SECULAR ORDER OF DISCALCED CARMELITES
England, Wales and Scotland

The rich treasury of the Catholic saints and blesseds often seems to me to be inexhaustible.  I don’t know how many there are, I expect...

I learnt quite a bit from reading about St Joseph of Leonissa Ofm. Cap (1556-1612), whose feast is today.  First about himself – he was a...

Among the most endearing of the many new technologies to me are What’s App groups.  A What’s App group has just been started for the...

I googled ‘St John Bosco Carmelites’ to find any connections between the saint of today’s feast with Carmel, and I came up with the...

The Boars Hill Carmelite friars have a plot in Wolvercote Cemetery, on the northern edge of the city of Oxford.  This same cemetery...

In recent years I have found myself – to my complete astonishment – involved in founding new OCDS groups.  There are of course many...

In the Office of Readings, we have been looking recently at St Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  I can’t help but be struck by the way that...

I found this about St Angela Merici (1474-1540, today's feast) on an Ursuline website – it seems she was very close to us Carmelites in...

Quite a few years ago in my Protestant days I discovered the Treatise on the Love of God by St Francis of Sales (1567-1622) - whose feast...

Today’s saint offered to us by the Church - St Emerentiana - was a favourite of Blessed Marie-Eugène, founder of the Carmelite Institute...

In a Carmelite prayer group last night, we were discussing the ‘Act of Self-Offering to Merciful Love’ (you can google it to see the...

I was talking to a friend the other day about how in my youth I was always craving intimacy with a woman.  When I married my late wife, I...

‘How was it?’ – we sometimes get asked by others after one of our Carmelite meetings; or we ask someone else that question after such a...

The story of St Antony made a great impression on me when I first read about him as a young man.  This call he had to a life of solitude...

After his funeral mass at Boars Hill Carmelite Priory today, Fr John Hughes OCD will be laid to rest in Wolvercote Cemetery.  This is...

This morning we shall be having an OCDS National Council meeting on Zoom.  The National Council is composed of the Regional...

I have received notification of a big conference on S            t Therese of Lisieux to be held at the Boars Hill Carmelite Priory in...

I have been reading a book about the influence of St Teresa of Avila on St Therese of Lisieux.  We are so used to thinking of Therese as...

Philippa Hodges died at Christmas.  A member of the St Elijah Secular Community in Oxford, she had been connected with the Carmelites...

Somebody I was with very recently told me ‘I was wild in my youth’, so I was intrigued to learn a little from Wikipedia about the Italian...