina.  It was there that a great...

Tomorrow is the funeral of Evelyn Rodgers, who has died at the age of 100. Evelyn was a member of the OCDS community in Wincanton in the...

At our Coventry meeting on Saturday I was struck by how our discussion of a text by Therese of Lisieux led into the difficulties all of...

I've been looking at the latest issue of Mount Carmel: a Review of the Spiritual life, produced by the Discalced Carmelites of the...

PS I should have mentioned that today is the Feast Day of St Alphonsus.

An eighteenth-century saint and Doctor of the Church celebrated for his contribution to moral theology, St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote...

Today's feast of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, reminds me of my journey into the Catholic Church. I grew up...

One of the great blessings I have received in Carmel is the encouragement to follow the daily office of Readings in the Breviary. I...

I have friends who tell me that they have long had an urge to enter monastic life but circumstances have not allowed it to be fulfilled. ...

We had our Virtual Community meeting last night. This is a meeting online which is like a shortened version of a Secular Carmelite...

Is there any particular connection between the Apostle St James - whose feast day is today - and St Teresa of Avila? Yes there is. St...

Today is the feast day of a hugely important figure in the history of our Order, Blessed John Soreth (1391-1471), who was Prior General...

Fr Matt Blake, our Delegate from the Friars, makes a very precious contribution to our life in the Secular Carmelites. We prize many of...

The first meeting of the new Northampton OCDS group in the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour took place last Thursday. We had...

In our Northampton group last night we discussed the balance between reading and praying in spiritual growth. Two of us had been...

Yesterday was the feast day of the Blessed Martyrs of Compiegne, France. They died on the guillotine on this day in 1794 in Paris. They...