Secular Carmelites and those curious

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How about experiences of married people joining the OCDS? I wonder if there are many cases of people whose spouses who are not much into living the Faith or even non-Catholics.

God bless.
 
Dear drforjc,

I, obviously, am not a memeber of the OCDS but in response to your question–a wonderful part of the fundamental Christian Gospel is that, through the power and mercy of God, our weaknesses can become our strengths and the things that kill us can give us life. The life and death of Jesus are the best examples of that. As for the Carmelite way, specifically the Discalced way, this is seen to be true in the life of Holy Mother Teresa. She was always very friendly and popular and outgoing–so much so that she knew that these qualities were causing her to fall away from God in that she was forming friendships which were detrimental. Later on in life, though, these qualities were transformed so that her friendships led to her own and others’ salvation.

Another way to look at it is this: she was excellent at wasting time. Through the grace of God, though, and her observance of the Rule, she came to a point in life where she didn’t waste a second of her life. And, truth be told, St. Teresa was not, by nature, a “calm, prayerful, joyful, peaceful, even-tempered” person!! Well, maybe joyful. 🙂

The same can happen for all of us. It takes a while…took 20 years for St. Teresa to really get on track. So, yes, you can “succeed” as well as anyone.
 
All,
thank you for the replies and encouragement.

Bro. Dan,
I, obviously, am not a memeber of the OCDS
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I think I will listen attentively to a professed Carmelite religious as well!! 🙂
 
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drforjc:
All you who indicate you are secular or lay Carmelites seem so calm, prayerful, joyful, peaceful, even-tempered (I could keep going). Do you think someone who is a bit impetuous/judgemental/anxious would have trouble? I mean, can the serious and devoted practice of Carmelite spirituality gradually change/refine/smooth…
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To your last question I say yes, in that contemplation of God corrects our faults, whatever they may be. I find my faults lessened after practicing contemplation to different degrees over the last couple of years. Fr Dubay quotes someone as saying, or says himself (can’t recall which), that a sinner who contemplates either stops sinning or stops contemplating: contemplation and sin (mortal sin, and deliberate venial sin) cannot coexist. I know that at least one very serious fault of mine is now vanquished, and that it disappeared after a period of several months’ of particularly heavy contemplation. I never left off of contemplating, but lessened it somewhat, and the fault has not returned. I am now picking up again. Of course, we don’t contemplate in order to get an effect; we don’t contemplate to get something from the beloved. But to contemplate the beloved is to be gradually cured. This doesn’t mean we cease to be sinners; I think the notion that we can become free of sin was declared a heresy in the 1400s. Just sharing that, nobody here has said we can be free of sin. 🙂
 
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Augustine:
How about experiences of married people joining the OCDS? I wonder if there are many cases of people whose spouses who are not much into living the Faith or even non-Catholics.
God bless.
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I’m 42, married and a father of 4. Carmel has helped me greatly in my role as husband and father. I think my experience is a little bit like your question about “spouses who are not much into living the Faith.”

One of the great joys I’ve experienced from my time in Carmel is seeing how my wife has grown in her own faith. She’s a cradle Catholic (I’m a convert) and for many years we were both . . . shall I say . . . lukewarm at best.

After watching first hand the changes that have occurred in me over the last couple of years, it’s very evident my wife now wants the same kind of changes and transformation in her own life. We talk about faith issues - but what she notices most is the daily fidelity to the Rule. I guess this is an example of actions speaking louder than words . . . or to paraphrase St. Francis(?): Preach always and sometimes use words.

My wife never went to daily mass . . . now she joins me a few times a week. We never prayed as a family . . . now it’s a regular part of our life. She even joins me for Evening Prayer from the Liturgy Of The Hours sometimes. On her own initiative, she has started going to Eucharistic Adoration and has joined a prayer group. And, very interestingly from a Teresian perspective, her circle of friends is changing as she is intuitively drawn to people who can bring her closer to God. In this I’m reminded of St. Teresa’s description of the third mansions in Interior Castle.

I look to all this as a sign of authenticity about my own call - seeing changes and spiritual growth in those around me.
 
Augustine,

In response to your 12/4 email about Carmelites in Central Texas . . . first, the Dallas community is very orthodox. Mount Carmel Center, which is a monastery for the friars, a retreat and education center, and the place where the OCDS meet monthly, is a wonderful place to visit. However, I understand, from meeting OCDS from Austin at Mt. Carmel Center, that there is an OCDS community in Austin. If you can’t find it, you can probably get information from the Dallas community. I’m not Carmelite so I cannot help with that.

For those reading and re-reading Sts. Teresa and John, you might find Fr. Dubay’s *The Fire Within *a helpful synthesis of some of the key concepts. I found that just hearing him express some of their concepts in his words clarified a few things for me. Also, someone expressed St. John seeming a bit “dark” – according to a friar I heard present on St. John, it is helpful to begin reading his works with the Living Flame of Love and the Spiritual Canticle before reading the Ascent and Dark Night. This friar indicated that many get overwhelmed if they read them in order.
 
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drforjc:
I have a question that maybe some of you secular Carmelites could address–
Do you think a certain personality type is preferred or required to “succeed” (not the word I wanted but for lack of a better one) in Carmel?
All you who indicate you are secular or lay Carmelites seem so calm, prayerful, joyful, peaceful, even-tempered (I could keep going).
Do you think someone who is a bit impetuous/judgemental/anxious would have trouble?
I mean, can the serious and devoted practice of Carmelite spirituality gradually change/refine/smooth out someone or is that person doomed to fail if they don’t have that sort of temperament by nature?
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My friend we are all a work in progress, there are no personallity types that I know of that would be excluded, what makes you so sure you haven’t just described me. The whole purpose of Carmel is to change us into what God wants us to be. There are no failures, anything we can do to assist/advance our spiritual life is a gain, even if we went to meetings for 5 years and descided we didn’t have a vocation and left, how could that be called failure.
 
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Augustine:
How about experiences of married people joining the OCDS? I wonder if there are many cases of people whose spouses who are not much into living the Faith or even non-Catholics.

God bless.
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My wife was in Carmel for 10 years, I could never go to the meetings because of work, then she helped start a group that met at night, and I could go, so I did and have been.
 
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FrmrTrad:
To your last question I say yes, in that contemplation of God corrects our faults, whatever they may be. I find my faults lessened after practicing contemplation to different degrees over the last couple of years. Fr Dubay quotes someone as saying, or says himself (can’t recall which), that a sinner who contemplates either stops sinning or stops contemplating: etc etc 🙂
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Dear FrMrTrad

My heart leapt when I read your post! Your post is wonderful and I loved it! It is exactly true that when a soul contemplates and meditates on the Truine God, God’s beauty and infinite Goodness becomes more apparant to that soul that once this is realised the soul then realises how sinful and offensive it has been to God. Before the sinners ‘eyes’, the sins are clearly ‘seen’ for the offense they cause to Divine Love. This realisation causes the soul to pray for graces not to sin. The soul also desires then not to sin with a new fervour!

Sin is lessened, but I was told, ‘even the righteous man falls seven times a day’. We are sinful in our humanity and should not stop striving for holiness and to cease to be sinful, but we should also realise that we cannot achieve perfection in this life. That it is not possible to cease to sin entirely in this life, but that our desire to cease to sin, brings about a lessening of sin, perhaps the eradication of mortal sin is possible, but venial sin remains.

As you say FrMrTrad, we do not love God for gain, we love because we purely do love Him. I have often thought, when my judegment comes, if Jesus decides to cast me to hell, then my judgement is just. We desire to please God and strive to cease sinning not for morbid fear of our eternal judgement, but for a desire to please and love God, to do His will because it is His will, without question. ‘If anyone loves me , they will keep my word’ loosely paraphrased. This is true, we do not keep God’s laws because we know it will buy us eternal salvation, we keep His laws because we love Him and desire to please Him. When we contemplate Him we realise how little we know and that God’s Providence, care and love for us is so profound and unimaginable, stretching beyond anything we can imagine, then we realise His laws are to our benefit not to cause us a hardship, not a code that is a riddle to only gain eternal life. God’s laws are infact to create heaven on earth and for our greater benefit here and for our eternal inheritance if only we would follow them.

To contemplate is to come to ‘know’ God …when we know God to the best we can in our earthly frame, is to KNOW we must strive to cease to sin, because we realise we are offending the one who loves us more than anyone else, who brought about our very being. When we glimpse through contemplation the eternal Goodness of God it impells us to run towards Him with all our might, strength,heart, mind and spirit, just for the delight it may cause Him and not for our own benefit

God bless you and much love and peace to you and those you love

Teresa
 
DBT,

Our families are very much alike. I’m glad to hear that others could become an OCDS in spite of such situations.

God bless.
 
*In response to your 12/4 email about Carmelites in Central Texas . . . *

Thanks for following it up.
*… the Dallas community is very orthodox.
  • But what do you make of that sentence in their web site? What kind of non-Christian mystics do they receive?
    However, I understand, from meeting OCDS from Austin at Mt. Carmel Center, that there is an OCDS community in Austin.
    That’s a joy to know about. I’ll try to know more about it.
God bless.
 
Hello Teresa(9)! Thanks so much for your reply to my post, it was a joy to receive. I’m glad you continued posting too. Would you believe, I opened The Way of Perfection just now, for the first time in months, and turned directly to chapter 23, sections 5 and 6? I don’t place any stock in the coincidental finds of that sort, from page opening at random, but it is amusing: Section 5 is about “beginning with determination” in order to “struggle] with greater determination” and to not “be afraid that the Lord will leave you to die of thirst”. Section 6 goes on to say “I’m not surprised that those who have not experienced this want the assurance of some gain for themselves.” Exactly what we were talking about! “[T]he Lord says, ask, and you shall receive. If you don’t believe His Majesty in the sections of His gospel that insure this gain, it will be of little benefit, Sisters, for me to break my head in trying to tell you about it.” Then Ch. 24 goes on to discuss “how vocal prayer must be recited with perfection, and mental prayer joined with it.”

In the post-conciliar period there was too strong a reaction against the spiritual practices that had gone before, and there is now, I find, something of a latent prejudice against ‘formulaic prayer’. A local member of the diaconate, for example, always likes to pray in a sort of wandering ‘Be with us, Jesus’ kind of way; thankfully he also sometimes remembers to pray for Mary’s intercession! I like the way St. Teresa of Avila demonstrates the importance, and best use, of prayers like the Our Father.
 
Here is a site that lists contact info for OCDS communities. I don’t know how accurate or up to date it is . . . but hopefully it could be a good starting point for those looking for a community near them.

Click on OCDS communities from this page to see the listing.

www.karmel.at/eng/res.htm
 
I am having no luck with getting a hold of the community in Cleveland or an OCDS member in Akron. :crying:

Maybe the time is not right or my patience is being tested.

Patiently waiting,
Jen
 
Hi Jen,

The only community I was able to find near you in Ohio is the following one in Sandusky. How close is this to you?

Sandusky OH Community
Helen Wobser
115 Franklin St Apt 606
Sandusky OH 44870-2877
419-609-9526

Warm regards,
Carole
 
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Jenlyn:
I am having no luck with getting a hold of the community in Cleveland or an OCDS member in Akron. :crying:

Maybe the time is not right or my patience is being tested.

Patiently waiting,
Jen
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Jenlyn, go to the #114 post, try the link go to OCDS Communities there are at least 4 personal email addresses for Ohio people, good luck, you efforts will be rewarded.

Your brother in Carmel Leo
 
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Leo44:
Jenlyn, go to the #114 post, try the link go to OCDS Communities there are at least 4 personal email addresses for Ohio people, good luck, you efforts will be rewarded.

Your brother in Carmel Leo
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There is one that lives very close but the responses have not resulted in anything concrete, yet.

Jen
 
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Joysong:
Hi Jen,

The only community I was able to find near you in Ohio is the following one in Sandusky. How close is this to you?

Sandusky OH Community
Helen Wobser
115 Franklin St Apt 606
Sandusky OH 44870-2877
419-609-9526

Warm regards,
Carole
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I have left a message with her and have no response. I wonder if she is a “snow bird” and flown to Florida for the winter.

Peace,
Jen
 
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