By Ruth Burrows OCD
One of many striking Carmelite authors of this present day has now written at the imaginative and prescient and aspirations of the nice foundress of her order,St Teresa of Avila. the foremost to that imaginative and prescient was once ardour - now not a few country of heightened non secular emotion, yet an all-engrossing preoccupation with God. yet, as Ruth Burrows issues out, what all too frequently occurs in perform is that the day by day way of life turns into tailored to non-passion: she argues, passionately, that trustworthy observance - the horarium, the 'detachment from created issues' obedience, the connection among sisters - offers a nearly ideal state of affairs for receiving a really nice love of God, and that the constitution mustn't ever be tailored to a lesser love. This, maybe her most crucial publication to this point, is written basically for fellow contributors of her personal Order.But this relatively, and the element and readability with which she expresses it, makes Carmel a publication of profound curiosity to all contemplatives, to monks and spiritual with extra lively apostolates, and to laypeople - in a note, to all Christians who see the 'passionately pursued' comtemplative existence not just as a middle vocation within the Church, yet as a resource of notion for his or her personal religious lives.
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Example text
From her youth upwards Teresa had proof of it. For herself, freedom from enclosure gave her opportunities otherwise unavailable. She found directors that understood her: it was while staying in a friend's house that she met St Peter of Alcantara whose support 26 THE RETURN TO SOURCE and guidance she sorely needed; and in the same house likewise, Maria of Jesus. She encountered influential people who became her friends and helped her with her foundations, and some of the young women whom she met joined her Reform, notably Maria of St Joseph, one of her most gifted, trusted and best loved daughters.
That they may be one as We are one': persons in oneness - such is 54 EREMITICISM IN THE TERESIAN CARMEL Christian community. We are not a mere group, still less a herd. Each of us has to stand alone before God, totally responsible for her own life: her thinking, attitudes, decisions, actions. We cannot renounce this responsibility either in the name of obedience or of community. We shoulder this lonely responsibility at the same time as we 'commune' with others in New Testament fashion: humbly accepting guidance, formation, support; putting all our talents at the service of others.
47 CARMEL Work is often laborious, and calls for great sacrifice and we must be prepared for this in our 'work'. We can recall how Therese of Lisieux grasped the meaning, the inestimable spiritual value of the daily round and its importance to the Church. She gave her utmost right to the end. Sick, exhausted, she would strive to be as she said 'at my post'. A difficulty we have to reckon with is that the consequences of a lack of generosity regarding attendance at the Office are not observable.