THE CARMELITE APOSTOLATE

"I glorify myself for them", said Jesus, having in mind each one of us, "so that they shall be sanctified unto Truth." So it is with the Carmelites; the divine life in them must definitely expel egoism and any attachment to self.

There must remain no selfish interest in any of their sacrifices. "Adveniat Regnum Tuum." May God's reign come in every soul in all the earth; here is their triumph of immolation, here abides that intimate interior joy that no one can take from them.

The prayer of Carmel, similar to that of the Carthusians and the Poor Clares, is an apostolate that is based on the dogma of the Communion of Saints and the overflowing of their merits.

Meanwhile the immutable prayer of the Contemplatives compensates, in the balance of the Divine plan, the deficiencies of so many poor baptised souls, and preserves in the universal Church that level of prayer and love that is, in a sense, the primary and most important of their activities.

Is there any Contemplative Order that has gone further in this invisible apostolic way than that of Carmel? It is sufficient to think of St. Theresa of Avila. It would be difficult to find anyone more explicit than she. This great reformer insisted that the austere life of Carmel united to prayer should save souls without any human argument.

"Oh! my Sisters in Jesus Christ," cried Saint Theresa of Avila, "help me to ask this grace of Our Lord, (the conversion of sinners). It is for this I have gathered you here together; in fact, if one had to aver that your prayers, your hopes, your disciplines and your fasts have no longer the scope I have indicated, tell yourselves that you are no longer corresponding to the end for which Our Lord has called you to this place."[1] The Venerable Anne of Jesus testifies, after the death of the Saint, that this goal gave the initiative to all the foundations of Carmel during her life and also after her death.

"To love, for all those who know not how to love." Here is the apostleship of all Contemplatives, an apostleship that grows in proportion to the intensity of union to which their soul has reached.

"O God", ejaculated St. Catherine of Siena, "let us live a living death in truth and perfect light." It is in this divine light that the creature, called to a life of reparation and love, sees souls in God: it is in this death that she experiences joy, the fruit of her charity.

Often we do not understand this fact of an apostleship of love, because we have been shown some hard, almost inhuman pictures of these dear souls shut away in silence, separated from all carnal desires, offering their mortification and lost in God.

We might be tempted to speak of egoism; and we might be inclined to forget that their love --- their burning charity --- intensifies in the measure with which their soul clings more intimately to God in contemplation. Therefore the best way to work for one's neighbor is still that of going first straight to God.

While St. John of the Cross was writing the following words, he was quietly directing the Carmelites in the way of perfection and the fulness of divine love. "There is," writes St. John of the Cross, "so much strength, so much fervor of charity in a soul when it is seized with the love of God, that it cannot limit itself to its own spiritual profit; but, as it seems to her to be a poor thing to go alone to Heaven, with a diligence full of affection, she works to the best of her ability to lead as many souls as she can with her. This is the effect that her great love of God has on her, whose source lies in perfect prayer and contemplation."[2]

St. Theresa of Lisieux says that the role of the Carmelite in the Church is that of a heart that knows how to love. All her actions, though they are only of prayer and penance, are therefore all the more excellent as they are in conformity with the Will of God; they are apostolic, universal and efficacious.

We can compare this efficacy of our own social organism to the motors placed in the center of our enormous foundries, invisible to us but, nevertheless, the power that sets the work in motion.

You ask what these solitaries do? We can reply with a famous orator --- "They live above our cities where vice spreads its audacities and triumphs, and act as lightning rods, keeping the thunderbolts at bay. They are ever watchful, they redeem the souls of those of us who are enmeshed by pleasures, buried in sensuality, dominated by egoism.... If to-morrow their lips should be closed, if their up-lifted hands were to fall to earth with discouragement, if they were to abandon their life of penance, the world would be carried away like a straw in the wind of the tempest and the vengeance of God".

1. St. Theresa of Avila "Way of Perfection".

2. P. Bruno in "St. John of the Cross".

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