Be a witness of the Great Love that God has for mankind

"From my own interview with Mother and the chapter nuns in the New York Carmel that Thanksgiving Day and from interviews with other girls which I subsequently attended as a nun, I must report that above all things Mother Teresa was interested in a girl's love for Our Lord.

She said one must have great love to take up her cross every day and follow in faith her Beloved Jesus. Only such love can make the life possible. Attraction for the religious life is not sufficient. Any girl who comes 'to seek peace' is to be carefully and seriously tested, as is one who 'loves solitude.'

Aptitude also was rated far below the supreme test of love and determination to strive for perfection. Aptitude, or general fitness for the life, is absolutely necessary, but aptitude without a personal love of Our Lord is not sufficient. As to aptitude for the vows, Mother Teresa said, 'No one could say she was unsuited to poverty; no normal person would have difficulty with the vow of chastity; and even those least disposed to submission can become obedient - people in the world must obey their superiors.' Nor should there be any difficulty for a normal girl in living a community life. It was, and still is after many years, Mother's opinion that the aptitudes needed for success in the world - the same qualities - are needed in the religious state. And she always added that a person who chooses marriage is not by any means barred from the life of Christian perfection, for there are many saints in the kitchens, factories, and offices of the world. Not all the contemplatives are found in the cloister; among the priests and nuns engaged in the active apostolate, there are contemplatives, and there are contemplatives in the world. Spared of the distractions of the world, we in the cloister should normally be able to spend more time in contemplation than others.

Mother Teresa summed up the interview in some such way as this:

'Cecilia, my child, we shall let you know soon what decision the nuns have come to about your interview. Meanwhile, do not forget to exercise yourself in all the virtues, especially love and faith. We in Carmel are supposed to be witnesses before men of the Great Love that God has for mankind. We are to think constantly of God and rejoice in Him and want to be near Him to love Him.

'Our cloistered life is one of all or nothing. If you desire to be a Carmelite, you should want to give yourself completely. You must have a strong longing for God alone.'"

-- My Beloved: the Story of a Carmelite Nun by Mother Catherine Thomas, ocd

Saint Teresa reformed the Carmelite Order with her irrepressible determination

"As I read on, I learned that after the Black Death of the fifteenth century the Holy See mitigated the original austere rule of silence, fasting, prayer and penance. It was thought the health of the people in fifteenth-century Europe could not stand such a rigorous discipline.

Then in the following century, at Avila in Spain, appeared the great organizer and mystic of Carmel, Saint Teresa of Jesus. After living as a nun for twenty years under the mitigated rule, she felt impelled to bring back to the Order all its primitive penance and prayer. When she hesitated, because of her sex and weakness, to attempt the restoration of the original rule of Carmel, Our Lord spoke to her: 'It is because men and theologians will not listen to Me that, despised by them, I come like a beggar to talk of what I want with humble women and to find rest in their company.'

How I admired the great Saint Teresa and her courageous confidence in God! Church dignitaries and ministers of state conspired against her. But once God's will became clear to her, there was no obstacle she could not overcome.

It was because Saint Teresa, with her irrepressible determination, succeeded in restoring the Primitive Rule of Carmel, the Rule followed throughout the world by all discalced (or shoeless) nuns, that I was thinking of Carmel. I discovered that monasteries of the Reform were established all over Europe. And, most exciting of all, I learned that in our own country the very first religious order of women to found a convent in what was then the United States was the Carmelite Order."

-- My Beloved: the Story of a Carmelite Nun by Mother Catherine Thomas, ocd

"No sooner had I finished the Autobiography of Saint Thérèse than I searched out and read with my customary enthusiasm everything I could find about the religious order of Carmel.

The name of Carmel, I discovered, meant literally 'garden' or 'beautiful hill'; its mystical meaning - 'sacrifice' - was far more significant

I learned that Carmel was a small mountain, one of a chain of high hills that ran across Palestine, and that it was to Mount Carmel that the prophet Elias retired, to seek God in solitude, and to pray for his people. And this, nine hundred years before Christ was born. This same Elias was actually, according to the Carmelite tradition, the founder of the religious order to which Saint Thérèse of Lisieux belonged. I never dreamed  it possible that a religious order in the Catholic Church could trace its origin to a date before the coming of Christ. The beautifully impressive statue of Saint Elias, the prophet, that stands in the Vatican alongside the saintly founders of other religious orders is inscribed Elias, Founder of the Order of Mount Carmel.

Carmel was called the Order of Mary, and the early members of the society were called the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel; they were charged with the 'blessed duty of honoring her, and spreading devotion to her.'"

-- My Beloved: the Story of a Carmelite Nun by Mother Catherine Thomas, ocd

** Painting behind the altar of the chapel at the Discalced Carmelite Nun's Monastery in Haifa, Israel. Haifa is in the slopes of Mount Carmel.

I should be a lamb like Our Lord

"Lamb of God. The true Lamb that was stricken for our transgressions. God's only begotten Son came down from Heaven and by becoming the Son of David was made the Lamb of God. Innocent, gentle, guileless, as befits the Truth, He opened not His mouth when led to the slaughter. And on Calvary the Lamb was sacrificed. In a vague imperfect way the idea of sacrifice began to dawn on my childish mind. Our Lord showed His love for His Heavenly Father and for us, by laying down His life; then I should be a lamb also and do likewise... The 'I should like to be a nun' had taken a definite advance. From this time on the thought was 'I ought to be a nun.' But the will to be a nun was stiff far off. In His own sweet and gentle way God was leading me and preparing me for Carmel, though at the time the name Carmel would have been less likely to suggest a cloister than a candy or a pie!

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It is possible that God permitted me during my high-school years to live my life fully in order that my body might grow strong and vigorous. Not that exceptional physical health is an absolute necessity for the contemplative life; I have seen delicate women experience little difficulty in living the life of Carmel. But they were women of great fervor. To a cloistered nun, strong nerves are far more important than a strong body. Under the austerities of the cloistered life - the fasts, the penances, the long hours of prayer, the unvarying routine - an athlete may give way, while a frail girl with a sound personality will thrive.

It is also possible that God allowed me to enjoy these years of my youth in order to demonstrate that the contemplative life is not a refuge for those not at home anywhere else. There would be little merit in leaving a world one was incapable of enjoying; there would be no sacrifice if one entered a cloister to escape the life outside, or if one had a natural distaste for the joys of life."

-- My Beloved: the Story of a Carmelite Nun by Mother Catherine Thomas, ocd

Carmelite nuns: mothers to souls everywhere

"In the elementary school department at Ladycliff there were a number of little boys as well as girls. Often I would be asked to supervise their evening play hour, and I loved to tell them stories and to answer their questions. Whether it was my natural penchant for storytelling or the maternal instinct that every girl has, I don't know; but I do know that these hours with the children were my greatest recreation. They were also the cause of many a silent struggle deep in my heart.

The delight I found in the children and their warm response to my interest in them sent waves of doubt and indecision over my soul concerning my calling to the solitude of Carmel's cloister. Maybe, I thought, my fondness for children was an indication that I should enter an 'active' order of nuns so that I might teach children daily in the classroom or go to mission lands and give myself to thousands of orphans. But in the silence of the Chapel where I would take my troubled heart peace and certitude would return, and I would dismiss all doubts as I poured out my love to Jesus. Deep within me, apart from all emotions, came the clear, persistent call of my Beloved to leave the world and to mother only the souls of these children - and the souls of all mankind everywhere with my prayers and penance from within the cloister.

How that could be done I did not at that time fully understand, but my years in Carmel's solitude have taught me that one does not have to be visible and physically present to ease the burdens of an anguished world."

-- My Beloved: The Story of a Carmelite Nun by Mother Catherine Thomas, ocd

** Photo is from the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Ontario

Old Time Magazine article with Mother Catherine Thomas

"Granted a valid vocation and a healthy body and mind, what does the postulant find in a cloistered convent? The group she has joined gives a family's sense of solidarity and protection. Silence does not exclude communication, and a world that talks from morning to night may not appreciate the gaiety of the recreation hour after a day-long silence. Barring homesickness, the postulant is likely to be happy during her first few convent months. But, as New York-born Carmelite Mother Catherine Thomas puts it, in her autobiography, My Beloved, The Story of a Carmelite Nun, "Postulants are new brides; and like other new brides, for the most part they are blissfully ignorant of the trials that lie ahead."

The contemplative convent is far more than a quiet place to provide the opportunity for prayer. It is also a kind of operating room where prolonged and drastic surgery takes place to free the individual from those things that stand between her and the love of God.

Sacrifice of Self. There are three main areas to be operated upon, represented by the vows. The vow of poverty, designed to cut through the hampering entanglement of material things, operates on many levels; Carmelites and some other religious are forbidden to use the word "my" except for their faults (they refer to "our" cell, "our" Breviary). Poverty applies equally to any kind of attachment. Sisters are systematically frustrated by their superiors in the tendency to become identified with a particular job or hobby. Still more strictly applied, the vow of poverty applies also to impressions. Contemplatives are actually enjoined to see and hear as little as possible of what goes on around them.

The vow of chastity is the easiest to fulfill for most religious. Hardest is the vow of obedience, designed to eliminate the most formidable barrier between the human and divine: the self.

Obedience to the superior is looked upon by the monastic as obedience to the will of God—much as the soldier is trained to salute not the officer but the uniform of his country. The superior deliberately imposes humiliations to break the natural self-love most lay Christians take as a matter of course. Obedience even to a relatively relaxed rule can be a stringent whip if performed, as it should be, on the split instant. St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the "Little Flower," once advised a novice: "When someone knocks at your door, or when you are called, you must practice mortification and refrain from doing even one additional stitch before answering. I have practiced this myself, and I assure you that it is a source of much peace."

Dark Night of the Soul. The life of contemplation has its occupational diseases. Sisters sometimes suffer shattering doubts about the genuineness of their vocation, or an onslaught of "scrupulosity"—obsession with insignificant imperfections that begin to loom like mortal sins. Most agonizing of all is spiritual dryness, analyzed by St. John of the Cross in his book, The Dark Night of the Soul. Without any apparent cause, all the warm joy and pleasure that the religious normally finds in prayer and the monastic routine suddenly disappears. As one contemporary has described it: "The entire spiritual world seems meaningless and unreal; even one's own most vivid spiritual experiences fade out like half-forgotten dreams. One becomes keenly, sometimes agonizingly aware of everything prosaic: heat, cold, stuffy rooms . . . excessive weariness, the irritation of the heavy, uncomfortable garments . . . other people's maddening 'little ways'; the 'sinking feeling' and depression that are inseparable from fasting: the appalling monotony of the rule-imposed routine . . ."

Infractions of the rule, in letter or spirit, are inevitable, and different orders have different ways of dealing with them. Carmelites have a weekly "Chapter of Faults," at which the monitress is honor-bound to report all lapses observed during the past week: "In charity I accuse Sister—of the fault of doing . . ." This is considered a valued opportunity to practice humility. Sisters may also publicly accuse themselves of their own faults (as they do at Maryknoll) and accept appropriate penances from the Mother Prioress.

Corporeal penances, such as hair shirts or scourging, are practiced today only in the strictest orders, though Carmelites sometimes make and sell both hair shirts and scourges to priests. They themselves still subdue their bodies with whips. Writes Mother Catherine Thomas: "In Carmel, when we are inflicting this penance upon ourselves, we have more than our own bodies and our own souls in mind. It is true that we accompany the flagellation with the chanting of the psalm Miserere for our own sins; but we also recite prayers at this time for the exaltation of the church, for peace and concord on earth, for our benefactors, for the souls in Purgatory, for those in the state of sin, and for those in captivity."

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The convent or monastery, said St. Teresa, is a strong point in a dangerous situation. This, she told her followers 400 years ago, when the world was no less dangerous than it is today, is "the chief reason why Our Lord gathered us together in this house. "

"In time of war, when the enemy has overrun the whole country and the situation is desperate, the lord of the region withdraws into a town which he orders strongly fortified, and from it he sometimes attacks the enemy. As those in his stronghold are chosen men, they can do more by themselves than they could with whole armies . . . Even if they are not victorious, they are never vanquished.''

*The Church distinguishes between nuns, who generally take "solemn vows" and are strictly cloistered; and sisters, who take "simple vows" and are usually active in the outside world. *One of the foremost U.S. missionary societies, active in the U.S., South America, Africa and Asia. The Maryknoll Sisters are a completely separate organization. *When Martha asked her sister Mary to help her get dinner ready for Jesus and the disciples, instead of sitting adoringly at the Lord's feet. Jesus admonished the busy woman. "Martha, Martha," He said. "Thou art careful, and thou art troubled about many things: but . . . Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10: 41-42)."

-- Laborare est Orare, Time Magazine, 11 April 1955
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I tried to do a Google search on Mother Catherine Thomas, authoress of My Beloved: The Story of a Carmelite Nun and I found this 1955 article interviewing Mother. The article is more extensive, with information on Maryknoll Sisters. I don't read Times Magazine, but I don't believe this type of article is common for what I presume is a "popular" magazine.


Many things have changed since 1955, but I thought this would be interested for those readers who would like to read Mother's book and cannot afford a copy. I actually saw online a hard-cover copy with dust jacket for $350?! Outrageous. The original paperback cost 78 cents back in 1955. Fear not, dear readers, I have a paperback copy and look forward to putting some excerpts in the future.