Carmelite Quotes & Sayings

Prayer and comfortable living are incompatible. — Teresa Of Avila

They had an old-fashioned sincerity ... that touched Archy in this time when everything good in life was either synthesised in transgenic cyborg vats or shade-grown in small batches by a Buddhist collective of blind ex-Carmelite Wiccans. — Michael Chabon

Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone. — Edith Stein

All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, there's not much difference between politics and sex; it's all about
power. He didn't suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. It's a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it: if Camille, he thought, approximates to one of those little milliners who can't make ends meet - in other words, an absolute pushover - then Robespierre is a Carmelite, mind set on becoming Mother Superior. You can't corrupt her; you can wave your cock under her nose, and she's neither shocked nor interested: why should she be, when she hasn't the remotest idea
what it's for? — Hilary Mantel

Letter 33 [To a discalced Carmelite nun in Segovia[63] Ubeda, October-November 1591] ... Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love. God so acts with us, for he loves us that we might love by means of the very love he bears toward us. [63] This person's identify is unknown. — San Juan De La Cruz

In the words of Pope John Paul II at the canonization of St. Edith Stein - a Catholic Carmelite nun who died in Auschwitz because of her Catholic faith and her Jewish descent - "Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie. — Chris Stefanick

Constance FitzGerald, a contemporary Carmelite authority on John's theology, points out John's assertion that this divine inflow is the "loving Wisdom of God." Specifically, she says, it is the active presence of Jesus Christ as Wisdom, as divine Sophia. Thus, "Dark night is not primarily some thing, an impersonal darkness like a difficult situation or distressful psychological condition, but someone, a presence leaving an indelible imprint on the human spirit and consequently on one's entire life."21 — Gerald G. May

And if the imam and the Muslim leadership in that community is so intent on building bridges, then they should voluntarily move the mosque away from ground zero and move it whether it's uptown or somewhere else, but move it away from that area, the same as the pope directed the Carmelite nuns to move a convent away from Auschwitz. — Peter T. King

Later, John Paul II would challenge seekers like Jobs, noting that "Carmelite mysticism begins at the point where the reflections of Buddha end. — Al Kresta

It is said that the Christian mystic Theresa of Avila found difficulty at first in reconciling the vastness of the life of the spirit with the mundane tasks of her Carmelite convent: the washing of pots, the sweeping of floors, the folding of laundry. At some point of grace, the mundane became for her a sort of prayer, a way she could experience her ever-present connection to the divine pattern which is the source of life. She began then to see the face of God in the folded sheets. — Rachel Naomi Remen