Saint Therese Of Lisieux (Doctor Of The Universal Church)

"My mission - to make God loved - will begin after my death, I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will send a shower of roses." - St. Thérèse

• Feast day : 1 October
• Canonized : 1925
• Patroness of the Missions
• Known for her "The Little Way," which consisted of love and trust in God.
• Declared "Doctor of the Church" in 1997

St. Thérèse was born in a pious Catholic family. Her parents Luigi Martin and Zelie Gueren made their name shine with many Christian virtues. In such a school of sanctity the little Thérèse learnt to live and progress in the love of God. She was the last of nine children and lost her mother when she was a small child. She tried to become a worthy daughter of Mary, our heavenly mother. On the day of her First Holy Communion she consecrated herself to Mary. When she was ten years old Thérèse became very ill. Her father had a novena of masses celebrated for her full recovery.

Thérèse was a young girl of fifteen when she joined the Carmelite order of nuns in Lisieux.Initially given menial tasks of washing, ironing and cleaning, Therese eventually became the mistress of the novices in the convent. A quiet and unremarkable nun, Thérèse suffered severe bouts of depression. Deathly ill with tuberculosis, Thérèse promised upon her death to loose a shower of roses in the form of favours and miracles from heaven. At the moment of her departure at age 23, a fellow sister ran outside to gaze up at what was an overcast sky. Before her eyes, the clouds parted and revealed a hood of twinkling stars. Her Carmelite mother superior and sister, Agnes, edited and published Saint Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul, which tells of the sweetness and simplicity with which Thérèse approached her duties.

Her life was a song of love to Jesus and Mary. She wrote a hymn: "I want to suffer for love and I will sing always even if I have to gather my roses from among thorns." Her roses were the sacrifices she offered to Jesus through Mary. St. Thérèse is one of the most popular saints in modern times.

• The Little Way - Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
• Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
• Questions and Answers Regarding the Act of Oblation to Merciful Love

Saint Teresa Benedicta Of The Cross ( Edith Stein )

"O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace. "
- St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

• Feast day : 9 August
• Canonized : 1998
• Co-Patroness of Europe

Edith Stein was born to a Jewish family at Breslau on October 12, 1891. Through her passionate study of philosophy she searched after truth and found it in reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Jesus. In 1922 she was baptized a Catholic and in 1933 she entered the Carmel of Cologne where she took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was gassed and cremated at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, during the Nazi persecution and died a martyr for the Christian faith after having offered her holocaust for the people of Israel. A woman of singular intelligence and learning, she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II at Cologne on May 1, 1987 and canonized on October 11, 1998. Her feast is celebrated by the Church on August 9 of each year.

Letter from Pope John Paul II : Proclaiming Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Co-Patroness of Europe

Saint Teresa Of Jesus Of Los Andes

"A Carmelite sanctifies herself in order to make all the Church's members holy ... Let's live intimately united with Him, since one who loves tends to be united with the one loved. The fusing of two souls is done through love." - St. Teresa of Jesus of Los Andes

• Feast day : 13 July
• Canonized : 1993
• First Chilean and the first member of the Teresian Carmel in Latin America to be beatified.

Juanita Fernandez Solar was born at Santiago, Chile on July 13, 1900. From her adolescence she was devoted to Christ. She entered the monastery of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns at Los Andes on May 7, 1919, where she was given the name Teresa of Jesus. She died on April 12 of the following year after having made her religious profession. She was beatified by John Paul II on April 3, 1987, at Santiago, Chile, and proposed as a model for young people. She is the first Chilean and the first member of the Teresian Carmel in Latin America to be beatified. [St. Teresa of the Andes was canonized on March 21, 1993 in St. Peter's Basilica.]

Saint Elijah - Prophet And Father Of The Carmelite Order

"With zeal I am zealous for the Lord God of Hosts." (1st Kings 19:10).

• Feast day : 20 July
• Earliest patriarch of the Order of Carmel
• Pre-Christian founder of Carmel

The prophet Elijah appears in Scripture as a man of God who lived always in his presence and fought zealously for the worship of the one true God. He defended God's law in a solemn contest on Mount Carmel, and afterwards was given on Mount Horeb an intimate experience of the living God. The inspiration that was found in him from the very beginnings of the Order so pervades its whole history that the prophet may deservedly be called the founder of the Carmelite ideal.

The Carmelites honour Elijah as their inspirer and father; they draw from him their ardent love for the living and true God to whose presence, working in a secularized, they want to render full witness.

Saint John Of The Cross - Priest And Doctor Of The Universal Church

"Live in the world, as if God and your soul only were in it; so shall your heart be never made captive by any earthly thing."
- St. John of the Cross

• Feast day : 14 December
• Canonized : 1726
• Co-Founder of the Carmelite reform (Discalced Carmelite Order)

St. John of the Cross stands as one of the most important mystical philosophers in Christian history. The son of a rich merchant, John was born Juan de Yepes y Alvarez in Fontiveros, Spain in 1542. The father of St. John was discarded by his kindred for marrying a poor orphan, and the Saint, thus born and nurtured in poverty, chose it also for his portion. John's father died when the boy was quite young, leaving his mother to raise him alone.

Unable to learn a trade, he became the servant of the poor in the hospital of Medina. After gaining employment in a plague hospital, John, at age 18, began to study with the Jesuits. In 1563, being then twenty-one, he humbly offered himself as a lay-brother to the Carmelite friars, who, however, knowing his talents, had him ordained priest. He continued his studies at the University of Salamanca, where he began to teach while still a student. After being ordained in 1567, John met St. Teresa of Avila, another of the great mystics of the Christian tradition.

He would now have exchanged to the severe Carthusian Order, had not St. Teresa, with the instinct of a Saint, persuaded him to remain and help her in the reform of his own Order. Thus he became the first prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. These monks went so far as to go barefoot, indicating their commitment to poverty, lending to them the appellation of "Discalced" or "shoeless." Over time, a rift arose between the traditional Carmelites and John's Discalced Carmelites. His reform, though approved by the general, was rejected by the elder friars, who condemned the Saint as a fugitive and apostate, and cast him into prison, whence he only escaped, after nine months' suffering, at the risk of his life. During this period of imprisonment, John wrote much of the poetry that would provide his greatest contribution to later generations. Twice again, before his death, he was shamefully persecuted by his brethren, and publicly disgraced. But his complete abandonment by creatures only deepened his interior peace and devout longing for heaven.

Eventually, the rights of the Discalceds were recognized, and John took on various roles of leadership within the Order. After some fifteen years of leadership, he died in 1591, leaving behind a number of remarkable works of Christian mysticism: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, and the Spiritual Canticle of the Soul.

Saint Simon Stock

" Carmel's Flower - Vine ever blossoming - Heaven's splendor! Virgin who bore a child - No one is like thee - Mother gentle and kind - Yet never touched by man! To Carmelites give thou the privilege - Help us Star of the Sea. " (Flos Carmeli by St. Simon Stock)

• Feast day : 16 May
• Never formally canonized; venerated by the Carmelites since at least 1564; the Vatican has approved Carmelite celebration of his feast
• Father General of the Carmelite Order
• His vision of the Virgin Mary with the Scapular caused the widespread "Scapular devotion."

He was descended of a good family in Kent. From his infancy he turned all his thoughts and affections to attain to the most perfect love of God, and studied to devote all his moments to this glorious pursuit. In this earnest desire, in the twelfth year of his age, he retired into a wilderness, and chose for his dwelling a great hollow oak tree; whence the surname of Stock wee given him. While he here mortified his flesh with fasting and other severities, he nourished his soul with spiritual dainties in continual prayer. His drink was only water; and he never touched any other food but herbs, roots and wild apples.

While he led this course of life, he was invited by a divine revelation to embrace the rule of the early Carmelite monks who were coming from Palestine into England. Albert, the holy patriarch of Jerusalem, had given a written rule to these friars about the year 1205. They settled at Aylesford in Kent and in 1254 Simon was elected Superior-general of the now mendicant Carmelites.

Simon founded other houses as the Order began to grow but he faced many problems as the original 'solitary' ideal of the hermits changed towards the more communal approach of the mendicants. These weren't just internal problems, as older orders also resented the arrival of these newcomers with their own particular devotion to Mary.

Simon withdrew to his monastic room or 'cell' to try and gain some relief from the problems faced both by himself and his Carmelite order, and in order to pray to Mary; it was then that he had his famous vision of her bringing the Brown Scapular to him with the following words, which are preserved in a fourteenth century narrative: "This will be for you and for all Carmelites the privilege, that he who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire."

He died at Bordeaux in the mid-thirteenth century. He is venerated in the Carmelite Order for his personal holiness and his devotion to Our Lady. A liturgical celebration in his honor was observed locally in the fifteenth century, and later extended to the whole Order.

Blessed Elizabeth Of The Trinity

"The weakest soul, even the one that is most blameworthy, is the one that has the best grounds for hope." - Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity

• Memorial : 8 November

Daughter of Captain Joseph Catez and Marie Catez. Elizabeth Catez was born on 18th July 1880 in Campo d'Avor near Bourges, France, and she was baptized four days later. In 1887, her family moved to Dijon. Her father died when she was seven, leaving her mother to raise Elizabeth and her sister Marguerite. Noted as a lively, popular girl, extremely stubborn, given to fits of rage, with great reverence for God, and an early attraction to a life of prayer and reflection. Gifted pianist. Visited the sick and taught catechism to children.

Much against her mother's wishes, she entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Dijon, France on 2 August 1901. Though noted for great spiritual growth, she was also plagued with periods of powerful darkness, and her spiritual director expressed doubts over Elizabeth's vocation. She completed her noviate, and took her final vows on 11 January 1903, the same year she was given the monastic veil. She became a spiritual director for many, and left a legacy of letters and retreat guides.

The five years that she spent in religious life brought her ever closer to God although the Lord tested her with many spiritual trials and severe physical suffering due to Addison's disease which finally brought about her death on 19th November 1906.

Prayer to the Trinity: Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity