Yet Carmel lives on...

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J.M.J.

Feast of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

"I looked, and behold Carmel was a wilderness..." (Jer. 4.26).

In giving an account of the first mission of the Discalced Carmelite Fathers in the Philippines, Fr. Sebastian ("A Man Shall Scatter," 1957) wrote this in his foreword:

"Discalced Carmelites on the missions, how come? I thought...' People are always asking.

On the Feast of St. Joseph (tomorrow's) 1581, St. Teresa of Jesus (of Avila), the reformer of Carmelites, earnestly approved a decree published by Fr. Jerome (Gracian), the Provincial. Thus it begins: 'Inasmuch as Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ... commanded His Apostles to go unto the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature... it is good for all of us, both religious and priests, who succeed the disciples of the Lord in the Ministry, to have always in our hearts this hunger and thirst for souls... And IT IS GOOD FOR US CARMELITES TO ATTEND most particularly and with great zeal to the salvation and TO THE EXTIRPATION OF HERESIES AND THE CONVERSION OF GENTILES, because we are called imitators and successors of the zealous Prophet Elias.'"

Could there be a contradiction between the  'Catholic' spirit and the Teresian Carmel's? "Today, we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which others [heretics and schismatics] would 'be converted' and return to being 'Catholics'. THIS WAS EXPRESSLY ABANDONED AT VATICAN II [speaking of 'ChurchES' in GS and the false religions as also means of salvation in UR]" ('Card.' Kasper of the so-called 'Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity'). Could the 'Church' and her 'OCD religious' abandon a doctrine of the Eternal Word? As was prophesied and prefigured of Old, the 'institutionalist mainstream' (those whose reality of the Church is equal to her  'official' institutions) would depart and so the Prophet Jeremias continues: "...and there dwells not a man in them" (v. 29).

"One must first be a Catholic before he becomes a Carmelite" (Fr. Jerome of the Mother of God, C.D., in his retreat on the Rule of Our Lady).

But then, the good Lord did "not utterly destroy" (Jer. 4.27)...