Into the Wild: a blog by the Discalced Carmelites UK

For many families, the first sign of the coming festivities comes, after the advent wreath, with baking. Smells of cookies, cakes and bread pervade many homes. From spice cookies to almond crescents there is a joy that accompanies this activity. Especially in homes with small, and not so small, children using the cookie cutters is a way to include all members of the family in the process. A lot of thought goes into baking. Choosing the recipes, finding the ingredients, and baking takes time but it is a time that during Christmas many don't quite measure, it simply goes by in a way that reminds me of something an old professor commented once. He was reminiscing about his childhood Christmases and one of the things he remembered noticing was that time seemed to not exist during Christmas. Family members came and time was spent sharing, eating, playing, and singing, but this time spent wasn't measured. No one stopped to notice the time spent during preparation or the time spent to

 As Catholics we stand in an interesting place: we follow two calendars that are not always in sync. There is the liturgical calendar according to which our year ended with Christ the King and the every day, everyone calendar (in more cases this will be according to the old Gregorian calendar), which has the year ending on the 31st of Dec. While this might appears as if Catholics live torn between two worlds it is really a reminder of the call we have to maintain a balance. A reminder that while we are not of this world we are in it and in being in it we are called to bring God into it so that it can return to God.  Catholics are constantly exposed to both the earthly and the divine through the liturgy, it is the divine entering our everyday lives. This is enacted in a very real way by the intertwining of the liturgical calendar with the everyday calendar even when they do not align with each other perfectly. This is especially visible during Advent and Christmas. We prepare expectantl

There really is no passage in the entire Bible that for me forms the link between the Old and the New Testament quite so clearly as the Virgin Mary travelling to visit her cousin Elizabeth. While the encounter is in everyone's mind, especially if they pray the liturgy of the hours, because of the Magnificat, the fact that Mary travels from Nazareth to the hill country of Judah is a small detail, often read quickly but which carries with it great significance. Judah is where the ark of the covenant dwelt and Mary, in carrying the Messiah, being thus the new ark of the covenant, was travelling to the same hill country. What follows is their encounter, the baby John (the baptist) leaps in Elizabeth's womb and she exclaims "And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?"  and Mary responds with her song of praise. It can sometimes be easy to forget that these two women were Israelites, that the babies they carried were Israelites and that their Go

Recently, during a talk about Edith Stein on Radio Maria, the action of the Holy Spirit on her soul stood out to me. The speaker was asked about how she had become a Catholic and while her reading St Teresa's Vida  is a well-known turning point in her life the previous gentle promptings of the spirit are less well-known.  She had at a young age decided that she was an atheist though out of love and respect for her mother, who was a devout Jew, she continued to practice the prayers of the Jewish faith her mind had turned away from the Abrahamic faith. In her autobiography, Life in a Jewish Family, she speaks about how her experiences of the death of close family members had left her with burning questions about the afterlife and about what was important in this life. These burning questions were not satisfied until her conversion more than a decade later and spurred her on in her studies. She would late comment how she realised that all those who seek the Truth are in reality seekin

The month of November begins with All Souls and All Saints. This coincides with a shortening of the day, the hours of darkness mark the rhythm of our routines. The leaves fall and it becomes colder. Everything seems to draw to a close, a visible and tangible reminder that the end of the liturgical year draws near.  The passing from this life into the next found in the Feast days that start the month initiate us into this period of closure of the liturgical year. The play of light and darkness of this period is symbolised in several feast days - St Martin, St Lucy, - and ultimately Advent. The Liturgical Calendar of the Church connects with the biblical idea of religious duties to be performed at the Temple found in the Old Testament. While the word Liturgy itself denotes especially public rather than private worship the connection between the two is a natural and necessary one in much the same way that fasting or abstinence from food aids in preparing the spirit, those private devotion

After a few days off sick with an unknown virus, we are back. We returned from Avila a week ago yesterday, the day that stands out in memory was the Friday we went to Medina del Campo. Medina was the place in which Teresa met John of the Cross. It was also St Teresa's first foundation outside of Avila, a test to the question of whether the charisma would 'travel' to another location. When St Teresa and her sisters that had travelled with her to the new foundation found that there wasn't a house but a rather dilapidated building that they would have to repair. They said the first mass in a room, that would later become the parlour, with only half a roof on it. It was in this room that St John of the Cross and St Teresa first met, we were standing on the side in which the first mass was said and St John sat when he spoke to St. Teresa. At the convent, which we had been allowed to enter as a special favour, as they only usually allow visitors on Saturdays, we met Jose Anto

On Thursday we went to Toledo, a city that played a role in St Teresa's work and St John's life. It was a place not without difficulties and is most associated with the town in which John of the Cross was imprisoned. It is also where St Teresa began writing her Interior Castle.  Through the maze of small medieval streets, Fr Matt guided us to the Friar's Monastery where we had Mass and then were able to walk around the garden. The views from the garden are impressive, overlooking the river that runs alongside Toledo and its suburbs.  John of the Cross' arrest is not easy to explain and can be quite shocking when you consider it was done by his own community. Part of is the history of the time, which is too extensive for here. What can be very briefly mentioned here is part of what Fr Matt said: during this time disobedience was the major reason people would be punished, usually with imprisonment. Imprisonment for disobedience was all to common and it happened in most mo