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
The Feast of the Holy Family, Year A
THE FEAST OF HOLY FAMILY, YEAR A
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).
To receive audio and written copies, subscribe by emailing podcasts@cacs.org.uk
To connect with our Living Prayer Podcast on Youtube, kindly click: https://www.youtube.com/@CACSOxford
We often romanticise the Holy Family, picturing them in a serene static tableau. Yet, today's Gospel presents a terrifying reality. A family on the run.
They are refugees displaced by the murderous jealousy of the tyrant. Here lies the mystery of the Incarnation. To show the essential nature of the family in the economy of salvation, God did not enter the world as a fully formed warrior, but as a vulnerable child.
The Holy Family is not holy because they were spared suffering. They are holy because they remained gathered around Christ amidst the chaos. As Pope Benedict XVI often reminded us, the family is the little church.
It is the primary place where the Word is heard and lived. Today, this institution is drowning in histories of abuse, economic strain, and the dictatorship of relativism that seeks to redefine human identity. Yet, precisely because it is under attack, the family remains the necessary anchor.
St. Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses. Just as Pharaoh sought to kill the infant Moses, Herod sought to destroy the Christ. And just as Moses led the people out of Egypt to constitute God's family, Jesus emerges from Egypt to redeem the whole family of men.
A hidden spiritual thread binds these to faith. We recall the Hebrew midwives, Shephra and Puerh, because they feared God, refusing to kill the male children. Scripture says, God gave them families, or built them houses.
These establishes a spiritual law. Faith builds the family. When the fear of God, the acknowledgement of a transcendent order, is removed from the home, the family loses its foundation, becoming subject to the shifting sands of emotion.
But when a family fears God, even if they are drowning in worldly trouble, they are given a house that endures, for it is built on the rock. How does the family survive the heralds of history? Through St. Joseph, we see the Carmelite ideal of contemplative listening. Joseph acts on the promptings of dreams.
In the biblical tradition, the dream is not a suspension of reality, but a moment when the noise of the ego is silenced so completely that the voice of God can be heard. Joseph does not debate the angel or complain about the flight into Egypt. He listens and obeys.
In our noisy world, the family must recover this interior silence. Without it, we cannot listen to the gentle voices or warnings, nor can we protect the identity of our children as sons and daughters of God. The father's role is to be the sentinel, a spiritual sentinel anchored in God.
We must be honest, however. Many families feel far removed from the ideal of Nazareth, marred by ugly histories. Yet, St. Paul provides the remedy.
Forgive each other as soon as the quarrel begins. The family is a sanctuary of forgiveness. Even if a family is broken, the family of man is achievable in Christ because He heals the wound of Adam and purifies our genealogy from within.
Let us pray that our families may become houses of the Lord, where, like Joseph, we are ready to rise in the moments of uncertainty to protect the presence of God in our midst.