« Pilgrims of Hope », we celebrate St. Teresa of Jesus on October 15 : she often exclaimed in her prayers, « O my Hope and my Father and my Creator and my true Lord and Brother! When I remember how you have said that Your delights are to be with the children of men, my soul is filled with great joy! » (Excl.VII)
« Spes non confundit », « hope does not disappoint » (Romans 5:5). We would like to share with you a few paragraphs from the beautiful lecture that Father Abdo Abdo, OCD, gave us at our assembly in Rome last September.
« In the Carmelite Constitutions, hope appears as one of the three fundamental theological virtues: «They devote themselves to continual prayer, sustained by faith, hope, and above all by divine charity, in order to attain with a pure heart the fullness of life in Christ » (Const. 10).
In her autobiographical writings (The Life), St. Teresa bears witness to a hope embodied in the most difficult moments. During a period of intense spiritual darkness, she writes: « I began to call to mind my great resolutions to serve our Lord, and my desire to suffer for His sake; and I thought that if I carried them out, I must not seek to be at rest; that if I had my trials, they would be meritorious; and that if I had troubles, and endured them in order to please God, it would serve me for purgatory. What was I, then, afraid of ? If I longed for tribulations, I had them now; and my gain lay in the greatest opposition. Why, then, did I fail in courage to serve One to whom I owed so much? » (LIFE 36, 8).
For Teresa, hope is lived concretely in abandonment to Providence.
From a very young age, Thérèse manifested this hope turned toward eternity. She recounts in her autobiography: « It astonished us greatly to find it said in what we were reading that pain and bliss were everlasting. We happened very often to talk about this; and we had a pleasure in repeating frequently, “For ever, ever, ever”.» (LIFE 1, 5).
Carmelite hope is not based on external circumstances, but on the certainty that « hope—divine hope—does not disappoint » (Rom 5:5). In their monasteries, true « oases of prayer », the Carmelites of the Middle East and North Africa carry this hope for the universal Church.
Your contemplative mission, inherited from St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross, is and is becoming ever more a beacon of hope for all those who seek God in a world searching for meaning and unity. In the constant exercise of hope, you proclaim that the Gospel has a future in these holy lands, despite all appearances to the contrary.