A Glimpse of Carmel

checking in from my Discalced Carmelite Retreat

Pax vobiscum.. I write between Conferences at a Discalced Carmelite retreat, this is the 2nd of 3 updates, the third occurring around noon on Sunday.

Is is 7:30p on a Saturday and I am very much in a dreamy, stunned-like state. It’s not because of the copious amounts of coffee I’ve had since this morning, nor the wonderful meals we’ve shared at our Discalced Retreat. Nor is the deep-woods like setting of our Retreat Center here in Heart of Texas. Father did this. When he read St. Thérèse’s Act of Oblation , very, very slowly.

It as if the Little Flower herself entered the room and spoke —

ACT OF OBLATION TO MERCIFUL LOVE

J.M.J.T.

Offering of myself
as a Victim of Holocaust
to God’s Merciful Love

O My God! Most Blessed Trinity, I desire to Love You and make you Loved, to work for the glory of Holy Church by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory. I desire to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your Kingdom. I desire, in a word, to be saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!

Since You loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love.

I offer You, too, all the merits of the saints (in heaven and on earth), their acts of Love, and those of the holy angels. Finally, I offer You, O Blessed Trinity! the Love and merits of the Blessed Virgin, my Dear Mother. It is to her I abandon my offering, begging her to present it to You. Her Divine Son, my Beloved Spouse, told us in the says of His mortal life: “Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you!” I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God! that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence I ask You to come and take possession of my soul. Ah! I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are You not all-powerful? Remain in me as in a tabernacle and never separate Yourself from Your little victim.

I want to console You for the ingratitude of the wicked, and I beg of you to take away my freedom to displease You. If through weakness I sometimes fall, may Your Divine Glance cleanse my soul immediately, consuming all my imperfections like the fire that transforms everything into itself.

I thank You, O my God! for all the graces You have granted me, especially the grace of making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall contemplate You on the Last Day carrying the sceptre of Your Cross. Since You deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion.

After earth’s Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love Alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.

In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!

Time is nothing in Your eyes, and a single day is like a thousand years. You can, then, in one instant prepare me to appear before You.

In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, Asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!

May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.

I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!

Marie, Françoise, Thérèse of the Child Jesus
and the Holy Face, unworthy Carmelite religious.

This 9th day of June,
Feast of the Most Holy Trinity,
In the year of grace, 1895

The bold is mine.

Spoken holy words are unique to the receiver, according to God’s operation in the soul, so I know you won’t understand this just now, but I come away from this with Thérèse’s as a proto modus, a model of sorts for every one of us if we are to gain heaven.

We must be completely emptied out, my friend. Just as —

 Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. 8 He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.
— St. Paul to the Philippians 2, 7

(I just quoted Philippians earlier about working out our salvation with fear and trembling. Isn’t that incredible? Is not Thérèse here with us? Guiding us on our little mini-retreat on the page?)

My Biggest Take-Aways for Conference #3

The set up for these pensive thoughts was Father talking about St. Thérèse‘s transformation, year-by-year, Manuscript A to Manuscript C to Last Conversations mere weeks and days before she died.

Hers is probably the most widely documented holy life — if we consider the letters amongst her family and friends, the memoirs of her sisters, the historical documents of Holy Mother Church about her canonization & miracles, the writings of Popes, priests, religious since her death.

You can read everything and come away with the same conclusion: she was just a simple soul who loved and lived God above all else. Can we not just read the Gospel and some holy writings of the saints like she did? shut ourselves up in the cloister of our hearts like she did? and just go to heaven? Why does God wish us to be fascinated about this little Carmelite nun? Why has He deigned it so that she is our special little friend?

We must follow her little way, a universal way of littleness that is truly a generic mold of the soul doing all for God.

I know this way and so do you. It’s our experience of pushing out and releasing every thought, trouble, and distraction when we’re kneeling before Christ’s Altar during the Canon of the Mass. All the time. Through Christ, in Christ, with Christ.

Me, within

little veronica following the mold of Little Thérèse. what would that be like?

will Thérèse help me? yes.

will Jesus? of course.

soul, what is it that I must pray for? poverty of soul & purity of heart like you always have.

and desire? everything. not for you, but for Holy Mother Church and for the Glory of the Father through Christ Jesus.

did I accomplish this through this post? who cares. Love. Love generously, and ask for nothing in return.

Like St. Thérèse.

St. Thérèse, my sister, pray for us.

❤️

---

Saturday, 2:50p

My husband and I have been attending retreats for over 10 years now. Raising 5 children in a Catholic home, it never occurred to us that to be even more Catholic meant to nourish one’s prayer life with a little bit of removal from the world to stand before God for a whole day.

If I am on retreat, then what am I doing here speaking with you?

My dear friend, you are my Church, part of Christ’s Mystical Body, so it with He and thee I share a few thinkings as Thérèse, Teresa, John of the Cross and Jesus keep me company in the deepest recesses of my soul.

Why retreat?

We all know Jesus withdrew into gardens, the desert, and mountains. Where do we go to spend time solely with God? with Jesus? with Our Father? to listen to the Holy Spirit?

Once a priest told me every Catholic needs to retreat from the world at least once a month — to literally remove oneself from the world to be solely with God for at least 8 hours, the equivalent of a workday. If we can offer our hearts and minds, yay, our entire animus to perfunctionary duties to secure our livelihoods for our loved ones, how much more should we set ourselves apart in devotion to God for a day? to love our God and love our neighbor?

When we read, pray, meditate, contemplate before Him as Jesus did for an extended period of time, we can be assured we return to the holy work of our lives with a purer intent, a more sanctified focus to fulfill His Holy Will.

How would one go about doing this?

Check your Diocesan Offices for events at your local retreat center, or make your own. Carve out 9a - 3p any given Saturday. Pay attention to what God has been telling you in the days or weeks prior and find those holy books or prayers you’ve set aside but haven’t had time for. Then, go somewhere. Find as much isolation before God you can manage. Segment your day into morning, late morning, and after-lunch “conferences”: read for an hour, talk a walk to mediate, reflect for 30 minutes, then pray for another 30. Don’t forget to begin or end your retreat with Holy Mass.

Our retreat.

Every October, our Discalced Carmelite Community has a weekend-long silent retreat. My husband and I did not plan on attending this year because 1) bad economy 2) I’ve been swamped with work because of my new teaching job (grades are due this weekend). Praise God, I’ve been doing well with my prayer life, daily, with His help — because I see this job that appeared out of nowhere as a Holy Work of the Father.

If I can manage to see my livelihood with this perceptive, if I can manage glancing up at Our Lord in Love throughout the day, isn’t this enough? Do I really need the additional help of a set-aside-time-for-God retreat?

Yes. “Managing” isn’t enough.

Whatever you’re doing in your prayer life, at whatever stage, a retreat only amplifies the beautiful work to be done by God within you. Your soul just returns to becoming God’s work. Just as you would drop off your vehicle for your mechanic to work under the hood, a retreat about is taking your soul in for a spiritual tune-up by the Master Mechanic.

What elation I have in being here among like-minded Catholics who seek the Face of God with me. (so much so, I had to come by & speak with you!)

This month’s retreat is on St. Thérèse and is called — joy of Joy! — Faithful Daughter, presented by one of our Discalced Carmelite priests from our Province. We just wrapped up our second of four conferences or talks. The first was on the History of Carmel in Spain and England during the Reformation and on France before and after the Reformation. Father wanted to provide cultural context on Thérèse’s Catholic France and on what influenced her, her family, and her Carmel of Lisieux.

My Biggest Take-Aways for Conference #2

The first is Father asking us to consider God’s Providence in our own personal salvation history, in our own redemption.

St. Paul¹ tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Yes, my work will look different from yours, which can be said for all the saints throughout History. All this, we know, will be affected through The Great Saint of all time, Who is Christ Jesus and Him Crucified, through Whom all good is perfected and accomplished. How wonderful to think we each have a unique, but common Holy Story to tell when we get to heaven!

Thérèse‘s Story is different than mine in that I wasn’t born in 19th Century France nor raised by Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin before dying young in a Carmelite cloister etc, etc, etc! My holy story will involve perfecting my Faith, Hope and Love while living out my vocation somewhere in Texas as Matriarch of a Catholic family who works to raise, mold and inspire saints among her own household.

What graces and crosses does God gift us to work out our personal story of salvation?

I don’t have anything that resembles Thérèse‘s “Christmas Miracle” conversion when she was 13, but I do have a history of beautiful crosses that I can clearly see have shaped me throughout my life.

I was just reflecting on this very idea of my crosses, my sacrifices this week before coming to my retreat, without ever knowing what Father’s talks would be about — isn’t that interesting?

I’d written in my Notebook —

God has been dripping away all these years. Many things, many _____. All that I have imagined, He has not allowed or have always come to naught.

Naught. Nothing. Nada.

…

I think how all these He has been working for me to more like Him without me knowing it.

This is one of the beauties of experiencing retreat.

Retreat causes the soul to slow down and reflect — not just during this holy time, but before and after by contemplating God’s Love, Work, and Action in your life.

It is as though in spending Time with God, you actually step into His Eternity and He lets you see, connect, and experience His salvific work in your life.

Indeed, you are putting on the mind of Christ, seeing with human eyes where God has been as you journey toward Heaven.

Me, within

I’m so happy.. I’m surrounded by my holy books, my Breviary, my Notebook, my pens, my friends and family and my saints, (food), my Church, my priest — words, language, & ideas and The Word.

Carmel is the desert, a land of hopeful detachment preparing us for heaven where we will have nothing but God to make us happy. Carmel is a dawn dulls earthly distraction.

No matter what kind of “holy work” I think I do with my Masses, my rosaries, my Adorations, its times like these that I am wholly reoriented toward God because I cast off Time and allow Him to work in a space that is wholly unknown to me — my soul.

Every retreat is different, just like every phase of my life is different, just like every moment is different, impacted by God’s transforming grace. During a retreat, I open the gate to my garden to let The Gardener in, to do what He will, how He will, when He will.. His effects lasting for as long as I stay in grace, forever if I wish!

Oh, Lord.. it is better I don’t know what You do to me.. You know what I need. To You, my Sovereign Lord, I give you the little realm of my soul. Do with me what You will. Amen.

❤️

1

Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.
— St. Paul to the Philippians 2, 12