Carmelite Spirituality

All our Carmelite teaching is designed to make us docile to the workings of the Holy Spirit as our Constitutions and Ratio show. These documents teach us that the Holy Spirit is our principal educator to whom:

the one called to life in Carmel, aware of the indwelling grace of the Spirit, should strive to become ever conscious of that ineffable Presence.

The Searching Heart

The Carmelite tradition begins in searching hearts. "Where have you hidden, beloved?" writes the Carmelite poet and mystic, John of the Cross. "You fled like the stag after wounding me." (The Spiritual Canticle stanza 1) We fragile humans have an aching heart, a hunger, a desire which we seek to nourish and fulfill.

In our Catholic liturgical calendar, the Lenten season opens with Ash Wednesday.

I have never been to a desert. I have never seen one. I don’t believe this is a unique experience. I have seen nice pictures of deserts with sand and sun, a play of darkness and light, and they have awakened in me a deep sense of the transcendent and mysterious. But I don’t think I would even try to visit a place like that even if the opportunity arises.

The modern mind is no longer the Greek or medieval mind; it is inductive in its approach to things and its starting point is the actual world about us. It is also dynamic, geared to change and bent on finding the stuff of its thinking in the existential order of things. In practice, this means that if the spiritual life is to be relevant today, it must be a dimension of real life. The earthly path is the one to heaven and one must find God in the works of his hands, especially in persons.