For Carmelites in Chapter

The Vatican Press Office published yesterday the text of a message of greeting which Pope Francis sent to the Prior General of the Order of Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, Reverend Father Fernando Millán Romeral, as the Brothers begin their General Chapter.

To the Reverend Father

Fernando Millán Romeral

Prior General of the Order of Brothers

of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel

I greet you, dear Brothers of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, who are celebrating your General Chapter during the month of September.  At this moment of grace and renewal, which calls you to discern the mission of the glorious Carmelite Order, I wish to offer you a word of encouragement and of hope.  The ancient Carmelite charism has, for the past eight centuries, been a gift to the entire Church, and today it continues to offer a particular contribution for the edification of the Body of Christ by showing his luminous and holy face to the world.  Your contemplative origins stem from the land of the epiphany of the eternal love of God in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.  As you reflect on the mission of the Carmelites today, I suggest that you might consider three elements which might guide you to the full realization of your vocation which is the ascension of the mountain of perfection: paying homage to Christ, prayer and mission.

Homage

The Church has the mission of carrying Christ to all the world and for this, as Mother and Master, she invites everyone to come close to Him.

In the Carmelite liturgy for the feast of the Madonna of Mount Carmel, we contemplate the Virgin who stands beside the cross of Christ.  This is also the place of the Church: close to Christ.  It is also the place of every faithful son of the Carmelite Order.  Your Rule begins with the exhortation to the brothers to live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ, by following and serving him with pure and undivided hearts.  A close relationship with Christ is formed in solitude, with the fraternal assembly and with mission.  The fundamental option for a life concretely and radically dedicated to following Christ (Ratio Institutionis Vitae Carmelitanae, 8) makes of your existence a pilgrimage of transformation in love.  The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council recalls the role of contemplation in the journey of life: the Church has in fact the characteristic of being at the same time human and divine, visible but endowed with invisible realities, fervent in action and dedicated to contemplation, present in the world and at the same time a pilgrim (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 2). The ancient hermits of Mount Carmel preserved the memory of this holy place and even if they were separated by great physical distance, they kept their gaze and their hearts constantly fixed on the glory of god.  Reflecting on your origins and your history, and contemplating the vast ranks of those who have lived the Carmelite charism throughout the centuries, you will also discover your current vocation to be prophets of hope.  In this hope, you will be regenerated.  Often, that which appears to be new, is actually something very ancient, illuminated by a new light.

In your Rule, we find the heart of the Carmelite mission just as relevant today as it was at the time it was written.  As you prepare to celebrate the eighth centenary of the death of Albert, the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1214, you should remember that he formulated a way of life, a space which makes it possible to live a spirituality totally oriented to Christ.  He outlined external and internal elements, a physical ecology of space and the spiritual armour necessary for adequately responding to a vocation by effectively fulfilling its proper mission.

In a world which often misunderstands Christ, and in fact rejects him, you are invited to join and to draw always closer to Him so that you might be more profoundly conformed to Him.  This is a continual call to follow Christ and to be conformed to Him.  It is of vital importance in our disoriented world because when its flame is extinguished, all other lights end up losing their vigour (Lumen fidei, 4).  Christ is present in your fraternity, in the community liturgy and in the ministry entrusted to you: renew the practice of paying homage with your entire life!

Prayer

The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, before your General Chapter in 2007, recalled that the interior pilgrimage of faith toward God begins with prayer, and at Castel Gandolfo, in August 2010, he said: You are the ones who teach others to pray.  You refer to yourselves as contemplatives in the midst of the people.  In fact, it is true that you are called to live on the heights of Carmel, and it is equally true that you are called to bear witness in the midst of the people.  Prayer is that real path that opens us to the profundity of the mystery of One Triune God, but it is also the obligatory path that winds among the people of God, continuing their pilgrimage in the world toward the Promised Land.

One of the most beautiful ways of entering into prayer is through the Word of God.  Lectio divina introduces us to direct conversation with the Lord and opens the treasures of wisdom.  Intimate friendship with the One who loves us makes it possible for us to see with the eyes of God, to speak with His word in our hearts, to preserve the beauty of this experience and to share it with those who are hungry for eternity.

Returning to the simplicity of a life centred on the Gospel is a challenge for the renewal of the Church, a community of faith which always finds new ways to evangelize a world in constant transformation.  The Carmelite saints were great preachers and masters of prayer.  This is what we seek once again of the Carmel of the twentieth century.  Throughout your history, the great Carmelites were a strong reminder of the roots of contemplation, roots which are always fertilized by prayer.  This is the heart of your witness: your Order’s dimension of contemplation, of life, of growth and of transmission.  I’d like each of you to ask yourself: how is my contemplative life?  How much time do I dedicate during my day to prayer and to contemplation?  A Carmelite without a contemplative life is a dead!  Today, perhaps more than ever before, is it easy to be distracted by the preoccupations and the problems of the world and to be distracted by false idols.  Our world is fractured in many ways; in contrast, the contemplative turns to unity and therefore constitutes a powerful reminder of unity.  Now, more than ever is the moment to rediscover the interior path of love through prayer and to offer to the people of our time a witness of contemplation by preaching and fulfilling the mission of proclamation, not through the use of useless shortcuts but through the wisdom that emerges from meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord, a word that always leads us to the glorious cross of Christ.  And, together with contemplation, there must also be austerity of life, which is not a secondary aspect of your life and of your witness.  It is a very powerful temptation for you to fall into spiritual worldliness.  The spirit of the world is the enemy of a life of prayer: don’t ever forget this!  I urge you to live a more austere and penitential life, according to your most authentic tradition, a life far from every worldliness, far from the criteria of the world.

Mission

Dear Brother Carmelites, your mission is the same as the mission of Jesus.  Every plan, any comparison would be of little use if the Chapter doesn’t produce above all a path of true renewal.  The Carmelite family has known a marvelous springtime in all parts of the world, the fruitful gift of God, of missionary commitment of the past.  Today, the mission sometimes poses difficult challenges because the gospel message is not always welcomed and is even sometimes violently rejected.  We should never forget that, even if we should be thrown into murky and unknown waters, the One who calls us to continue his mission also gives us the courage and the strength to accomplish it.  Therefore, celebrate your Chapter enlivened by the hope that never dies, with the spiritual strength of generosity in the rediscovery of the contemplative life and the simplicity of evangelical austerity.

Addressing pilgrims in Saint Peter’s Square, I was able to say: Every Christian and every community is missionary in the measure to which it bears and lives the Gospel and witnesses to the love of God for all people, especially toward those who are in trouble.  You are missionaries of the love and tenderness of God!  You are missionaries of the mercy of God, who always forgives, always waits and always loves! (Homily, 5 May 2013).  The witness of Carmel in the past is part of the deep spiritual tradition which grew into one of the great schools of prayer.  It has also aroused the courage of men and women who have faced danger and even death.  We need only remember the two great contemplative martyrs: Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and Blessed Titus Brandsma.  Therefore, I ask: among you today, do you live with the temperament, with the courage of these saints?

Dear brothers of Carmel, the witness of your love and your hope, rooted in your profound friendship with the living God, may act as a gentle breeze which renews and reinvigorates your ecclesial mission in the world today.  To this you were called.  The Rite of Profession places these words on your lips:  With this profession I entrust myself to the Carmelite family in order to live a life of service to God and to the Church and I aspire to perfect charity with the grace of the Holy Spirit and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Rite of Profession, Carmelite Order).

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Carmel, accompany your steps and make your daily journey toward the Mount of God a fruitful journey.  I invoke upon the entire Carmelite family, and particularly upon the Chapter Fathers, the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit, and to all, I cordially impart the requested Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 22 August 2013

Francis