FLOS CARMELI

“…women must be silent in the Churches” (1 Cor 14: 33-35). St. Teresa of Jesus commented on the text: “We must all try to be preachers through our deeds since the Apostle Paul and our incapacity prevent us from being preachers through our words.

As soon as St. Teresa died, Philip II, King of Spain ordered the autographs of the founder and writer to be collected and placed in the Library of the Mon. de S. Lorenzo de El Escorial, “enthroned them by placing them among the writings of the autographs of the Doctors of the Church, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine. King Philip, before the Church, proclaimed his first Doctorate. 

By the brief, “Multiformis Sapientia Dei”, Paul VI proclaimed the Doctorate of St. Teresa of Jesus, along with St. Catherine of Siena, the first women Doctors of the Church.

“…we are very happy and full of joy for having declared St. Teresa of Jesús Doctor of the Church. Her teachings are so timely today! We can truly say that the clock of Providence has marked the time of St. Teresa. She has taught us the royal path, the path of prayer and communion with God.”

On 21st September 1614 – Fr Jerome Gracián died at Brussels. He was a very important part of the Teresian Reformation as a Superior, Preacher, Spiritual Director and confidant of St. Teresa of Jesus. He was professed in the Teresian Reform in 1572, and was the First Provincial of the Teresian Reform. After the death of Teresa of Avila, he was accused of departing from the spirit of the Teresian Reformation and expelled, after a trial brought about by Father Nicolás Doria in 1592. He was received by the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance. He had the joy of seeing the Beatification of St. Teresa of Jesús, for whose cause he worked so hard.

Today, September 17 is the Feast of St. Albert of Jerusalem, Bishop, Legislator of the 0rder of Carmel. Albert Avogadro was born about the middle of the twelfth century in Castel Gualtieri in Italy. He became a Canon Regular of the Holy Cross at Mortara and was elected their prior in 1180. Named Bishop of Bobbio in 1184, and of Vercelli in 1185, he was made Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1205. There, in word and example, he was the model of a good pastor and peace-maker. While he was Patriarch (1206-1214) he formed the hermit brothers of Mount Carmel into a collegium and wrote a Rule for them. He was murdered at Acre on September 14, 1214, by the Master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, whom he had rebuked and deposed for immorality.

He is not a Carmelite, but the Order of Carmel celebrates him with all propriety as her son for being her legislator. As Patriarch of Jerusalem, he met with St. Brocard and the other hermits on the slopes of Mount Carmel and at their request, composed the Rule of Carmel, putting in writing what the monks practiced in their lives.

 

On this day, September 9, 1624, the Discalced Carmelites took possession of the Church and monastery in Prague founded by Emperor Ferdinand II, renaming it the Church of Our Lady of Victories, in thanksgiving for the victory of 1620. Through the intervention of Father Domingo de Jesús María, Ruzola, OCD, by imperial decree, the Church of the Holy Trinity, occupied by the heretics, was given to the Carmelites. Regular life began at the monastery on 21-1-1625.

The foundation was suppressed by the Emperor Joseph II, in 1782, passing into the possession of the Knights of Malta, and the church was elevated to a parish. In 1912, the Discalced Order of Carmelites, of the Province of Austria established a new foundation next to the Sanctuary of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, which had previously belonged to the Order of Servants of the Virgin Mary. In 1919, the German Carmelites were expelled from there due to the vicissitudes of the European war, and the convent was closed in 1921. In 1993, the Church of Victories, where the image of Our Lord Jesus of Prague is venerated, was returned to the Carmelites.

(Source: Miguel Ángel Lecumberri, Carmelite Ephemerides September-December. Volume III. Santiago, Chile 1996.)

*AND IN HER MORNING*

The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling. God alone
has sealed this land as secretly His own;

but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.

God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awarenesses of Him.

We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say: God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with Our Lady

who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul’s acres shine and shine with her!

You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!
Your own reflection has revealed Your place,

for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face.

Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD (Jessica Powers)

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers,
ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Carmelite Prior General Giovanni Battista Rossi—who St. Teresa referred to as ‘Juan Bautista Rubeo’—died on this date, 4 September 1578 as a consequence of an accident in which he fell from his mule and broke his leg. Teresa was deeply saddened when she received the news:

Juan Bautista Rubeo (Giovanni Battista Rossi, 1507-1578) was an untiring apostle born in Ravenna who entered the Carmelites at the age of ten. He received his doctorate in Padua. In 1546 he was named procurator general of the order and began lecturing at the Sapienza in Rome. The Carmelite general chapter, under the presidency of St. Charles Borromeo, unanimously elected him general of the order on 21 May 1564. He lost no time in obtaining faculties from the Holy See to visit, reform, and correct the houses of the order. His cherished desires were to bring the order back to its origins, to stress solitude, affective prayer, devotion to Mary, and the apostolate. This appealed to him much more than merely promoting fulfillment of the laws newly set forth by the Council of Trent. In 1564 he began his visit to Spain, and on 10 June 1566, he had an audience with Philip II. Proceeding to Andalusia, where the Carmelites were torn by rival factions and resistance to reform, he convoked a provincial chapter for 22 September at which over 200 Carmelites took part. His efforts to correct abuses angered the guilty parties and caused them to make appeals to the king, complaining of Rossi and calling on the king himself to set up a visitation. As a result, Philip II lost confidence in Rossi and initiated his own plans for the reform of religious orders in Spain. Unaware of the king’s attitude, Rossi began his visitation of Castile and on 27 April 1567 authorized Teresa to found other houses for her nuns, provided they be under the jurisdiction of the order, and the number in each community be restricted to no more than twenty-five nuns. A month later he limited the region where the new houses could be founded to Castile, but later he extended this to all parts. Because of the troubles among the friars in Andalusia, he did not want to grant permission for new foundations of discalced friars. But at Teresa’s request on 10 August 1567, he wrote from Barcelona giving her permission to found two houses of “contemplative Carmelite friars” in Castile. In 1569 in a letter to the prioress of Medina, Rossi wrote: “She [Teresa of Jesus] does more good for the order than all the Carmelite friars in Spain together.” And Teresa esteemed him just as highly. But later because of the many jurisdictional complexities that arose from the king’s desire to reform the Carmelites in Spain, passions were aroused and Rossi was so misinformed that he approved measures harmful to what Teresa was trying to bring about. She never lost her high esteem for Rossi and explained and appealed to him through her letters. Rossi died unexpectedly on 4 September 1578 as a consequence of an accident in which he fell from his mule and broke his leg. Teresa was deeply saddened when she received the news and always lamented the pain she thought she had caused the general because of the misunderstandings that had arisen and her inability to explain things to him personally or get her letters through to him.