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There are as many different reasons as there are Carmelites in the world, but there are some things we all share in common. Here are a few of them.
Every Christian believes that he or she is loved by God. Yet how many feel empty and unfulfilled? How many think that God's love for them is a kind of duty, a sometimes exasperated 'putting up with' them? Yet each one of us is loved, warmly, personally, fully. I am a joy to the Heart of God, who took delight in creating me. He made me absolutely unique because He wanted to be loved in the way that only I can love Him, wanted to give me a happiness that only I can feel. The Carmelite has come to realise this and is swept off her feet. In her astonishment at being loved so fully and perfectly, she feels a need, a driving force, to spend her life responding to that love, and leading others to the same breathtaking realisation: God is in love with me.
When we are in love with someone, we want to spend time with them, to talk to them, to make their interests our own. Everything we say and do is influenced by them. We will never be the same again. God makes it easy for us to feel like this about Him because He became a human person in Jesus, someone who lived, worked, loved and suffered as we do. I need to love Jesus. This need, this driving force I feel within me is the Holy Spirit living in my heart. He has moved me to respond to the love of Jesus by becoming a Carmelite nun, whose vocation is love and the prayer that is an expression of that love.
Love is a living thing, containing the principle of growth. It cannot remain inactive, but keeps increasing and widening its capacity. This too is the Holy Spirit in us, loving every member of the human race and longing for their peace and happiness. It is a natural consequence of loving Jesus, because all the movements of His Heart become our own. That is why our prayer is not only the expression of our own love for Him, but an urgent plea that every person will know, love and serve Him and so find eternal happiness.
Our day is divided into periods of silent prayer, vocal praise, reading of Scripture and other spiritual books, work of various kinds - printing, altar bread baking, nursing sick sisters - and time for relaxing and talking together. The centre of the day is the celebration of the Eucharist where we are united more closely with Jesus; it is both the source and the culmination of our life and love and prayer.
The Carmelite Order is consecrated to the Virgin Mary. She is the perfect model of a life of love and prayer united to the Person of Jesus. By her example and her intercession, she helps us powerfully in our journey of faith and our growth in love of God and neighbour. When my heart beats as one with the Heart of Jesus, then I will truly love and cherish Mary as my mother.
For more information about Carmelites in Scotland, contact one of these addresses.
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