Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Our Lady, Queen of Mount Carmel

It is July 16 ... IT IS THE FEAST OF OUR LADY, QUEEN OF MOUNT CARMEL

Do we call her Mother? For St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face Mary is "much more Mother than Queen."

"If a child is to cherish his mother, she must cry with him and share his sorrows." 

Knowledge and love can only deepen for our tender Mother Mary when we seek wisdom about her from her Sacred Spouse: Spirit Lord. 

In prayer, He may direct our thoughts by drawing us into the revelations about our Beloved Mother that He has inspired in holy souls throughout the centuries. Through His Wisdom, revealed through them, a contour of her gentle, sweet features begins to take shape. 

Mary was described by St Louis de Montfort as "our powerful Sovereign, our beloved mistress, ... the world of God."

We have therefore a world of reflections to explore in our search to glimpse her beauty: her interior silence, her profound humility, the light of her faith that will shine through the darkness of our mind, her total self-emptiness, her willing enslavement to God's Will. When we accept Mary as our Spiritual Mother, she will "reveal our thoughts" (Luke 2) to us and we begin to grow in self-knowledge, that gift which gives us deep humility under the Gaze of God. 

There is an abyss between God Who is Infinite, Numen, and we, who are finite. The depths of the abyss are highlighted in a conversation between Our Father and St Catherine of Siena. The Father asked her: "Do you know, my daughter, who you are, and who I am? ... You are she who is not; I am He Who is."

1200 years before God illumined Catherine about her finiteness, her nothingness, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the  Annunciation. When we stand, in unobtrusive silence listening to their dialogue, it becomes clear to us that Mary, the Immaculata, the God-bearer, the Hodogetria, was fully aware that she was the one "who is not."  We hear her describing herself  as the "handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38).

This word, "handmaid", holds profound meaning. We remember that this was the same ancient word that St. Paul used to describe the Savior in Philippians 2:7: Jesus "emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, (doulos) being born in the likeness of men..."

Mary His Mother, the self-described handmaid, the douly of the Lord, the bondslave of God, His total possession, the one whose Owner had all rights to do with her as He willed, even and including should His Will be to take her life. 

Mary was empty of self. She was, as it were, the "prelude" (St John Paul II) to her Son's total self-emptiness, God's Doulos

And God accepted His Son's self-sacrificial death on the Cross, Christ, the Saving Victim. 
 
Mary, Queen of Carmel, embodies the beauty of a Carmelite heart and life in her love for the Saving Victim. In her self-emptiness, Mary embodies the being who could be filled with God. It is Spirit Lord Who "opens her lips and her mouth declared His praise" at the Visitation. 

Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD wrote that, "prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." Because she was totally empty of self, Mary's prayer was filled with supernatural efficacy, with a faith that animated every thought, word, action that she made.  Mary will gently mother us into an awareness of the abyss of our finiteness, helps us to offer ourselves as God's doulos/douly, leads us into the wisdom of self-knowledge where our awareness of our nothingness deepens in the perspective of the Infinite Who is God. 

If the awareness of our nothingness nips at our spiritual pride and disheartedness begins to lurk in the depths of such self-knowledge. St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face encourages us:

"You, Lord, will descend to my nothingness and transform that nothingness into living fire.....and even when I have nothing....I will give Him this nothing."

And so, we may stand gazing into the vast abyss between the Infinite Who is, and the finiteness of we, "who are not". With St Therese, we may humbly offer all that we are to God ... and give Him our nothing. 

With Mary as our Queen of humility, we offer our Yes, ourselves, to be His douly, His doulos, to do with as He Wills.

And the mighty power of Spirit Lord will rush into our depths, fill our souls with Himself to the capacity pre-ordained by God, and transform our "nothingness into living fire". 

All who meet us, every moment of our days, will touch God as He moves in and through us and all will taste His sweetness as He transforms us into His own Image. And He will draw souls to God through our "nothing" that He fills with Himself. 

How?

When He fills the measure of ourselves that we give to Him, that measure becomes the property of Spirit Lord. He has one Desire....to draw us into winning souls for God and that Desire begins to propel us at disconcerting moments. We may be watching a tense TV movie when we feel His unmistakable invitation to join Him in prayer. Ten minutes before the exciting conclusion  of the movie. 

We obey, take ourselves off into solitude with Him and at the knee of Mary, we pray an urgent Decade of the Rosary......and our great, great grandchild, yet to be born, who will only ever see photographs of us, will be snatched by God away from a life of drugs, or pornography, or alcohol. St Therese teaches us that prayer soars beyond space and time and God already owns the decades where our great grandchild moves. What was, what is and what is yet to be are all one in Him. Through our small sacrifice, united with in and through Christ Jesus'  ultimate Sacrifice, we have won the soul of our loved one. 

 God has gratefully accepted the little space of ourselves that we have given Him, filled it with Himself and His Desire for souls,  and then waits to reward us in unimaginable ways for doing something that He gave us the power to do in the first place.

And we begin to understand how he transforms our “nothingness into living fire”, even beyond space and time.

More words from St. John Paul II come to our mind: “Prayer united with sacrifice is the most powerful force in human history.”

Mary was filled with self-emptiness. And filled with God.

Mary: "zealous for the glory of the one true God and the sanctification and salvation of souls"; Mary: the "Woman"-made-prayer; Mary: whose sacrificial suffering from the "sword" that pierced her heart so that she could reveal our thoughts to us;  Mary: "united with Christ Crucified and His omnipotent prayer as Saving Victim"; Mary: the pure and most powerful intercessor for all of God's children for whom the Savior shed His Precious Blood; Mary: whose "adoration and contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity" is inexhaustible; 

                                                Mary, filled with Love Himself ...
                                                Mary, Mother, Queen of Mount Carmel, pray for us. 

(Quotes used in the final paragraph are from the ancient charism of the Discalced Carmelite Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) 

Thursday, June 5, 2025

PENTECOST

                                           Πεντηκοστ
                                            PENTECOST 
                                  A CARMELITE REFLECTION 
     

"On the day of Pentecost, when the seven weeks of Easter had come to an end, Christ's Passover is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, manifested, given, and communicated as a Divine Person: of His fullness, Christ, the Lord, pours out the Spirit in abundance" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 731).

The Holy Spirit of the Living God, the Third Person of the Divine Three. Where do we meet Him in Sacred Scripture? What does He reveal about Himself, this RUAH, the Holy One Who "brooded over the face of the waters" of our souls in our darkness? (Gen 1)
 
He is the Power of the Most High Who overshadowed Mary, filled her being, and she conceived the Lord God. 

His work reveals Himself. He is the Giver of Life, in abundance.

Mary, carrying the just-conceived three day old Saviour, greeted Elizabeth whose child in her womb leaped with holy joy when Spirit Lord released the soul of the unborn John the Baptist from original sin. 

At every Sacrament of Baptism, the Mighty Power of Spirit Lord, Giver of spiritual life cleanses the soul from original sin. We see the priestly vestments, the white Baptismal cloth, the holy water, we hear the child's cries. What we don't see is the rush of Spirit Lord pouring Himself into that soul, Self-giving Goodness, unseen, unheard, calling that child into Rebirth out of original sin.  Spirit Lord, Whose work reveals Himself. He is the Giver of spiritual life, in abundance. 

Throughout the Gospels, a limited profile of this Divine Person slowly emerges into our sin-restricted view. His Aroma reveals His Presence. He is Wonder Counselor and Consoler, the Revealer of our Salvation, the One Who endows God's people with glory, the Winnower of all souls destroying evil in His unquenchable Fire (Luke 1 to 3). He is the Dove Whose arrival at the Jordan River "tears open the heavens" (Mk 1:10) to descend upon the Lord, the One Who then propels Jesus with great force into the desert to confront and defeat and silence satan" (Mt 4:1-11). He is Holy Joy and He fills Jesus with that great joy and "anoints" Him to preach the Good News to the poor, to set souls free who are imprisoned and oppressed by sin in all its suffocating wiles, to give sight to the spiritually and physically blind, to raise the dead to life.

It's with awe and deep humility then that we read a reflection from Blessed Pere Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD. His words help to open our spiritual eyes a little wider to grasp more about the Beauty of this Divine Person and His intimacy with and within our being:

"He penetrates us and envelops us. There is not a molecule of our being where He is not; there is no movement of our members nor of our faculties that He has not animated. He is around us and even in those regions more intimate and more profound than our soul itself. God is the soul of our soul, the life of our life, the great reality in which we are, as it were, immersed; He penetrates all that we have and all that we are by His active presence and His vivifying power....He is the Architect of our holiness, our supernatural beauty: 'In Him we live and move and have our being.' 

We are identified with Christ, that's true, but it happens through the action of the Holy Spirit present in all the pores of our soul, in all the molecules of our body, in all earthly and heavenly realities. 

It is not a matter of believing in the Holy Spirit in a vague sort of way. We must believe in Him as a living reality, a living, intelligent, all-powerful Person, a Person who knows what He wants, who does what He wills, and who knows where He is going" (Acts 17:28, Fr. Marie-Eugene OCD, I Want To See God).

A "Person, a Person who knows what He wants, who does what He wills, and who knows where He is going."

And Christ the Lord pours out this Spirit in abundance, this Divine Person whose deepest longing and joy is the sanctification of our souls, to rebirth us into friends of God.  

Pere Marie of the Child Jesus was one who knew well the Spirit of the Lord as his "friend": "This Spirit is our Guest, a living flame in us, a light. He is our friend."

Nevertheless, Pere Marie's disconcerting Friend pushed him, disturbed him and the soul of our Blessed Pere rejoiced in the discomfort:
  
"We need hardships, disappointments, we need to be thwarted in our thoughts and in our plans; we need God's breaking our framework in order to understand that there could be something different. And sometimes we don't want to break our framework, for we are prisoners of our thoughts, of our plans."

Through His grace, God communicates to the soul a participation in His Nature. We may therefore rejoice when our Friend disconcerts us with broken frameworks, thwarted plans, hardships. God's Jealous Hand is at work within us, rebirthing, reshaping, renewing our countenance to closely resemble that of the Second Person of the Divine Three. And when we meet Our Father, He will immediately recognize the Countenance of His Beloved Son, returning His Gaze with great joy.

"Spirit Lord is a Person Who does what He wills."

And He wills to transfigure all souls into His love, His beauty, His purity, His gentleness, His holiness, His understanding, His order in the design of God, His wisdom, His knowledge, His counsel, His fortitude, His gift of holy fear, His piety. 

The Catechism teaches us that the Saviour's "Passover is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit" (CCC 731).

We are all called to come sip at the ocean of the Spirit's love and power. Who are we, His apostles today? Our faces are many, but each one is unique, as unique as our service which He gifts to us to manifest Christ's Presence in His Church, His world: 

"It is especially in their common work that the Holy Spirit glorifies the instruments He has chosen. The Holy Spirit makes Himself lowly ... in order to glorify them. Inspirer of the work by His light, efficacious agent by His omnipotence, yet He hides Himself under the human traits of the apostle and in each of us, His works show forth His Gifts, His desires, His diverse genius. The Holy Spirit appears in this world under a thousand human faces that reflect the power and grace of His hidden presence. The Spirit never repeats Himself in the exterior forms He chooses". 

Mary, the Mother of God has been described as the Immaculata (St Maximilian Kolbe); "the fairest honor of our race" (Antiphon 2, The Liturgy Archive); "Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father, Admirable Mother of the Son, Faithful spouse of the Holy Spirit" (St Louis de Montfort).

It therefore is fitting to conclude our thoughts by reflecting on the profound reflection of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross OCD as she seeks to discern the Spirit's Beauty through the eyes of Mary, Queen of Carmel, His faithful spouse:
                                             
POEM TO SPIRIT LORD.

"Are You the one who created the unclouded mirror
Next to the Almighty's throne,
Like a crystal sea,
In which Divinity lovingly looks at itself?
You bend over the fairest work of Your creation,
And radiantly Your own gaze
Is illumined in return.
And of all creatures the pure beauty
Is joined in one in the dear form
Of the Virgin, your Immaculate Bride:
Holy Spirit, Creator of All!"

COME, HOLY SPIRIT, FILL THE HEARTS OF YOUR FAITHFUL, ENKINDLE IN 
US THE FIRE OF YOUR LOVE, SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT, AND WE SHALL BE CREATED, AND THOU SHALT RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

--
Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com