RESTORATION BY SAINT TERESA OF JESUS

The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, as its very name gives us to understand, was instituted to honor the Mother of God. A tradition of many centuries identifies the first Carmelites with the hermits of Mount Carmel, disciples of the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

In the Prophet Elijah, whom Sacred Scripture presents on the summit of Mount Carmel in found prayer2, burning with zeal for the glory of pro God and living continually in His presence³, the Order recognizes the inspiration of the Carmelite life, dedicated to contemplation in solitude. Elijah accomplishes his work and disappears "leaving behind him a spiritual following"4.

For centuries the eremitical life flourished on the slopes of Mount Carmel, Subsequently the cenobitical life was organized and about the year 1210 the Superior, Brother Brocard, asked and obtained from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Saint Albert, a Rule which confirmed and expressed concretely their purpose of living in "obedience to Jesus Christ", In passing to the west, the Rule suffered some modifications and the Carmelites adopted a mixed life, of both action and contemplation, although with great emphasis on the contemplative spirit.

The Rule, which had already been approved by Pope Honorius III was again approved by Innocent IV, with some changes which did not affect the first one in anything essential; and the Order spread rapidly throughout Europe where it acquired an extraordinary prestige because of its great intellectual figures and, above all, saints.

The Primitive Rule offers the members of the Carmelite Order a tested doctrine for attaining perfection. In it is emphasized as the principal end, the following of Christ, which the Council prescribes for institutes of consecrated life.

In order to achieve this end, the Rule imposes the profession of the evangelical counsels: chastity offered to God, poverty, and obedience; counsels which, as they are founded on the words and examples of Our Lord and recommended by the Apostles, by the Fathers and Doctors and Pastors of the Church, are a divine gift which the Church received from Our Lord and, with His grace, preserves perpetually 6.

In order to preserve this "divine gift", the Rule prescribes solitude in the cell in order to live "meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord and watching in prayer".

The center of this life is Sacred Scripture, the source at which contemplative prayer and ecclesial prayer, according to the prescriptions of the Sacred Liturgy, are nourished. To live in obedience to Jesus Christ demands that the soul strive to free itself from the impediments which could separate it from the fervor of charity. That this may be achieved, the Rule adds to the observance of the evangelical counsels diligent work and penance, expressed concretely in abstinence and fasting, silence and the guard of the senses. Moreover, it exhorts one to be on guard against dangers and temptations and to defend oneself from the snares of the enemy.

The Rule of the Order of Carmel not only promotes the heroic exercise of the virtues, but also encourages one to advance more and more on this road.

A supernatural prudence ought to moderate such an austere and penitential form of life, but no limits ought to be placed on its demands which are a consequence of the following of Christ. "If anyone does more, Our Lord will reward him at His coming".

The terrible disturbances which Europe suffered toward the end of the Middle Ages had repercussions on religious Orders, and the Carmelites, alleging the need to dedicate themselves more to the active life, sought greater latitude regarding retirement in the cell, and fasting and abstinence. The Rule was mitigated by His Holiness Eugene IV in the year 1431 and, with the exception of some provincial reforms which were not of a definitive character, it was observed in this way throughout the Order until the foundation of the Carme of Saint Joseph in Avila, August 24, 1562.

Saint Teresa of Jesus, penetrating into the primitive inspiration of her institute, the spirit of its founders and its sound traditions, places before her daughters as an ideal the holy hermits of holy Mother: "Let Mount Carmel who spent their lives in obedience to Jesus Christ and His most us remember our holy fathers of the past, those hermits whose lives we aim to imitate. What sufferings they endured! What solitude, cold, and hunger, and what sun and heat, without anyone to complain to but God!

With admirable balance and supernatural prudence, Saint Teresa adapted (as the Second Vatican Council would later request) this kind of life to the circumstances of a convent of Nuns. Besides prayer and contemplation, she preserved the eremitical spirit, solitude and silence, absolute poverty, austerity and penance.

In conformity with the Rule, she presents the Prioress as the center and soul of community life, a life founded on charity and joyfully enclosed by voluntary cloister.

She recommends humility as the foundation of all the other virtues, especially of charity, and a free and generous obedience. Finally, she gives to it all an apostolic and ecclesial meaning, with its own characteristic stamp of simplicity and radiant joy.

Thus she establishes in her monasteries an admirable kind of life, in which her Nuns "seek and love, above all else, God Who first loved us, and they zealously foster a life hidden with Christ in God, from which love of neighbor flows and is urged on, for the salvation of the world and the building up of the Church”.

In order to consolidate her work and to complete the details for which the Rule did not provide, Saint Teresa wrote Constitutions which were the most concrete creation of the practical genius of the holy Reformer. Although inspired by the Ancient Constitutions, she stamps them with her own personal characteristics and the ardent fervor of her own divine love.

These Constitutions, together with the Rule, have been the Law governing the Discalced Carmelite Nuns from their beginnings and which Saint Teresa, on her deathbed, left as a heritage to them.

The greatness of the saints which Carmel has given to the Church shows clearly the perfection of the laws by which they were sanctified.

In this way, Saint Teresa of Jesus not only returned to the primitive spirit and fervor, but did much more: she renewed the spirit of Carmel by her own ardent desires for perfection, enriched it with her own holy life and mystical experiences, and then clarified it by her writings in a way which cannot be surpassed. She founded a religious family in the Church, a shoot-the most illustrious from the venerable trunk of Carmel, and she gained for the Order Fray John of the Cross, to whom she herself taught the Carmelite ideal of which the Saint will later be the consummate master, bequeathing marvelous treatises to the treasury of the Church, some of which were writ ten at the request of the Discalced Nuns and dedicated to them.

To preserve and to transmit this type of consecrated life and this doctrine, whose relevance the Church has acknowledged by honoring its holy founders with the title of Doctor, is the principal duty of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns."

It all constitutes the patrimony of our Institute, of which Holy Mother Church has said through His Holiness Paul VI: "A doctrine proved by the attainment of perfection is considered by the Council as one of the patrimonies of Institutes and one of the greatest benefits which they must guarantee you".

The origin of the Reform of the Carmelites of the old observance was also due to a divine inspiration, which met with a generous acceptance in the heart of Saint Teresa of Jesus in spite of her presentiment that it was going to cost her much labor.

The Saint was convinced that only those who were living the same life as that which the Discalced Carmelite Nuns were living, would be able to help them on their spiritual road 15. Given the fact that this condition was not at that time fulfilled in the Carmelite Fathers, who profess the mitigated Rule, she asked permission of the Father General of the Order, Fray John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, to found two houses of reformed friars. The Saint gave the greatest importance to the choice of subjects who were to make the beginning, since she desired friars with the courage necessary to "further the austerity which was needful," and she was not entirely satisfied until Providence put in her path Saint John of the Cross. The Saint herself taught him the kind of life and fraternal character of her Carmels which he afterwards implanted in Duruelo, Mancera, and Pastrana. In this way, it became the life of the Discalced Carmelite Friars, a faithful copy of that of the Carmelite Nuns, without any difference other than a certain apostolic activity for the Professed. Thus the reform of the Discalced Carmelite Friars came into being six years after that of the Nuns. Saint John of the Cross was the first Master of Novices and also the first spiritual director of the Carmelite Nuns.

The growth of the Reform during the following thirteen years was extraordinary, in spite of the difficulties inseparable from the want of juridical independence. Resting on the provisions of the Council of Trent, which decreed that Superiors of Religious should profess the same Rule as their subjects ¹8, Saint Teresa worked untiringly until she brought this about. In 1580 she obtained from His Holiness Gregory XIII a Brief in which the separation of the Calced and Discalced was ordered, erecting the latter into a separate Province, with the power -among others to make Constitutions of their own. The desire of Saint Teresa was at last about to be fulfilled, namely, that her Constitutions would be confirmed by the Church. The first General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelite Friars took place in Alcala de Henares, March 13, 1581. The Constitutions, which the Saint had written for her Nuns, were approved, having previously been put in order by the Chapter Fathers and completed by other norms then in force in the Church; Constitutions were likewise drawn up for the Friars, inspired by the Mother Foundress and very similar to those of the Nuns.

Saint Teresa saw in such a separation a great benefit for the Order of Carmel. They would all be able now to serve God in peace, Calced and Discalced, and she could sing her "Nunc Dimittis''.

Two years later, the Holy Mother took her flight to Heaven. The last words she spoke were to proclaim her love and submission to Holy Mother Church and to earnestly recommend to her daughters the observance of the Rule and Constitutions, the observance of which, it seemed to her, was enough to canonize them.

Saint Teresa left this exile with the consolation of seeing realized her first inspiration to undertake the reform of the Friars. From that moment the Carmelite Nuns would be governed by those who lived the same life they did.

This latter was, in what refers to the Nuns, the new element in the Constitutions of Alcala The profound modifications introduced recently in t legislation of the Carmelite Fathers have been the cause of such dependence losing its purpose. At present the monasteries of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns are autonomous and their juridical dependence differs according to their status"

United to their Carmelite brothers by such sacred bonds as those we have just recalled, they labor "to respond adequately to the intense urgencies which spring from a love wholly given to Christ and an unreserved surrender to the mission of the Church."

This has confirmed the relevance of the Teresian Carmel, persuasively recommending all Carmelites to be faithful to the charism of their holy Foundress and reminding them of her words

All of us who wear this holy habit of Carmel are called to prayer and contemplation' (cf.Interior Castle, V. 1.2)

"It is necessary, then, that Carmelite Friars and Nuns, faithful to the life of prayer and its exercise, persevere in their vocation in order that they may attain that knowledge of the living God which
must be their title to glory, their specific vocation, their providential mission.

"Let them strive to be, with greater earnestness, the adorers in spirit and in truth, whom the Father seeks, with the conviction that this itinerary of the 'way of perfection' will not only be of profit for their own souls, but also for the welfare of many others, as Saint Teresa affirms (Cf. Life, 11,4)".