A Vocation to Love
My vocation is to love!
-St. Therese of Lisieux
Our Carmelite life raises a question to you. “Why this?” Therefore we have shared with you what we do each day. We will also try to explain to you something about why we have chosen this life. But fundamentally, the choice is a response to a call from God. And why God has led us to the Mount of Carmel is His secret…
Contemplative life is a wellspring of grace in the Church. St. John Paul II said, “It is necessary that Carmelites, faithful to a life of prayer and its exercise, persevere in their vocation in order that they may attain that knowledge of the living God which must be their title to glory, their specific vocation, and their providential mission.”
We are blessed with many saints since the time of our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus, even until our present day with the canonization of Mother Maravillas of Jesus in 2003 and Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity in 2016. These Carmelites, hidden from the eyes of the world, through a life of love and fidelity, were raised to the heights of sanctity. We recall St. Therese of the Child Jesus, patroness of the missions, whose influence has reached the ends of the earth. She desired to love Jesus more than He had ever been loved before. Feeling her littleness, and with complete confidence and total abandonment, called upon her Beloved to be Himself her sanctity, thus revealing to the world the way of spiritual childhood, which is the way pointed out by Jesus Himself in the Gospel: “Unless you be converted and become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 18:2-3).
A religious vocation is a gift! It is a profound expression of the love of God for you. To discover this call is to realize that Christ is looking on you and inviting you to give yourself totally in love. – St. John Paul II
Preparation for religious life according to the vows, like the preparation for the priesthood, is a way of conversion and growing in faith. It is a way of developing all the potential in a human person. Each person is unique, and formation implies a profound respect and love for each individual’s vocation and for the graces working in each one since we do not all run in the same way.
‘Within the unity of the monastic observance, there is scope for a variety of individuals.’ ‘Each individual finds his own secret with the Bridegroom.’ Our Holy Mother St. Teresa is very sensitive to this fact that different temperaments and circumstances require different responses to grace. Our particular path is unique. It is amazing to see what happens when someone works with God’s grace.
The Lord has given each person so many talents and characteristics but these do not develop automatically. It is important to see formation, above all, as a divine work, a supernatural process. The goal of all formation is a gradual transformation into the likeness of Christ, through the action of the Spirit aided by the maternal solicitude of Our Lady, Mother of Jesus and of the Church, and who as the Queen and beauty of Carmel is our model in following Christ.
What does it profit to give God one thing if he asks of you another? Consider what it is God wants, and then do it.
– St. John of the Cross
Whether Postulant, Novice, Professed — the life of a Carmelite remains simple in its beauty and joy. It is a life of poverty, chastity and obedience, humility, silence, and solitude—a life of union with God through prayer and sacrifice for the needs of the Church and the world. “This is why the Church has shown such special care in safeguarding Nuns’ withdrawal from the world and the enclosure of their convents.” (Statute on Enclosure)