My Friend the Friar
A podcast where we learn about our faith and share what it takes to live a Catholic Christian life through conversations and contemplations with my friend the friar, a Discalced Carmelite Priest.
My Friend the Friar
A Brief History of Carmelite Spirituality (Season 4 Episode 2)
We trace the Carmelite path from Elijah’s quiet breeze to Teresa and John’s reform, exploring how silence, scripture, and daily Eucharist shape a life of allegiance to Christ. Along the way, we look at Mary’s role, major historical shifts, and why laypeople might discern the Secular Order.
• origins on Mount Carmel and Elijah’s witness
• the Rule of St Albert and daily Eucharist
• shift to mendicant life and urban presence
• crises, mitigations and the call to reform
• Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross’ renewal
• Mary as model contemplative and patron
• Spain’s Golden Age and Carmelite saints
• differences with the Ancient Observance
• why charisms matter for lay discernment
• how the Secular Order forms prayer and life
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Welcome to the My Friend the Friar podcast, and thanks for listening. If you like My Friend the Friar and want to support us, please consider subscribing or following us if you haven't already done so. And if you found us on YouTube, then don't forget to click the notification bell when you subscribe so you'll be notified of new episodes when they release. Thanks again and God bless. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and my friend the friar, Father Stephen Sanchez, a discalced carmelite priest. Good morning, Father. Good morning, John. How are you? I am on my second out of seven cups of coffee. So I'm I'm okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm on my second as well.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:See, I think seven is a noble. It's the perfect number. Come on. It's a holy number. Yes. Of course. Like it's the perfect cups of coffee. How many? Seven. There you go. It's biblical. You can't argue with God. Amen. Amen. Oh my gosh. It is. It's been a minute since we've recorded. Um what have you been up to? What are you and your brother? All you got, you just run around causing trouble. What are y'all up to?
SPEAKER_00:I've been very busy uh between the parish and the center and Merry Lake and lots of stuff going on, just lots of stuff. Uh retreats and stuff I've been preparing for retreat. I'll be uh giving a retreat um to the secular order in Denver, to the secular order in Knoxville, to the secular order in Georgetown. Uh plus parish stuff, right? So I just finished yesterday. We finished the parish audit. That was okay. So just all these wonderful contemplative things, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Bookkeeping. Nothing is more contemplative than bookkeeping. Crunchy numbers. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's funny. But the weather is I don't know about have you been outside yet this morning? Oh yeah. Nice. It's starting to turn into fall. I know you there's like this window here in Texas where it's like it's nice for maybe a month, and then it's either like just rainy and cold and crummy, or it's like a hundred degrees outside. Yeah. That's Texas. Yeah. But I like the cold, so well, God bless you and your little heart. But you know, when it snows out at Merry Lake, it is so pretty. It is. It's a castle. It is so pretty. I I would love to go out there and just get stuck and not be able to leave because of the snow.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that'll happen. That can happen.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man. And we we took Sophia down to college, so she's out of the house now. And it's so funny because like you know, well, I keep expecting her to come home, you know, because like she would be at work or she'd be going hanging out with friends, or she'd be at school when she was in high school, and I would be at home working, and I just expect her to come home, and she doesn't come home anymore. It's weird. Um, and it reminds me or it makes me think too, um, about mom, right? Because like it this is the time of my life, or I guess this moment in my life where I think, oh, I need to go text mom something, right? And oh, can't do that. And then I'm like, oh, I gotta tell, oh, Sophie's not here either. So it's just kind of, I guess, that time in my life. It's it's just interesting because it's very different than when I was a kid. It's just but it's similar too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But God is good and she's doing good in college so far. I mean, she's only been there for a little bit, but she's I mean, she's only been there a week. Come on. She's adjusting well, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And she actually she made like a hundred on some test the other day. She was all proud of herself. So I guess she's taking studying seriously enough is good. Good. Yeah. Hope she keeps it up. Me too. Me too. Um okay, so enough of the chit chat. Let's get to it. We um today we're gonna be talking about Carmelite spirituality. Um and this is just something I I guess a lot of people are curious about. People I think people in general are curious about religious orders because generally speaking, I think in in our uncatechized little brains, we think of the priest wearing the the black in the c in the Roman collar, right? And then a nun walking around, right? But the nuns got some little habit. And I I think generally speaking, at least for me, I envision like a little Dominican nun, like just black and white habit kind of thing. But um, and then people kind of stumble into this world of there's a lot of different orders, yeah, and spiritualities and charisms and stuff, right? So uh, so we obviously we're on team Carmelite over here. Hello?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, like anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So um, so yeah, so we figure we would just kind of do like an introduction, like where did it come from? Uh, where are we at now? Um, kind of explore it a little bit. Might set us up for some future episodes of of places uh within the uh spirituality that we might want to dig in deeper.
SPEAKER_00:Right, but make sure and take notes so we don't forget because of what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Things we're going to do, and then we never do it. So I already forgot. It's that's why I need the seven cups of coffee, so I can remember. All right, I'll let you get started.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so just a little bit on kind of a this is an introduction to Carmelite spirituality, and we could go for hours and hours and weeks and weeks and months and months. Uh so this is just uh an overview, so of broad strokes. So uh Carmelite spirituality is a rich spiritual tradition within the Catholic Church that focuses on contemplative prayer or prayer of silence, meditation, those are ways of talking about contemplative prayer. Um and it's the purpose of this prayer is to achieve union with God through Christ. A longer answer would take months to outline things. It would start with the entire spiritual movement of the desert fathers and the monastic traditions that develop from that movement. So going back to our eastern roots and the fathers that went out into the desert and all that, it that's that would be uh a whole course on just that movement, right?
SPEAKER_01:So we don't want to I I think we've and we've talked about that here and there, like sprinkled throughout some of our episodes, especially early on.
SPEAKER_00:I think when we were talking about sanctity, maybe sanctity and also on martyrs, because a lot of the a lot of the desert fathers were not into the desert to prepare themselves for martyrdom. So yeah, there's a again the tradition is very, very, very rich. So there's a lot, and again, we can we're only gonna follow this one thread uh of the Carmelite uh spirituality. So the Carmelite Order was founded on Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel is in Israel, it is a little mountain ridge that juts out into the Mediterranean. And the order was founded in the 1200s. So Mount Carmel is this mountain range that that goes out to the port of Haifa, and it's about 15, that part is about 15 miles long that stretches out into the Mediterranean, and it's about 1500 feet above sea level. Uh, so this has always been part of um a holy place, has always been considered a holy place. So if you remember your Bible stories and you remember that in the book of Kings, we have the prophet Elijah confronting the false prophets of Baal and Ashtaroth that were brought into Israel by Queen Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, and that was like 871 BC. Um Mount Carmel is the place where then this confrontation happens between Elijah and the false prophets. So this is where Elijah uh and everything that he symbolizes in in Old Testament spirituality, the whole prophets, the whole prophetic school, right? Um, he challenges Israel to fidelity, to be faithful to its covenant to covenant with the living God. So he confronts uh Israel and says, you know, how long, how long are you gonna sit on the fence, right? Are you gonna if you're gonna worship Baal, worship Baal. If you're gonna worship Yahweh, worship Yahweh, but don't sit on the fence and and worship both, right? You can't have both.
SPEAKER_01:So in this confrontation, if you remember, uh the whole thing of uh bringing the Holocausts and so Yeah, I was gonna say, is this where he the like the other prophets are like dancing around and all this stuff, and and Elijah's literally just sitting there like y'all are wasting your time, and then he like burninates them or something, like right.
SPEAKER_00:So what happens is they bring two bulls or heifers to sacrifice, and he lets them choose the one, and then he lets them prepare their bull and everything, and then he's okay, you go first. And so they do all this stuff, and and he basically the challenge was whoever answers the prayers is the true God, right? And so Baal and Ashtraf prophets are are you know doing their whole crazy stuff and slashing themselves in frenzy, and and nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, and then so then Elijah begins his uh prayer and he kind of sort of challenges it even more because he has he has them pour water over his sacrifice, over the wood, over the offering and everything. He pours water all over it, and then he begins his prayer, and then at the time of the evening sacrifice that's happening at the that should be the time of the sacrifice of the temple, fire comes from out of heaven and consumes uh the Holocaust that Elijah had prepared. And after that, then Elijah slays uh the 450 false prophets of Baal and the 400 false prophets of Astra. So he kills 850 people, right? And so this is like okay. Uh this is old testament.
SPEAKER_01:It's one of those good old, yeah, good old testament throwdowns.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just likely and everybody dies, and everybody dies. And then because of that, uh Queen Queen Jezebel uh promises to kill Elijah because she killed her false prophets, right? So this is the big, big contest, right? So this is what it's it focuses on is the contest between Baal and the God of the covenant. So Elijah flees uh to the mountain, you know, into the desert to the mountain. He's running to the mountain that is in northern Israelite tradition is called Horeb, and in the Judai tradition is called Sinai. Going back to where God established the covenant with Israel on Sinai, right? So that's where he goes, and this is where uh we have in the book of Kings, we have the manifestation of God's presence in a different way. It's not like uh in the original manifestation in Sinai with trumpets and clouds and thunder and fire and wind, right? All this stuff, and so all this happens, but God is not in the fire, God is not in the hurricane wind, God is not in and then all of a sudden there's a gentle breeze, a gentle stirring, and then Elijah realizes that is God's presence, so he goes out into um to face God, right? And so this is where we have the Carmelite tradition developing from that.
SPEAKER_01:So part of what I love I love this Bible story. Sorry, if this this or Bible story, this part of it. It's just the whole kind of episode start to finish after he's killed the um false prophets. The false prophets. Um, if I remember doesn't basically God say, Okay, you've been through a lot, why don't you take a nap and eat something? Although he he and then we'll start journeying or something. He goes, right.
SPEAKER_00:He goes, he flees because he's afraid that Jezebel's gonna kill him, so he flees to Mount Sinai and he travels and then he gets he's so tired of traveling, he does he just basically falls down in the desert and says, Okay, kill me, just take me. So he falls down and sleeps in the desert. The angel comes and wakes him up and tells him to meet and brings him something to eat, something to drink. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And he goes back to So, like in my yeah, it's just funny. In my brain, it's always been like, when things are hard, take a snack, take a nap, reset, and keep moving. Yeah, right? Like, don't give up, just keep going. And then I just love in the in the mountain when it's yeah, God's not in the whirlwind, he's not in the earthquake, he's not in all these like big, like terrible, scary things like that just grab all your attention. It's like after all that, there's that still whisper sound, right? That quiet sound, and that's where God is. And you know, he falls on his face and he covers his face. Right. And it's just like I love it because we get so distracted by all the big things in life.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's why it just always resonated with me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and for us, it's this is kind of sort of the root of the contemplative life that is it is searching for and being attentive for that gentle stirring of the breeze, right? Um learning to cultivate a listening heart. And that's the whole that's why we go back to Elijah and we consider Elijah uh our father, our founder. Um because since Elijah, remember there was a guild of prophets that would follow Elijah around. There's a guild of prophets and would follow Elijah around, and after Elijah is taken up in the whirlwind, then they follow Elisha around. And so there's always this guild of prophets, and then uh there's always hermits on Mount Carmel. So this is then where we uh trace ourselves back to that school of prophets, that's guild of prophets that followed Elijah and Elisha and stayed on the mountain, right? So we've we trace ourselves back to that. What happened was um since there were always hermits living there since the time of Elijah in these caves on Mount Carmel, the Crusades, the first crusades that went back to regain the Holy Land, because it used to be a place of pilgrimage, and then the Muslims took it over, and there was no longer a place you could go to. So uh the crusades of the European kings to regain um the Holy Land. So as they fight for establishing what we call the Latin Kingdom that was established in 1099, um a lot of the crusaders, yeah, that first crusade and even second and third crusades, a lot of the crusaders had made a vow to live out the remainder of their lives in the Holy Land, to stay in the Holy Land. So some of these crusaders or ex-crusaders gravitated towards Mount Carmel and to live lives as solitary hermits, and they joined in their the hermits or those that had been living in the colony that had been living up in the mountains anyway, in Mount Carmel, anyway. And then so the eastern brothers and western brothers come together and start living their lives, praying with scripture, spending time reflecting, praying, you know, on the mysteries of the life of Christ, on the Paschal mysteries. And eventually what happened, because this is how Westerners are, we wanted some, the Westerners wanted something more organized, right? And so these hermits, these solitaries, began to come together. They'd come to live together in loose uh associations of brethren and sort of loose communities of hermits. And eventually they wanted some type of guidance for their life. And so they were out, they wanted a rule like the rule of Saint Benedict. So that is how it began to develop. And then they went to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Saint Albert, uh Albert of Jerusalem, who was Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1206 to 1214. And he was living in exile. He wasn't living in Jerusalem because of the continual Moslem attacks on Jerusalem. He was living in Accra, which is uh a few kilometers away. And so they came to him and they asked uh Albert to give them a rule of life. So he writes this rule of life. He was an Augustinian, like our present Pope. He was an Augustinian, and then he writes a rule for them, and then he gives them this rule. Uh and so he gave them this rule. We're not sure exactly when he handed the rule to them, but it was between 1207 and 1214. And um Albert was murdered. Uh he's a confessor. He was murdered during uh the procession of the exaltation or the triumph of the cross on September 14th. He was murdered and he's uh he's considered a uh confessor, uh one who suffered for the faith. Uh anyway, so the rule is known as the rule of St. Albert, and it was approved by Pope Honarius III in 1226. Okay. So since it was written for ex-Crusaders and using the rule of life of the Augustinians, uh Carmelites are to quote, live in allegiance to Jesus Christ. And so that word allegiance, you know, it sort of speaks of kind of sort of uh the knighthood and chivalry and sort of this is sort of like crusader kind of language of allegiance to the Lord. And and as a community of hermits, they were to stay in or near the cells, our cells, unless otherwise justly occupied, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, and they were to live under the guidance of a prior or an elder brother. And all this was to be with reverent silence. There's this whole culture in Carmel having to do with silence. Aside from silence, another interesting characteristic of the rule was that of attending daily Eucharist, which was a very extraordinary guideline. For the time, right? To go to daily to daily mass, attend daily mass. So that's a rough draft of how it begins with the rule. So now, due to historical circumstances, this loose confederation of hermits slowly was transformed into a mendicant or a wandering or a begging order, right? It wasn't something that we wanted, it was something that happened to us. First. It's just such a funny way of saying that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It just happened because this is I didn't, I mean, I didn't ask for this life. But this is this is what happened.
SPEAKER_00:It found me. So first, uh Gregory the Ninth in 1229 imposes on the Carmelites then uh an absolute collective poverty and mendicancy, meaning we have to beg. We have to go out and beg for our livelihood. Then in 1238, they moved to Europe. The first thing is they spread all over Mesopotamia. They mean they became very popular, and they moved to Europe in 1238. And because they're mendicants, uh then under Pope Innocent IV in 1247, Pope Innocent asks them then to take care of souls. In other words, to they are not only supposed to beg for their livelihood, they're also to either spiritual direction, confessions, catechis, right? The care of souls. And so this is then some of the changes that starts happening to the order, right? It's not something that we asked for, but something that the Pope asked of us, right? So this is then we start listening and following and being obedient to what it is that the we believe the church is asking of us. So one of the changes that they do into the rule is that we eat together. There's a common refectory, we pray the hours together, so there's a cower uh choir obligation. And three, that we could found our monasteries in urban areas before the monasteries had to be out in the country, right? Away from everybody. So now we can found monasteries in the cities. And fourthly, was that we're all to live under one roof. All of our cells were to be under one roof, whereas before everyone had their own hermitage apart from everybody, right? So, and then in 1317, uh Pope John the XXII uh allowed the Carmelites to uh any type of activity, teaching, preaching, spiritual direction, parochial apostolate, all those things then became part of uh our life. Okay. Then we come in our history, we come to the reform of the order. So we don't have time to get into this. I mean, it'd be it's very interesting. I find history very interesting. So all of Western civilization, as well as all religious orders, were affected by wars, famines, plagues, and the social decay that followed uh these tragedies, right? So in the Middle Ages from the year 500, you have the fall of the Roman Empire, right, in like 400s. So in the Middle Ages from the 500s to 1500, you have all these tragedies happening, wars, you have the hundred-year wars. There's so many things that are happening uh that civilization declines. So in the light of these difficulties, the rule of St. Albert, or the rule, most religious rules, uh, slowly became mitigated. Mitigated is to like take an exception to or make exceptions for, right? So the mitigated rule. So there was exceptions majors, like there was enough, not enough people to come to choirs. Okay, so you don't have to come to choir or you don't have to eat together, or you whatever, right? There is the religious life became lax, right? And again, part of it too is plagues and everything that was happening, and so we're barely, you know, barely surviving. And so I think that is one of the reasons why uh the reform or the religious life, not just religious life, life, period, all civilization began to sort of fall into its what they used to call the dark ages. Um there were several attempts within the order to reform itself, but this didn't come to any real fruition until the reform of St. Trace of Jesus and St. John of the Cross in 16th century Spain, right? So this is part of then of the reform within the order, uh wanting to recommit to reigniting the fire or the zeal that uh led to the full observance of the law, right? To to stop making excuses or stop mitigating or stop making ex exceptions and to live the the rule in its fullness, and that's what the reform was about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so uh it wasn't well well, let me ask you, was it that anything in particular had gone very wrong? Like things were being just blatantly abused, or was it just that everything had gotten so lax that it was kind of defeating the purpose of the whole rule and the whole order? Like what was it that was really in need of reform here?
SPEAKER_00:I think, well, one, uh going back, there is the whole one, the social construct, the church, the church finds itself in society, right? And so when people come into religious life, they come from society, they don't come from some hothouse. And so there is a change in understanding as to the purpose of religious life or even catechesis or just even Christian life, right? And so because all this lack is present, or all this because there is this lack, they bring with them this lack, so there's a lack of understanding as to religious life, as to uh understand what Christian life is, right? And so part of the reform was recentering ourselves in on uh the mystery of Christ and recommitting ourselves as religious, what that means as Christians, as religious, as church, uh all those things were needed, right? And so that's part of Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that makes me think. I heard someone say once, um, they're like, Oh, do you have problems with how the all the bishops seem to be acting or thinking nowadays, or the priests in your parishes? Well, start with your family, start with your home because where do you think they came from? Right. Like they come if if your family is not well catechized, if you don't live spiritual holy lives as the laity, then where do you think our future priests and bishops like there everything is going to be kind of disordered, right? And I guess that's what was going on here with all the decay of society. So the this reformation, internal reformation with the Carmelites, and there was a lot of other, like you're saying, church reform going on is kind of a a healing survival kind of mechanism for the church, right? Like get back on track and get back to to what it was meant to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think you know, there is an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, obviously, moves hearts and minds. You're like, oh, maybe we need to sort of step back, take a nap, eat something, and start again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. There you go. See, look at that. And maybe have seven cups of coffee. There you go. Yeah, and I guess this is I think this is something really important um for us to know and to reflect on, because um I would say that here in like you know, the Middle Ages, is not the first time the church has had to work on itself and now post that even now, like it is this is like a cycle, it just keeps happening. And so the church will persevere, but it starts with all of us personally. Because it's a line. It's not top-down, yeah. It's a right, it's a whole organism.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a dynamic, organic reality, and so yeah. If you don't understand it that way, then you're gonna make your life very, very miserable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, what other kind of reforms were going on at the time?
SPEAKER_00:Well, again, there's this movement, there's this movement of reform. Uh, there were previous attempts by the Holy See uh to institute ecclesial reforms, right? But the problem was that the Holy See we weren't, as a church, we weren't as centralized as we are now. And I think that's one of the acronistic uh things that people tend to enter into is like, you know, well, why didn't the church fix it? Well, because the church couldn't. There was no centralized legislation or or centralized bureaucracy. I mean, the church was still trying to get its act together in and moving path again.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's no separation separation of church and exactly there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is what people don't understand. There was it's all one thing. There wasn't separation of church and state. And if if civilization is falling, what do you where do you think the church is? The church is part of civilization, and the church is falling with civilization, but the church has to recognize its higher call and uh try or attempt to you know pull itself up and also encourage the rest of civilization to pull itself up. And there's a there's a course, a book, and also some courses that that speak of how Western civilization was saved. The only reasons Western civilization survived the Dark Ages was because of monasteries. All the books that were raised, that were kept in monasteries, the the scholastics, the scholars, the intellectuals that were in the monasteries that actually helped to revive and maintain Western civilization. So anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So were these so in so the the Pope had been trying, right? But couldn't.
SPEAKER_00:And if I remember from some of our other historical episodes, there's a whole bunch of nonsense going on with popes and multiple popes and who's the right pope and those things, and that had to do with politics as well, because there were certain kings that were trying to, you know, play uh politics with the church and with the having power or trying to use the church for power. All these things were happening, right?
SPEAKER_01:So the case of church leadership wasn't real strong. Did anybody well when we say church leadership, because this also now includes kings and queens at this time, did anybody try and step in and help?
SPEAKER_00:There were some. There were some people that were trying to help. And again, as this is the time when countries start actually existing as countries or as nations, right? This is part of the historical process as well. And so as these peoples become countries and nations, the church herself becomes is becoming more herself. And so there is this, there are good um, again, most of the kings and queens are Catholic because that was what existed in Christianity. And so one of the first uh reformers that were actually able to institute a successful reform were the kings of Spain, uh Ferdinand and Isabel in the late 1400s. So they begin the reform. And the way they begin the reform is they believed in the reform from the top down. So they begin the reform with the bishops. And so asking things of the bishops, making sure they're educated, making sure they were living their diocese, making sure they're living moral lives and ethical lives, and they were able to teach. And so they're uh being very um demanding of the bishops, and then Cardinal Cisneros, uh, a prominent figure in Spain at the time as well. He's the one that published the first polyglot Bible. You had the Bible in in the vernacular, in Latin, in Hebrew, in Greek, and so again, so there's this whole call for reform. And so then we have Luther's call for reform, obviously, then in Germany. That's part of going on, right? And then finally, after all this stuff, it finally gels into what we call the Council of Trent. And that is where the the real solidified reform happens, is through that. And that is again where where there the papacy is centralized, the bureaucracy is centralized, and the the holy see becomes a lot more important in um implementing these reforms.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And y'all had some there's some big Carmelite Saints that come out of this time period, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Um Spain, uh the Golden Age. Yeah, specifically Spain, it during the what they call the Golden Age of Spain, which is mid-1400s to mid-1500s, we have a lot going on. So you have because of circumstances, Spain is you have the king of Spain, uh Charles, who is also Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. And as Holy Roman Emperor, he has kingdoms in Sicily, in Naples, I mean, all over the world, he's he is this emperor, right? In Netherlands, the lowlands, and so all these spiritual influences from all these different parts of the world are coming into Spain. Uh and so a lot of these different riches, uh, spiritualities from the lowlands, Jain Rose, Rice Brook, uh, they all come into Spain and they start sort of in this stew of all these different rich spiritual um interests and investigations. And this is where you get a lot of saints, a lot of lots of saints that come out of Spain during this time. And for us, during the reform, this is when the reform happens for us as discounts carmelites, it was the ideal then that St. Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross embraced this reform and sought to reignite the heart of the contemplative aspect of the order. And even though they faced a lot of resistance and trials and tribulations, they were able to start the reform of the order, which finally had to be separated from the older branch, the Carmelite Friars of the Ancient Observance. And we became then the reformed or the reformed branch of the order, the discalced Carmelite Order. Uh so we were discalced Carmelites, which were the reformed. And at that time in Spain, there was discalced uh Franciscans, there were discalsed, there's different religious orders that were also discals, meaning that they were in the process of reformation, right? And so they're the ones that they dropped all, they dropped the discalced title, but we still we still keep our discalce title as part of the reform, right? Yet it was the the ideal that that Teresa and John were aiming for, was an ideal that was set forth by one of the generals of the order, Father Philip Ripotti. Uh, and it is uh this that captured their imagination. And this is, uh if I remember correctly, I'm not sure if this is from the Golden Arrow or Institution of the First Monks. I forget where this is from, but this is a quote that I have here. There are two aims to this life, religious life or life as a Carmelite. The first is to offer God a holy heart, free from all stain of actual sin. We reach this when we become perfect in charity. The other aim is to taste in our heart and experience in our minds, not only after death, but even during this mortal life, something of the power of the divine presence and the bliss of heavenly glory. The first aim, purity of heart, can be achieved with the help of God's grace by toil and virtuous living. The second is experiential awareness of the divine power and heavenly glory by purity of heart and perfection of charity. So that is what they wanted to be the center of this reform, right? The reform of the order. So then basically what they're doing is the emphasis is the seeking union with God. So the Eastern Fathers spoke of this as the divinization of the human person. A lot of the mystics speak of a degree of this relationship that is compared to that of marriage.
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SPEAKER_00:John of the Cross uses a lot of wedding, marriage imagery in speaking of this union. For the early fathers of the church, the contemplative prayer was this unitive prayer with God that evolved into deeper degrees of union, which Teresa and John will then also develop and uh define into different degrees of this intimacy. Um just for a moment, I wanted just to sort of sidestep and bring in this other element too. Is let me just reference our episode on Mary in Lumingensium when we did the that podcast that took us a while to get to chapter eight.
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that you have a greater dimension, a greater context uh of this dimension of uh Carmelite devotion to Mary.
SPEAKER_01:Since the rule of there's several, how many episodes did we do? It's it's several because it's a lot to digest. So it's a good thing. I think there's four or five episodes on the urgency. But it's definitely it's good because a lot of people I think are curious about Mary. A lot of people are Protestant brothers and sisters. Some people get offended, and and so I think if you can take the time to listen to those or direct people to those, I I learned a lot just going through it with you. So I think there's a lot there. It's good stuff. That's all we do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh so anyway, the reason I want to bring this up is that since the rule of St. Albert was written for ex-crusaders, you have this chivalric context, right? So these are ex-crusaders, these are knights, right? The hermits pledging allegiance to Jesus as the Lord of the place. Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the king that they pledge allegiance to. And they also pledge uh allegiance and service to the lady of the place, which is the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, as knights in this idea of chivalry, their devotion to our lady was such that the chapel that they built for their liturgies and their prayer, Prayer, their first chapel to come together as a community, was dedicated to Saint Mary. Thus, we became known as the brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Because Our Lady, the chapel of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, which was the place where they were, and as hermits, brothers, right? They were brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. So Our Lady was seen as the model contemplative because in Scripture we're told she pondered these things in her heart. So she conceived the word in her heart before she conceived the word in her womb. And this is part of this whole idea of then of the contemplative life is spending time meditating, pondering on scripture and the way that God works in our lives and the graces that God blesses us with to help us then enter deeper into this Christian life, this life of a discipleship. So again, going back to this golden age of Spain, there was a lot of spiritual richness that pervaded Spain and the Spanish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, because of all the spiritual influences that gathered into the culture of Spain. So you have several saints that come from this period. I think it's very interesting, this period period of Spanish spirituality. You have St. Peter Alcántara, who was the Franciscan reformer. You have St. Ignatius Loyola, you have St. Francis Borgia, you have St. Francis Xavier, you have Saint John of Avila, of course you have St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. And recently you have Blessed Anne of St. Bartholomew, which is a Carmelite nun, and one of Teresa's companions as recently and also recently added within the last three, four months, was Blessed Anne of Jesus, which is also one of St. Teresa's uh nuns. And Teresa, um Teresa of Jesus, these first nuns that she gathered into her monasteries. It was Blessed Anne of Saint Bartholomew and Blessed Anne of Jesus who brought the reform of Carmel into France, and from France into Belgium and different parts of Europe, they started bringing the reform of Carmel. So uh, and a lot of the friars, for example, the friars, a lot of the friars brought uh Carmel to France, Carmel to Italy, Carmel to America. I mean, this is the the Discalce Carmelites were the first Carmelites in that came to Mexico uh and established with the new in New Spain, and so there is lots of spreading of the charism.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's interesting. I was gonna um I was just thinking to myself, like, I wonder like since then if anything uh of historical note has happened since like you know the 1600s. And the thing that came to my mind is well, obviously they came to the New World, and I think we talked about we talked about y'all coming through Mexico with our martyrs of the cristeros, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The cristeros.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how you guy had to flee to the United States and went all the way to New York and got turned around. So it might be interesting to do maybe a follow-up episode to this one day, kind of a historical um post. Yeah. Like New World, right? Like what's happened with the Carmelites since then. Okay. It might be kind of interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, since the 1600s, I mean, I think one of the things that has developed is the gift that God has given the church with the teachings of St. John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Saint Therese of Lisieux, uh Raphael Kalinowski, uh Teresa Benedicta, Edith Stein. Uh we have so many, many, we have many, many, many, many, many saints that have been raised to the altars. And I think the biggest historical development has been that the development of Carmelite spirituality in terms of the gift and the teachings or the magist the magisterial teachings of Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross. I think that's the big, big, big changes. Uh the fruit of contemplation has brought about these two great mystics. Teresa was the first woman, uh declared woman of the uh declared doctor of the church. So you have John of the Cross, doctor of the church, Teresa of Jesus, doctor of the church, Saint Therese, doctor of the church. And we're pretty sure that eventually Teresa Benedicta, Edith Stein, will be declared uh doctor of the church as well. You think so? Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot there. Yeah, she's an interesting bird. She's uh because the time when she was around, it was all this like feminism stuff is going on, and then World War II kind of like there's a lot of stuff. Yes, it's cultural, it's a the world is a mess. Yeah. Again, so that's kind of yeah. Take a nap. Yeah, have a snack. Um all right, so you're you're talking about the these ancient observance Carmelites. Who are these dudes, right? Like what are well are the are there any still around? Oh yes. Or did every okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's the the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance.
SPEAKER_01:Um Do you know anybody?
SPEAKER_00:Uh we I mean our generals, the general, our father general and their father general have yearly meetings together. Uh they put out a joint letter to both branches of the order. Um, but mostly we don't really have a lot to do with them because they're it's a it's sort of it's sort of like asking uh the Benedictines, like, okay, so do the do the Trappists have anything to do with the Cistercians, like no.
SPEAKER_01:It's a different so at this point you look so different that it's yeah. Do they stay most are they less friary and more monastic?
SPEAKER_00:No, in fact, they a lot of their ministry is in schools, which is yeah, something we would never do. Something that we would never do.
SPEAKER_01:Uh they they so back to the whole carrying of souls. So that was really interesting to see like how the the rule, um, even at the very beginning, I can see so much of this still in just my friendship with you, like seeing how you y'all go out and you catechise and you do spiritual direction and all these kinds of things. You have daily mass. So it's really cool to see how I guess thankfully, with the reforms of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, like that these things have stuck around. Yes, still. It's very ancient, it's really cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, okay, so one last question we'll because I see how long we've been talking. Like, why would somebody do you think like a lay person, a secular person, or even somebody who's religious, maybe somebody who's in seminary? Um, why do you think like is there a reason to practice a particular charism versus just being becoming like a parish priest? Or like a lay person like myself, um, just go to mass, read your Bible?
SPEAKER_00:I think it has to do with what you're attracted to. Like for some people are attracted to Saint to the spirituality, the liturgy of the Benedictins, so they become what they call Benedictine oblates, or somebody's attracted to Franciscan spirituality, so they become a third-order Franciscan, or uh someone is attracted to for karma, you're attracted to the contemplative aspect of life, and so you kind of it resonates with you. And for us, uh the secular order is a vocation as well. It's not it's not just a a sodality or a fraternity, it is there's formation, there's classes, there's community, all that they come together once a month for their meetings, and so it's basically finding something. Some if you find some spirituality that really resonates with you or resonates with your way of praying or your desire to pray or desire of relating to God, then those are just there to help you kind of focus that and and tap into that desire, whatever that desire might be, whether it's liturgy or can contemplation or uh social work, you know, is it Franciscan uh poverty or again? There's there's different ways in which and they're all they're all different manifestations of Christ's ministry.
SPEAKER_01:So um have people been doing the let like the laity? Have they been doing that for a long time? Like, is that something that has been around forever, or is that kind of a more modern um manifestation?
SPEAKER_00:For us, the secular order. Well, first um the first were the friars, and then slowly we had uh in the in the ancient observance when it begins, we have the friars, and then we have women who are interested in and sort of start living that type of contemplative life, and then they become the the they become established as the nuns, right? So you have the friars and the nuns, and then after that, then you have, I forget when it is, I'd have to look it up, um, the establishment of the secular order or laity associated with the order. So there's always been lay associations with different monastic orders or a way they they want to support the either the monastery or the religious congregation, the religious order. And so not only do they want to support, they want to actually participate in their liturgies or their way of life. And so there is a uh an association with that monastic life or the monastic or religious, religious charism that sort of resonates with them, and they want to, yeah, they want to live that in a deeper way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I can I can kind of see that. Like if you've got a monastery in your kind of medieval area, and so this is where everybody goes to mass or whatever, and so you you just rub off on each other, right? And so you start being formed by the relationships that that you have, and so yeah, yeah, I can I guess I can see it being around for a long time. Would you recommend for people to do that or or to to uh not necessarily to do it, but to investigate, to go out and see if there's something that really resonates with you? Because I know I'm asking because I know you with when it comes to prayer, you often say like, or not just prayer, but study too. It's like find the thing that interests you. What's the thing that attracts you and that's helpful? So then to just the average lay person out there, would you encourage people to go investigate and see how it's completely resonated?
SPEAKER_00:Just to be open to whatever it is, again, what it what interests you? I mean, if you're really interested in Saint Francis or the the spirituality of Saint Francis, the spirituality of the liturgy of the Benedictines or the silence of the Carthusians or the uh contemplative life of of the Carmelites or or other monastic traditions, uh Chamaldoles. You know, find if you're open to it, just find allow the Holy Spirit to lead you, and then if you find something that resonates with you, then investigate that. It might be something that the Spirit is offering for your own development, for your own journey as a as a spiritual aid for your own uh redemptive journey.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, super cool, man. Yeah, this is uh I I love this stuff. And I I know we love our history, and this is a bit of a history lesson, but but I love it, and I think it's great to because we don't know where we are if we don't know where we were. Exactly. And yeah, and you guys, as cool as you are in your brown habits, especially when the hood's on, um you're more than just good looks, right? Yeah. So this has been really cool, just kind of to dig in more and and learn about it, uh, the Carmelites. So thank you for this, Father. You're welcome. Thank you. All right, and everybody else who was listening, thank you for joining us. Yes, God bless. And uh yeah, we can't wait to have you join us next time. Share the podcast. Yep, like, subscribe, share all the good things, leave comments, leave reviews, and uh yeah, we'll see you next time. God bless. God bless you.
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