Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 12th June 2024
Carmelite Spirituality for Today’s World
Yesterday, I provided a very brief overview of the Carmelite tradition within the Roman Catholic Church. The Carmelites are a religious Order which were founded back in the 13th Century. There are various branches of the Carmelite family, but for present purposes I will focus on teaching which is common to all branches of the family. The Order has produced several Saints, among them St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), St John of the Cross (1542-1591), and St Teresa of Lisieux (1873-1897). Enough by way of background. What are some of the features of Carmelite Spirituality, and why might it be relevant to us today?
If you were ask a Carmelite for a definition of Christian Spirituality, they might say that Christian Spirituality is an exploration of the language of love. What does it mean for us truly to love ourselves as unique human beings, with all our strengths and weaknesses? What does it mean for us to love one another, despite the hurts and misunderstandings which are a common part of community life? And what does it mean to love God? And might we even dare to ask a further question: what might it mean for God to love us?
Indeed, the whole of Carmelite Spirituality can be seen as a commentary on following well known passage from Chapter 4 of the First letter of John: “Beloved, let is love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us”.
Much Carmelite Spirituality involves investigating and exploring different aspects of this language of love. Carmelites live in the real world, and they know that love isn’t always easy. Many Carmelites live in communities, and in communities, people don’t always get on with each other. This is true of life in a family, and it is also true of life in the Church. Both St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross knew all about the unpleasant realities of Church politics. Indeed, St John of the Cross was even put in prison by some of his fellow Christians.
Because Carmelites wish to focus on love, they are not afraid to put their love for God into words. I wonder what you feel about this? Some Carmelite writing can appear, to an outsider, as somewhat sentimental, or a bit over the top. But it is the language of love, and if we are capable of uttering tender expressions of love to our nearest and dearest, why should we restrain from expressing our emotions to God in similar terms? Perhaps the problem is the coldness of our ungrateful hearts. If we do not love God, we will find the language of affection awkward. But if God is everything to us, the words of love come naturally to us. Perhaps there are also questions of taste and personality. Some cultures encourage the expression of emotion, whereas others find any expression of feeling somewhat distasteful.
And because Carmelites are human beings, they are aware that while it is often hard to love others, it can be even harder to love ourselves. In recent years, some writers have sought to combine the insights of the Carmelite tradition with insights from secular psychology. This can produce a fascinating and profoundly healing dialogue between Spirituality and Psychology. It is not a matter of saying that Spirituality has all the answers, or that in our modern world, Psychology tells us all we need to know. Instead, it says that Spirituality and Psychology are two different languages. We are perfectly free to think about ourselves and our issues using the insights and vocabulary of only one language – be that the language of Spirituality or the language of Psychology. But we might find that we can gain greater insights into what it means to be human when we allow the languages of Spirituality and Psychology to enter into a dialogue with one another.
And so, for Carmelites, the essence of Spirituality is that it is an exploration of the language of love – and not just any old exploration, but an exploration guided by Scripture, prayer and an honest acknowledgment of the pain and complexity of life. But there are other elements to Carmelite Spirituality as well, and we shall look at some of these in the days ahead.