The Apostolate and the Mission
« Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty. »
( John 15, 5 )
Like all life, our lives as Carmelites aspire to bear fruit. The love of the Lord which has seized us is such that it always needs to spread again and again. It is indeed a missionary spirit, deeply evangelical, which animates our contemplative life and wants to make us apostles of Jesus.
It was to respond to the needs of the Church of her time, out of compassion for the Indians who had not yet received the Good News of the Gospel, that Saint Teresa of Avila worked entirely to revive the ideal of the Order of Carmel concentrated in the Rule given to the hermits of Mount Carmel. It commits us to work for the Church, through the ecclesial service of prayer and immolation (Constitutions no. 125).
She transmitted her apostolic spirit to her daughters so well that, following her, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus said: “I came [to Carmel] to save souls, and above all to pray for the priests” (Ms At 69v°). She wanted to love Jesus and make him loved, the zeal of souls increasing her momentum towards the depths of God; the love of souls pushing towards a work of union with God. This is the meaning of our life.
The apostolate entrusted to us is purely contemplative (Constitutions No. 126). It is the simplicity of daily life lived in faith, hope and love that we offer for the world, tending towards this “pure love” “more precious in the eyes of God
and the soul and more profitable to Church in apparent inaction, than all other works together” (St John of the Cross, CSB 29).
Already St. Teresa of Avila offered herself for the Church of her time wounded by the tearing of unity. This tear is still open, sometimes very vivid in our regions of the Middle East. For this we want to give our prayer, all our actions down to the most banal, the testimony of our fraternal life.
Our presence in our countries in the Middle East and North Africa is also intended to be a “testimony among non-Christians of the majesty and charity of God, as well as of the vocation of all men to unity in Christ” (Constitutions n°127). Through us Jesus makes himself present among our fellow believers of other religions.