🕯️ Hàng trăm tăng ni, phật tử khắp miền Nam hội tụ tại Tổ đình Vĩnh Nghiêm, TPHCM, để tưởng niệm Hòa thượng Thích Trí Tịnh – Phó Pháp Chủ Hội đồng Chứng minh Giáo hội Phật giáo Việt Nam. 🙏
#Phật #TăngNi #HòaThượngThichTriTinh #TônGiáo #Vietnam #Buddhism #ReligiousLife #VietnameseNews
https://vietnamnet.vn/tang-ni-phat-tu-thanh-kinh-tuong-niem-hoa-thuong-thich-tri-tinh-2450705.html
Quote of the day, 21 September: St. Titus Brandsma
Without poverty, a religious is a Pharisee, a gentleman of ease pretending to be a poor man. It is like someone who wants only the finer things of life disguising himself in the clothing of the poor. When religious are overly attached to unnecessary possessions or are always looking for luxuries, then we appear ridiculous before the Lord who received our vows.
Whenever someone comes seeking alms, give whatever you can. Giving alms is our way of life. It is the alms we receive that provide for our needs, and with our own alms, we must provide for those in need. Whatever we give to the poor we give to God.
Saint Titus Brandsma
Chapter VI, Seeking God
Arribas O.Carm., M 2021, The Price of Truth: Titus Brandsma, Carmelite, Carmelite Media, Darien, Illinois.
Featured image: The United States nonprofit organization Feed My Starving Children visited Nicaragua in March 2011. To date, the Ortega regime has revoked the non-profit status of over 5000 non-governmental, non-profit organizations, including those funded by the Catholic Church who partnered with Feed My Starving Children. Since 2018, Catholic schools and universities have been seized, diocesan bank accounts have been frozen, religious congregations have been expelled, and their property confiscated. Yet the poor who relied on their assistance remain in Nicaragua. Image credit: Feed My Starving Children / Flickr (Some rights reserved).
#almsgiving #attachment #needy #poverty #religiousLife #StTitusBrandsma
Quote of the day, 9 September: St. Raphael Kalinowski
The Visitation for 1901 was held on September 9 and was repeated every year at about the same time whenever [St. Raphael Kalinowski] was strong enough to undertake the journey. He wrote:
“They sent me to you in spite of my unworthiness. In order to carry out this visit well, I would have to have the spirit of our Father Elijah, our Mother Teresa and our Father John of the Cross, which I don’t have. So if anything good is to happen, it will be the work of God, but I will boast of my weaknesses.”
In the opinion of Kalinowski, the purpose of a canonical visit is found in the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and he used this as a motto for the nuns.
“We are in Carmel,” he would say, “to submit to God in giving up the things of this world, and in that way drawing down on ourselves and others the help we need to attain eternal happiness. The best part of this sacrifice, which is also the most pleasing to God, is that we surrender our will to Him by the vow of obedience. Obedience is the death of one’s own will, but that’s not enough. We need to persevere until death…. Our obedience offers us the perfect opportunity for our will to disappear completely and the will of God to be the guide of our actions. So when is our obedience perfect? We can see it in the mirror which the canonical visitation holds up to us. This is a mirror of our sacred obligations. If you do not obey them perfectly, the visitor will point it out to you, and you should take that as if it came from the lips of God – with respect and joy.”
Timothy Tierney, O.C.D.
Chapter 8, “Vicar Provincial for the Carmelite Nuns”
Note: Saint Raphael Kalinowski was appointed Vicar Provincial for the Discalced Carmelite nuns in Galicia in 1901.
Tierney, T 2016, Saint Raphael Kalinowski: Apprenticed to Sainthood in Siberia, Balboa Press Australia.
Featured image: Ruins of the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Zagórz, Poland. Image credit: uranos1980 / Adobe Stock.
#DiscalcedCarmelites #nuns #obedience #religiousLife #StRaphaelKalinowski
✝️What if the journey you’re on right now is not just about this life—but eternity?
Navigating Life: From Earth to Eternity, by Mark D. Ingram
Free until August 11th!
Quote of the day, 13 April: St. Louis Martin
My incomparable Father,
What Céline tells us is so like you! Ah, what a father we have! Truly, you are one of a kind… and so I’m not surprised that God is calling all your children to Himself, this father who cannot be matched! You are so precious to His heart that He cannot help but look upon you—and all who are yours—with a love beyond compare.
How our dear mother [St. Zélie] must be smiling down at you. How joyful she must be to see her little boat so well steered by you, guiding us all toward heaven.
O best of fathers, how great our responsibility will be if we do not become saints—if we do not follow in the path of your generosity. Ah, how Jesus will repay you a hundredfold for the lily you offer Him today—barely opened, yet full of freshness and purity.
Oh, your crown in heaven! My beloved Father, I see it already—radiant and beautiful. Ah, pray that your diamond not be too pale beside such glory.
I can say no more. You fill my heart—I am entirely yours.
Our Mother [Prioress Marie de Gonzague, O.C.D.] couldn’t help but weep as she read Céline’s account.
Ah! What a father you are!!
Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, O.C.D.
(Marie Martin)
Letter from Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart to her father, St. Louis Martin, 9 April 1888
St. Thérèse crosses the threshold of the cloister, a later watercolorNote: St. Thérèse entered the Carmel of Lisieux on the Feast of the Annunciation, which was deferred to Monday, April 9 in the year 1888 because March 25 was Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord.
We always refer to the website of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for the vast majority of our quotes concerning Saint Thérèse, Saint Zélie, and Saint Louis Martin. If you would like to purchase English translations for the collected works of St. Thérèse, please visit the website of our Discalced Carmelite friars at ICS Publications.
Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: St. Thérèse outside the Lisieux Carmel. Image credit: Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. / Flickr (Some rights reserved)
⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
What can you offer God this Holy Week with purity, generosity, and love?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.
#CarmelOfLisieux #familyLife #generosity #MarieMartin #MarieOfTheSacredHeart #postulant #religiousLife #StLouisMartin #StThérèseOfLisieux #vocations
Quote of the day, 5 February: St. Thérèse
You have hidden me forever in your Face!…
Divine Jesus, deign to hear my voice.
I have come to sing the inexpressible grace
Of having suffered…of having born the Cross…
For a long time I have drunk from the chalice of tears.
I have shared your cup of sorrows,
And I have understood that suffering has its charms,
That by the Cross we save sinners.
It is by the Cross that my ennobled soul
Has seen a new horizon revealed.
Under the rays of your Blessed Face,
My weak heart has been raised up very high.
My Beloved, your sweet voice calls me:
“Come,” you said to me, “already the winter has fled.
A new season is beginning for you.
At last day is taking the place of night.
Raise your eyes to your Holy Homeland,
And on thrones of honor you will see
A beloved Father…a dear Mother
To whom you owe your immense happiness!…
Your life will pass like an instant.
On Carmel we are very near Heaven.
My beloved, my love has chosen you.
I have reserved a glorious throne for you!….”
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
PN 16, Song of Gratitude of Jesus’s Fiancée
Note: On 5 February 1895, Céline Martin was clothed in the Carmelite habit and began her novitiate in the Carmel of Lisieux. St. Thérèse wrote the Song of Gratitude of Jesus’s Fiancée as a gift for her sister’s clothing.
Thérèse of Lisieux, S & Kinney, D 1995, The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: These are images of the note marking the day of Céline Martin’s clothing in the Carmelite habit, receiving the name “Geneviève of St. Teresa.” Image credit: Discalced Carmelites
#CarmelOfLisieux #CelineMartin #Clothing #monasticLife #novitiate #religiousLife #SrGenevièveOfTheHolyFace #StThereseOfLisieux
Quote of the day, 27 January: St. Henry de Ossó
What a fat, ugly daughter of Eve you’ve become!
Sister Josefa, why did you come to the Society?
— To suffer and die for Jesus and His Teresa. —
What’s the life of a good religious?
A prolonged martyrdom.
Your trouble is that you don’t draw good from your trials.
Once, there was a dog people threw stones at, and in its fury, it bit the stones. Everyone laughed because the dog was breaking its teeth and solving nothing…
Look higher. Don’t you know that the Lord arranges all things for the good of those who love Him? Don’t you know that nothing comes to us or happens without our heavenly Father’s permission?
Foolish one, do you want to be humble without humiliations, virtuous without virtues, a saint without labor? Foolish one, when will you learn to live crucified with Jesus?
All this happens to you because of your little virtue. And these fits of anger don’t do any good for your soul or your body. Be sensible… all for Jesus. Be humble, and you’ll have peace.
Saint Henry de Ossó y Cervelló
Letter to Josefa Llatse (extract)
San Gervasio, 5 September 1888
Translation from the Portuguese text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: On 27 January 2016, the parish of Our Lady of Our Lady of Henar in the Archdiocese of Valladolid hosted a celebration in honor of St. Henry de Ossó, who is the patron saint of Spanish catechists. Don Luis Argüello presided at the Mass, which took place a few weeks before he was named Auxiliary Bishop of Valladolid. Image credit: Ángel Cantero, Iglesia en Valladolid / Flickr (Some rights reserved)
#humility #peace #religiousLife #StHenryDeOssoYCervello #StTeresaOfAvila #suffering #trials #virtue
1979 The Monastic Council
In this painting, a group of elderly monks dressed in traditional red and white habits with cross insignia are gathered together. Some hold papers or cards while others have smoking pipes or cigars, suggesting an informal meeting or discussion.
https://nocontext.loener.nl/fullpage/07-July1979-Page-092.png
#photography #illustration #madman #nocontext #sfw #religiouslife #monasticism #contemplation #dialogue #tradition
Quote of the day, 27 November: St. Edith Stein
My heart is stirred by a noble theme, I address my poem to the king, my tongue the pen of an expert scribe.
The nun has bestowed herself and her whole life to Christ the King. By her vow of chastity, her heart and entire life are consecrated to Him and every human tie relinquished. By her vow of obedience, her own will is renounced: now she cannot do anything else but what the Lord commands her; she must be ready for every undertaking that He asks of her, executing everything in His service.
The man as well does all this freely as member of a religious order.
Is this a case where sex difference plays no role? Or is this a state for which the male or female species is more fitted? Can differentiation be seen in actual performance? The consummate surrender of the whole person is necessarily the same for both because it is the unique substance of the religious life.
The way to perfection of individual nature is loving devotion and surrender to God who is love. This surrender also represents the highest fulfillment of all feminine aspirations concerning their vocation. Correctly speaking, it is the highest fulfillment of our human vocation; but this is felt more vividly and sought more directly by the woman because it is in accordance with her specific nature.
Saint Edith Stein
Spirituality of the Christian Woman
Lectures given to the Organization of Catholic Women
Zurich, January 1932
Stein, E 2017, Essays On Woman, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Book 2, translated from the German by Oben, F, ICS Publications, Washington D.C.
Featured image: Edith Stein on her clothing day, 15 April 1934. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites
#love #spirituality #religiousLife #StEdithStein #surrender #nuns #friars #devotion #vocations #monks
Let us go on to other things that are also quite important, although they may seem small. Everything seems to be a heavy burden, and rightly so, because it involves a war against ourselves. But once we begin to work, God does so much in the soul and grants it so many favors that all that one can do in this life seems little….
Why should we, then, delay in practicing interior mortification? For interior mortification makes everything else more meritorious and perfect, and afterward enables us to do the other things with greater ease and repose. This interior mortification is acquired, as I have said by proceeding gradually, not giving in to our own will and appetites, even in little things, until the body is completely surrendered to the spirit [cf. Way, chap. 11, no. 5: “this determination is more important than we realize”].
The least that any of us who has truly begun to serve the Lord can offer Him is our own life. Since we have given the Lord our will, what do we fear? It is clear that if someone is a true religious or a true person of prayer and aims to enjoy the delights of God, he must not turn his back upon the desire to die for God and suffer martyrdom.
For don’t you know yet, Sisters, that the life of a good religious who desires to be one of God’s close friends is a long martyrdom? A long martyrdom because in comparison with the martyrdom of those who are quickly beheaded, it can be called long; but all life is short, and the life of some extremely short.
And how do we know if ours won’t be so short that at the very hour or moment we determine to serve God completely it will come to an end? This is possible.
In sum, there is no reason to give importance to anything that will come to an end. And who will not work hard if he thinks that each hour is the last? Well, believe me, thinking this is the safest course.
Saint Teresa of Avila
The Way of Perfection, Chap.12, nos. 1–2
Note: St. Teresa encouraged her nuns to actively prepare and practice for martyrdom, according to the accounts of 16th-century historian Belchior de Santa Ana, O.C.D. He indicates that Mother Maria de San José Salazar, O.C.D. carried the tradition of these pious recreations to the Carmel of Lisbon.
Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: These metal stolperstein (“stumbling stones”) bear Edith and Rosa Stein’s names, marking the site of their arrest in front of the Carmel of Echt, Bovenstestraat 48. Image credit: Qwertzu111111 / Wikimedia Commons (Some rights reserved)
https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/08/stj-longmartyrdom/
#desire #determination #DiscalcedCarmelites #martyrdom #martyrs #monasticLife #mortification #offering #religiousLife #selfDenial #StTeresaOfAvila
Do you want to get to heaven? Embrace the baseness of poverty and it will be yours….
It is the love of the poor that establishes kings. Blessed are those who do not chase after those goods for which their possession is tiresome, whose love is defiling, and whose loss is torture…
The kingdom of God is given rather than promised to the poor… All those of good will… leaving all for Christ as He left all for them, follow Him wherever He goes.
Blessed John Soreth
Cited by François de Sainte-Marie, OCD
L’Esprit de la Règle du Carmel
Ephemerides Carmeliticae 02 (1948/1) 205-244
Translation from the French text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: This detail of a photo by Lili Almog shows a Discalced Carmelite nun revealing her profession cross. The photo was taken during Almog’s work on the Perfect Intimacy project, which highlighted the life of three Discalced Carmelite monasteries: Haifa, Bethlehem, and Port Tobacco (USA). Image credit: Discalced Carmelites
https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/07/27/soreth-heaven/
#BlessedJohnSoreth #CarmeliteRule #followingJesus #FrançoisDeSainteMarie #heaven #JesusChrist #KingdomOfGod #love #poverty #religiousLife #renunciation
« Howling is the noise of hell, singing the voice of heaven; sadness the damp of hell, rejoicing the serenity of heaven. »
― John Donne
« Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven; because if you do not give yourself in sympathy to goodness, goodness cannot give itself in influence to you. »
― Phillips Brooks
🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/717966759332872192/heaven-does-not-make-holiness-but-holiness-makes
"Make those who will profess vows here learn through a long trial period not to think their life will amount to words alone, without deeds also."
(St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection 32:5, footnote 1, Kavanaugh translation)
#lent #StTeresaOfAvila #religiouslife #Catholic #Carmelite #quoteoftheday
"I know I will have to earn the holy habit with some severe #trials. They have already started in that my mother has begun with renewed vigor to oppose the forthcoming decision" to request to receive the #Carmelite habit in 1934
Read more!
http://carmelitequotes.blog/2023/02/14/edith-15feb34/
#EdithStein #vocations #religiouslife #Catholic #saints #quotes
"I hope to receive the veil on the 21st for the feast of Saint Agnes, but it hasn’t been decided yet for we don’t know if his Excellency will be free that day." St. Elizabeth of the Trinity explains the tentative plans for her to receive the black veil on 21 January 1903.
Learn more about her plans http://carmelitequotes.blog/2023/01/20/sabeth-21jan1903/
#stelizabethofthetrinity #religiouslife #vocations #profession #veiling #discalcedcarmelite #nuns #carmel #dijon #veils #catholic
Pauline Martin writes to her sister Thérèse on 7 January 1889: "You fill my heart with joy; I would really cry with joy when seeing that my little daughter, the dearest, holds nothing back in her holocaust… She is saying just like the Spouse in the Canticles: 'Come, my Beloved, let us go down into our garden'..." On 10 January, Thérèse was clothed in the holy habit of Carmel.
Read more:
http://carmelitequotes.blog/2023/01/06/agnes-7jan89/
#stthereseoflisieux #paulinemartin #religiouslife #vocation #habit #carmelite
With the beginning of the penitent season of Advent, I will be fasting from social media (including my tumblr, Discord, and this Mastodon account) every Friday and every Sunday.
We’ll see how it goes. It may even make a return during the Lenten season. 🤷🏻♀️
Relevant hashtags: #episcopal #minnesota #histodons #benedictine #writingcommunity #buddhism #wat #anglican #southdakota #religiouslife #medieval
