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Carmelite Family – Bulletin of Lay Carmel
Number 12. Winter 2001
Contents
Carmelite Spirituality
Patrick Burke,
O.Carm.
Fraternal life
modelled on the Jerusalem community is an incarnation of God’s gratuitous
love, internalised through an ongoing process by which we empty ourselves of
all egocentricity
- which can
affect groups as much as individuals - as we
move towards authentic centring in God. In this way we express the
charismatic and prophetic nature of the consecrated Carmelite life, weaving
harmoniously into it the personal charisms of each member, in the service of
the Church and of the world.
Constitutions art.
30.
The previous
article in the Constitutions (art. 29) states that the source and model of
the fraternal life of Carmelites is the life of the Holy Trinity. The ideal
for Carmelites is the knowledge and love that exists between the persons of
the Trinity. Once this ideal is clear, Art. 30 identifies the principles of
fraternal life and explains how Carmelite life can reach its ideal. The
first section of the article ends with a statement of the purpose of this
way of life.
Fraternal life is
an incarnation of God’s gratuitous love. The love of God is active in
bringing the members of the community together and their living together is
an incarnation of that love. People from outside and inside the community
who see the love that the members have for one another can take it that this
is what God’s love is like. This is one of the ways that God has chosen to
make the love of God known.
It is how it was
with the early Christian community in Jerusalem. People who saw how this
community lived were attracted to their belief and way of life. The way of
life, as the Acts of the Apostles tell us, had five clear properties: the
members prayed together, they listened to the teaching of the apostles, they
broke bread, they shared their goods and they spoke of their belief in the
Lord’s resurrection. We find in the Carmelite Rule these same five elements
joined together at the heart of the Rule.
The Constitutions
recognise that the building of this kind of community takes time and effort.
It is a process of change and growth in the members. Gradually the members
learn to recognise, accept and internalise the love of God, which is love
without bounds, freely and generously given. The process is not an easy one.
It calls for the emptying of ourselves. The members have to recognise the
strength of self-centredness and move away from that in their openness to
God’s law and in their commitment to the wellbeing and salvation of others.
The centre of
desire and attention of each Carmelite in this process of growth into
Christian maturity, moves from oneself to God. John of the Cross spoke of a
loving attentiveness to God. In the development of a spiritual life people
find that their whole life is taken up with God. They find themselves more
devoted to the search for His will. The experience is one of intimacy with
God and a willingness to serve Him with every human faculty.
Consecrated life
is a life of total dedication to God, a life that belongs to God, a life
that knows no other master. That too is an ideal. While we may fall short of
the ideal, we know that God is at work in bringing us to consecration and
our consecration cannot be mixed with any motivations other than a loving
attentiveness to God’s presence and will. This presence and will are
revealed in the life of the Church, in the Scriptures, in what is going on
in peoples’ lives, especially in the life of the poor.
In a healthy
community there is a harmonious weaving of the personal charisms of the
members. For community to be possible, the members have to pay great
attention to one another. The life of the community is an integration of the
lives of its members. The giftedness of the community is a combination of
the giftedness of each of the members, who enrich one another and are
capable of bringing out the best in one another. Any failure to recognise
and welcome the giftedness of each member will result in a serious
impoverishment of the community. It will take away from its effectiveness to
witness to the Gospel, it will adversely affect the health of each member
and the health of the community itself and will make its apostolic
commitment less effective.
The last point in
this section of Art. 30 is that the purpose of Carmelite community is to be
of service to the Church and to the world. While it is also possible to say
that the purpose of Carmelite community is the sanctification of the
members, here the Constitutions indicate that it is first of all a service
to the Church. We believe that in this service the members grow in holiness
and are sanctified, but it is important to understand that the community is
not an end in itself. The reason why people gather together in community is
to help the evangelisation of the Church and of the world through their life
of fraternity.
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