Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS) is a centre for research and formation that promotes spiritual formation and renewal, drawing on the rich resources of the venerable Carmelite tradition.
It is an apostolate of the Anglo-Irish Province of the Discalced Carmelites, based at the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, England.
OUR MISSION
CACS strives to achieve its mission through structured study and formation programmes in spirituality from the Carmelite perspective, especially Prayer and Spiritual Direction. At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, you are welcome to enter into the silence where God’s voice is heard in prayer, word and sacrament, inviting you to journey ever more deeply into a place of growth and wholeness. Our goal is to bring people to experience a life-transforming friendship with God through a lived experience of Carmelite spirituality that is authentic to its biblical roots.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
Feast of Therese of Lisieux
FEAST OF ST THERESE OF LISIEUX
Word & Wisdom is a weekly reflection on the Sunday’s scriptures and the wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. It promises to offer you real spiritual food to sustain you on the journey.
This Word and Wisdom Podcast is brought to you by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford (carmelite.uk.net).
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Today we commemorate the Carmelite feast day of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, esteemed by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times. Along with Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, Saint Therese is a Carmelite Doctor of the Church. While not as voluminous and systematic a writer as a Carmelite forbearer, Therese's rapid widespread cultural impact is both compelling and robust.
The childlike simplicity and invitational accessibility of Therese's spirituality speaks to new contemplative possibilities. She was deeply familiar with the mystical theologies of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross. However, in spite of this familiarity, Therese wrote, I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short and totally new.
I've always found this Theresian statement to be enigmatic and perhaps a subtle critique of the more structured mystical paths before her time. Therese suggests that these extraordinary paths, while profound, can appear daunting in their complexity and prolonged duration. With humility and bold confidence, Therese affirms with Saint Paul, but I shall show you a still more excellent way.
Thus, Therese proposes a little way that is more fitting for ordinary souls, the vast majority of contemplatives, who seemingly do not manifest extraordinary mysticism at all. In Therese's well-known elevator passage in Story of a Soul, she illustrates her passionate and sincere desire to be raised up to Jesus in expeditious fashion. We observe, underlying this passage, an urgency of love that is intense, consummate, and unapologetic in its audacious longing to be united with Jesus.
At the same time, Therese is keenly aware of her powerlessness to self-factualise her longing for Jesus. She humbly recognises that she is too small to ascend the stairway of perfection, possibly a euphemism for the rugged endurance of soul so commonly illustrated in the mystical theologies. Therese may appear like a precocious amateur, but she possessed extraordinary desires.
She always wanted to be a saint, and instead of becoming discouraged by her own inadequacy to attain holiness, she had a profound insight, God cannot inspire unrealisable desires. Therese's metaphorical use of an elevator as an expression of her boundless desires to be united with Jesus highlights her indescribable yearning for an accelerated path to perfection. When she searched the scriptures for evidence of such a divine invention, she tells us, I read these words coming from the mouth of eternal wisdom.
Whoever is a little one, let him come to me. Therese's primary insight consists of the full recognition of her powerlessness to self-attain God and the clear knowledge that only in her embraced identity as a little one can the Holy Spirit elevate the soul to united perfection. Hence, Therese declares, and for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.
By the grace of God, Therese did, in fact, rediscovered a spiritual path that was totally new. Her little way of total dependence and trust in Jesus for the growth and perfection of the soul is breathtakingly commendable. However, realising our littleness and powerlessness is not enough to make progress in the spiritual life.
Our littleness must be vigorously and continuously animated by our extraordinary desires to be united with Jesus. In truth, Therese's little way could be described as a mysticism of great desires. Therese reveals that our growth in the spiritual life is directly proportionate to the growth of our desires for God.
We all may not be constituted to experience ecstasies, raptures, and visions, but we all can nurture great desires. Our great desires ultimately lead us to the transforming arms of Jesus, the elevator itself, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.