Into the Wild: a blog by the Discalced Carmelites UK

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 s...

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...

We set off from Oxford at what felt like the crack of dawn. Once in Gatwick the pilgrims that came from other parts of the UK joined us and we gradually got to know each other. Somehow the hours went by and I barely noticed them. Somehow half the day had gone by and though the early rise did make me sleepy I didn't feel the type of exhaustion I can sometimes feel when travelling. Expectation, curiosity, and good company contributed to this.  We are staying in the birth house of St Teresa, the home of the oldest congregation of discalced friars. The Monastery church is built on top of Teresa's paternal home, our rooms overlook the courtyard.  The gospel for today was from Luke 18:9-14; it spoke of how the tax collector and not the pharisee went home justified. Fr Matt led us in a meditation of this passage bringing our attention of how at the root of it the parable was speaking of prayer and maturity in the faith. Both the publican and the pharisee came to God, seeking a relati...