Spiritual Mourning

Our only great sorrow should be for our sins.

A Prayerful Summer

It's not always easy when there is so much going on....

The Carmelite Rite

Many of the religious orders which were founded in the Middle Ages had their own unique customs and rituals. The Carmelites were no exception, and the "Carmelite rite" or "Rite of the Holy Sepulchre" was used in monasteries of the ancient observance until 1972. The Carmelites were founded in the Holy Land and so their rite contained some elements of the eastern liturgies. It also had a great deal of emphasis on the Resurrection of Christ and on the Blessed Virgin. As one article explains:

The rite in use among the Carmelites since about the middle of the twelfth century is known by the name of the Rite of the Holy Sepulchre, the Carmelite Rule, which was written about the year 1210, ordering the hermits of Mount Carmel to follow the approved custom of the Church, which in this instance meant the Patriarchal Church of Jerusalem: "Hi qui litteras noverunt et legere psalmos, per singulas horas eos dicant qui ex institutione sanctorum patrum et ecelesi approbata consuetudine ad horas singulas sunt deputati." This Rite of the Holy Sepulchre belonged to the Gallican family of the Roman Rite; it appears to have descended directly from the Parisian Rite, but to have undergone some modifications pointing to other sources. For, in the Sanctorale we find influences of Angers, in the proses traces of meridional sources, while the lessons and prayers on Holy Saturday are purely Roman. The fact is that most of the clerics who accompanied the Crusaders were of French nationality; some even belonged to the Chapter of Paris, as is proved by documentary evidence. Local influence, too, played an important part. The Temple itself, the Holy Sepulchre, the vicinity of the Mount of Olives, of Bethany, of Bethlehem, gave rise to magnificent ceremonies, connecting the principal events of the ecclesiastical year with the very localities where the various episodes of the work of Redemption has taken place.

The Carmelite rite is still used by a few religious communities.

The Year of the Priest

It has begun. It is the mission of Carmelites to pray for priests. Fr. Mark's reflections are worth savoring.

The priest is essentially a man who, in offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, witnesses day after day to the mystery of the Heart of Jesus, opened by the soldier's lance and never closed. Your role, Spiritual Mothers, is not to look at the priest; it is, rather, to look with Him at the pierced Side of Jesus until, by the force of Love's irresistible attraction, the priest, and you with him, are drawn across the threshold of that wound, into the inner sanctuary of the Sacred Heart.

Berthe Petit

Mystic of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Food for the Journey

Genevieve Kineke reflects upon the meaning of viaticum.

The Heart of Mary

"All the glory of the king's daughter is within...."
-- Psalm 44:14

At Fatima, Portugal on June 13, 1917, Our Lady said to the three little children: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God." Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was manifested by Heaven as being the path to peace for individuals and for the world. Two hundred years before the Fatima apparitions, St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort instructed his followers on how to live out one's consecration to the Blessed Virgin in the treatise True Devotion to Mary. "Mary is the sanctuary and repose of the Holy Trinity, where God dwells more magnificently and more divinely than in any other place in the universe, not excepting his dwelling between the Cherubim and the Seraphim."

To take our refuge in Mary's heart is a shortcut to holiness, to union with God. "This practice of devotion to our Blessed Lady is also a perfect path by which to go and unite ourselves to Jesus, who...took no other road for His great and admirable journey....The Most High has come down to us perfectly and divinely, by the humble Mary....So it is by Mary that the very little ones are to ascend...without any fear, to the Most High." (True Devotion to Mary)

The key to Marian consecration is the renewal of our baptismal vows, when we "give ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ by the hands of Mary," as St. Louis de Montfort recommends. In doing so, we give to Our Mother "our body with all its senses and its members; our soul with all its powers, our exterior goods of fortune, whether present, or to come; our interior and spiritual goods, which are our merits and our virtues, and our good works, past, present, and future." By giving everything to Our Lady, she will purify our good works and offer them to God on our behalf, bringing about the greater glory of God. Uniting our hearts with hers, we "do all our actions by Mary, with Mary, in Mary, and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus."

The Holy Eucharist seals our covenant with God. St. Louis de Montfort urges that before receiving Holy Communion:

You must implore that good Mother to lend you her heart, that you may receive her Son there with the same dispositions as her own. You will explain to her that it touches her Son's glory to be put into a heart so sullied and inconstant as yours....But if she will come and dwell with you, in order to receive her Son, she can do so by the dominion which she has over hearts....You will ask her for her heart by these tender words: 'I take thee for my all. Give me thy heart, O Mary.' (True Devotion)