Discalced Carmelite Nun Communities

[graciandelamadrededios]

 

 

sestre v rekreaciji - času, namenjene

 

 

Their habit is similar to German Discalced Carmelite Nuns

Edited November 28, 2013 by graciandelamadrededios

[graciandelamadrededios]

No, I haven't :) . Could you please post them?

 

Sure, here they are:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4L0A-bqUNE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKObpgUw23w

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC1Ffo78lxw

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFqlPvnPd4

 

Among Discalced Carmelite Nuns all over the world, only few monasteries wears wooden crosses attached outside the scapulars.

 

No one can ever explain the meaning of this - why do they have wooden crooses outside their scapulars when its customary for the Nuns to wear their profession crosses under.  

[graciandelamadrededios]

No, I haven't :) . Could you please post them?

 

You may want to view this link:

 

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/129496-carmelite-customs/#.Upb4J9IW3K0

[Chiquitunga]

Gracian, have you seen this? http://www.ocd.pcn.net/mission/News03en.htm  it has some details about foundations which I have previously never seen. look at part 3. it's about the foundation of the first Carmel in Mexico, which we were discussing here a few months ago

Edited November 30, 2013 by Chiquitunga

[graciandelamadrededios]

Gracian, have you seen this? http://www.ocd.pcn.net/mission/News03en.htm  it has some details about foundations which I have previously never seen. look at part 3. it's about the foundation of the first Carmel in Mexico, which we were discussing here a few months ago

 

Thanks Chiqui!

 

This is indeed a very good information and the longest so far that I have ever read about this foundation in Mexico - a foundation not initiated by the Discalced Carmelite Nuns themselves but by pious lay women.

 

Same foundation was made in India - Pondicherry Carmel.

 

Gracian

[graciandelamadrededios]

A video of a Discaled Carmelite Nun from Manila Carmel:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnfEZAq5Zf4

 

Sister Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD)

 

Columnist-turned-cloistered nun continues ‘life as prayer and prayer as life’

By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo 
Philippine Daily Inquirer

DateFirst Posted 00:00:00 04/11/2010

JD Constantino turns 90, with ?a long loving gaze at the world?
SHE TALKS A MILE A MINUTE. SHE IS abreast of the goings-on, perhaps more than most. With fire and frenzy she continues to write as if deadlines were still part of her life.

Her erudition shines through in conversations. She laughs, she listens, she remembers. She talks about the Philippines with great passion. Through her body of written works, she communicates to the world.

All that, but for more than three decades now, prayer and total commitment to God have been the essence of her life, the defining mark of her vocation.

Josefina D. Constantino, JD or Jo to countless friends, former colleagues and students, is contemplative nun Sister Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD). Last March 28, Palm Sunday, she turned 90.

Leaving all

A former professor of literature at the University of the Philippines (UP), and later, a daily columnist of The Manila Chronicle while working at the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), JD answered the call to the religious life in 1974 at age 54 and joined the contemplative, cloistered Carmelite order.

This meant leaving all?family, friends, freedom, a flourishing career?to live a life of prayer, silence and sacrifice while observing the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Today, one could say the world Sr. Teresa had left behind has not totally left her alone. It is right at her door at the Monastery of St. Therese on Gilmore Avenue in Quezon City.

They continue to come?friends, former colleagues, ideologues, intellectuals, religious, writers, seekers. The learned and the simple of mind, the rich and the poor, the distraught and the joyful, the needy and the thankful, the confused and the enlightened. Many ask for prayers, others just want to commune with her. This is not to say that her life of contemplation has been compromised.

Except for a slight limp, Sr. Teresa is relatively well for her age. And although she no longer belongs to the rat-race world that is our lot, she, the contemplative, remains in the heart of it. For isn?t contemplation ?a long loving gaze at the world??

World War II

Josefina D. Constantino was born on March 28, 1920, in Tondo, Manila, when the Philippines was under American rule. It was in the ?20s that the works of Filipino women writers began to flourish.

JD was the fourth of five children. Her parents, José and Susana, were not persons of great means but they were persons of great faith. JD attended Torres High School and UP, where she took up BS in Education and graduated cum laude and class valedictorian in 1940. Soon after, her father died.

JD was teaching at the Mapa and Torres High Schools when World War II broke out.

?I refused to teach the Japanese Co- Prosperity Sphere program,? she recalled, and instead took a job as social worker at the Department of Social Welfare.

?The war literally blasted me out into an ?unreal city,?? she said, borrowing words from T.S. Eliot. ?We ministered to all types of emergency needs and to the returning prisoners of war from Capas, and survivors of the Death March.?

Daily she walked the streets of Manila beholding suffering, deprivation and death.

After the war, JD joined UP. In 1947 she was sent to Columbia University in the US where she finished her MA in English and Comparative Literature. A favorite professor, Mark van Doren, introduced her to Trappist monk Thomas Merton?s writings and his book ?The Seven Storey Mountain.?

?Truly global?

Upon her return, JD taught Contemporary British and American Literature and other period courses.

?My postwar students were sharp and gifted,? she recounted. ?My universe was more truly global. I had become cosmic in spirit and more deeply Christian. Literature was once again my life and love.?

Inquirer columnist Belinda O. Cunanan and Press Secretary Cris Icban Jr. were among her students.

But UP was not a bed of roses. ?And then the persecution of the Faith at UP began. I was the finest target, making the trio with president Vidal Tan and Fr. John P. Delaney, SJ. That fight made me a national figure overnight, for the alumni who rallied behind me were all over the country. That was my first crucible after the war.?

She was secretary to UP?s president until 1955 when she received a faculty fellowship in Humanities from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was away for a year and upon her return found herself again besieged. In 1960, she resigned.

?It was over the issue of academic freedom and faculty integrity,? she explained. She wrote a searing five-part article about it in the Sunday Times Magazine. JD moved on, but she remained involved in education. She was executive secretary of the Foundation for Private Education and special assistant to the chair of DBP.

In 1966, the Ateneo de Manila University conferred on her the Ozanam Award to recognize her contribution to society as a lay Catholic educator, writer and civic-minded citizen.

?Faith and freedom?

JD?s name became familiar to newspaper readers because of her commentaries. When the Manila Chronicle asked her to write regularly, she agreed and wrote the column ?Faith and Freedom? five times a week for seven years until 1972, when martial law was imposed and newspapers were shut down.

But during all those years that JD?s career seemed to be taking a certain trajectory, there was something she was nurturing secretly. She had a strong desire to offer her life completely to God. The story of her vocation is detailed in her semi-autobiographical book ?Cry, Beloved Mother Church Rejoice!? and ?Priest of Fire and Flame,? a collection of essays about Fr. James Moran.

Moran was JD?s confessor for many years, starting in her UP days when she had to be instructed in the faith, until the ripening of her vocation.

?He sent me to the nuns at St. Theresa?s College for catechism lessons,? Sr. Teresa recalled. ?He was horrified that at age 22 I had not read a single Catholic book.?

Moran would soon learn that his precocious ward was questioning many articles of the faith.

Forlorn hope realized

While the war raged, Fr. Moran remained under house arrest at Carmel in Gilmore where JD would see him for spiritual direction. Soon, she found herself drawn to the Carmelites and wanted to join them. But this was not going to happen until 30 years later.

As Fr. Moran told her, ?You will have to live in the forlorn hope of it.? For she had family duties to fulfill. During those waiting years JD belonged to the Third Order of Carmel. Marriage was never in her mind.

In 1973, JD knew it was time. ?The definitive call to Carmel came. Leave all! With Fr. Moran I discerned for a year?the devil or the real call of God??

On March 25, 1974, JD entered Carmel. At about the hour of her entrance, Fr. Moran breathed his last. Her friends quipped: ?Magpapakulong din lang pala, bakit hindi pa sa Crame?? (She wanted to get confined, so why not in Crame?)

Camp Crame was where many anti-Marcos activists were jailed.

?I took to Carmel as fish to water,? Sr. Teresa recounted. ?I was finally home, never to leave it. I was enamored and awed interchangeably of what I thought was a medieval but fascinatingly modern habitat, shuttling between Trent and Vatican I and gingerly taking steps to Vatican II. I was interiorly rejoicing over the many hours of prayer and the silence and solitude I had forever so longed for. It was truer now?life as prayer and prayer as life.?

She, however, soon realized she was useless in carrying out monastery tasks. She had to be taught everything?cleaning bathrooms, sewing, washing, cooking. ?Once,? she recounted laughing, ?I put popcorn in the pancit.? She thought she was being creative.

Final vows

In 1979, Sr. Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary pronounced her final vows. Carmel would be forever.

But while immersed in an oases of prayer in the monastery, and through storms that challenged the soul, the writer in her did not die. She wrote unceasingly, but always under obedience. Today, her written works as a Carmelite nun are relatively voluminous.

Among the major ones are ?Cry, Beloved Mother Church Rejoice!? and two volumes of ?Personalizing Russia,? which are reflections on her stay in Russia where she observed contemplative life and the life of the Church.

Her ?Faith and Freedom? columns have been compiled in a book, her reflections, meditations, recollections, letters, prayers and essays have been printed in pamphlets and booklets and, sometimes, even in newspapers, but with Susana José as byline. Computer illiterate, Sr. Teresa does everything in longhand, which can drive an encoder mad.

A voracious reader, she has a remarkable grasp of literature, philosophy, theology, spirituality and current events, which is evident in her writings. She is conversant with the writings of Jewish scholar Edith Stein (Carmelite saint Teresa Benedicta, who was killed by the Nazis), Saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross as she is with Rizal, Dante and biggies of literature.

And now the Ateneo Library of Women?s Works is asking Sr. Teresa to preserve all her written stuff, including drafts, notes and whatever else, for archiving.

Like a dam

And what is writing like in Carmel? What has 36 years in Carmel been like for someone turning 90?

?Whenever I have to write,? she mused, ?I reflect on the subject and I pray double. I have no difficulty at all about ideas because I am easily filled literally, when I switch on the floodgates of God?s gifts and insights. It?s like a dam. I don?t even have to think. I only have to turn the key, or lift the beam, and the ideas rush like a roaring tide until they settle as waves gently and constantly oscillating, all in my mind and heart, as praise to God.

?It is because, in nothingness, I find myself immersed in God?s being, which is Truth, constant light... Holding them all in my mind as God?s own, I wait for the light. I wait for the signal.?

Writing, she said, is her way of sharing the fruits of her contemplation. ?I also want to honor the poor, they of pure faith.?

?These hours of prayer are gloriously free hours, free only for God and which is pure worship, because all else are naturally woven into the daily tapestry of unceasing prayer with vigils far into the night and long before dawn,? she added.

Without the contemplatives, she said, paraphrasing Merton, this country would have broken apart.

?These pure hours of timeless, spaceless, wordless, imageless being in Being, this pregnant emptiness, Christ fills through the Spirit for the whole humankind and the cosmos.? In the words of St. Teresa of Avila: ?Solo Dios basta.? (God alone suffices.)

?This is what contemplative life has been to me?yielding peace that surpasseth understanding, the ultimate happiness possible on earth.?

 

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/sundaylifestyle/sundaylifestyle/view/20100411-263547/Columnist-turned-cloistered-nun-continues-life-as-prayer-and-prayer-as-life

 

 

 

[marigold]

A video of a Discaled Carmelite Nun from Manila Carmel:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnfEZAq5Zf4

 

Sister Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD)

 

Columnist-turned-cloistered nun continues ‘life as prayer and prayer as life’

By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo 
Philippine Daily Inquirer

DateFirst Posted 00:00:00 04/11/2010

JD Constantino turns 90, with ?a long loving gaze at the world?
SHE TALKS A MILE A MINUTE. SHE IS abreast of the goings-on, perhaps more than most. With fire and frenzy she continues to write as if deadlines were still part of her life.
....
?This is what contemplative life has been to me?yielding peace that surpasseth understanding, the ultimate happiness possible on earth.?

 

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/sundaylifestyle/sundaylifestyle/view/20100411-263547/Columnist-turned-cloistered-nun-continues-life-as-prayer-and-prayer-as-life

 

What an interesting woman!

[Golden Years]

Let's hear it for older vocations! :bravo:

[graciandelamadrededios]

What an interesting woman!

 

I have spoken to her and boy, she could talk.

 

I was actually warned by her Prioress that Sr. Teresa is very chatty!  She is so energetic for her age and has a lot of stories.

 

Her stories about her time as cook made me laugh so hard!

 

I have read her "autobiography" and this book is one of my favorites.

[graciandelamadrededios]

Photo of former Philippine President Corazon "Cory" Aquino during her stay in Carmelite Monastery in Cebu.  She entered with the permission of the late Manila Cardinal Sin.  Cory was very closed to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns and the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters.  The aunt of Ninoy Aquino, her husband is a Pink Sister.

 

These two photos were taken when she went to Cebu for campaign during the dictatorship of Marcos and has to seek refuge to a secure place since there are reports of plan to assassinate her.  The Prioress said they have prepared Nuns habit (unblessed) for Cory and companions in case Marcos ordered to enter the enclosure and search the place. 

 

 

 

Cory revisited the Carmelite Monastery in Cebu

 

 

Cebu Carmelite safehouse for Cory

By Iste Sesante Leopoldo
Cebu Daily NewsFirst Posted 12:34:00 08/02/2009

?At last she is reunited now with Ninoy,? said a teary-eyed Cebu City Rep. Antonio Cuenco to Mother Superior Mary Aimee Ataviado of the Carmelite order during his visit to the Carmelite monastery in Mabolo yesterday.

Cuenco, who just arrived from Manila went straight to the monastery before heading to a mass in Mandaue City in honor of former president Cory Aquino.

It was a touching reunion for the brown-caped nun and Cuenco as they recalled the eve of the February 1986 Edsa Revolution, wherein Cuenco , then an assemblyman, drove Cory Aquino on a Ford sedan owned by Lito Osmena to the convent as a safe haven.

Aquino was in Cebu City for a rally at Fuente Osmena announcing a civil disobedience campaign on Feb. 22, when the political tide turned: Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos announced in Manila their defection from then president Ferdinand Marcos.

?We were all scared at that time. I was with my my wife Nancy and Peping (Cojuangco),? said Cuenco.

They had decided to take Cory to the convent for the night before her flight back to Manila because she was now a target for assassination by Marcos henchmen.

They arrived at the convent and were met by the sisters headed by Mother Ataviado.

?We were very excited and very happy. We could not believe Cory had come to us for her safety. She was in Cebu, advocating a disobedience campaign at the time but after receiving reports that Marcos wanted to liquidate her, that?s when they came to take shelter with us,? said Mother Ataviado, who described the former President Aquino as a very simple and prayerful person.

Aquino was joined by her daughter Kris and other supporters such as Raul Del Mar, brother Peping Cojuangco.

"I could still remember Kris suffering from mosquito bites," Ataviado recalled with a smile on her face.

But the expression on her face changed when she recalled how unidentified people came knocking heavily on their doors.

"We thought that we were under attack so we never opened the door until later on we learned it was the group of Ramon Mitra," Ataviado said, including other Cory supporters Aquilino Pimentel and John H. Osmeña.

Mother Ataviado said that the country should be happy that a woman of God is entering heaven and for the good life that she led.

[graciandelamadrededios]

Photo of former Philippine President Corazon "Cory" Aquino during her stay in Carmelite Monastery in Cebu.  She entered with the permission of the late Manila Cardinal Sin.  Cory was very closed to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns and the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters.  The aunt of Ninoy Aquino, her husband is a Pink Sister.

 

These two photos were taken when she went to Cebu for campaign during the dictatorship of Marcos and has to seek refuge to a secure place since there are reports of plan to assassinate her.  The Prioress said they have prepared Nuns habit (unblessed) for Cory and companions in case Marcos ordered to enter the enclosure and search the place. 

 

 

Then presidential candidate Cory Aquino was sheltered by the Carmelite sisters in Cebu City when the People Power revolution broke out in Feb. 22, 1986. Among those in the picture were her brother Peping Cojuangco and opposition leaders Tony Cuenco, Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and the late Ramon V. Mitra. (above photo)
(

 

 

Cory with the Carmelite sisters in Cebu City, February 1986. (above photo)

 

 

 

The late President Cory Aquino went back to the Carmelite sister's convent in Cebu City a few months before her term ended in 1992. (above photo)

 

 

Cebu Carmelite safehouse for Cory

By Iste Sesante Leopoldo
Cebu Daily NewsFirst Posted 12:34:00 08/02/2009

?At last she is reunited now with Ninoy,? said a teary-eyed Cebu City Rep. Antonio Cuenco to Mother Superior Mary Aimee Ataviado of the Carmelite order during his visit to the Carmelite monastery in Mabolo yesterday.

Cuenco, who just arrived from Manila went straight to the monastery before heading to a mass in Mandaue City in honor of former president Cory Aquino.

It was a touching reunion for the brown-caped nun and Cuenco as they recalled the eve of the February 1986 Edsa Revolution, wherein Cuenco , then an assemblyman, drove Cory Aquino on a Ford sedan owned by Lito Osmena to the convent as a safe haven.

Aquino was in Cebu City for a rally at Fuente Osmena announcing a civil disobedience campaign on Feb. 22, when the political tide turned: Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos announced in Manila their defection from then president Ferdinand Marcos.

?We were all scared at that time. I was with my my wife Nancy and Peping (Cojuangco),? said Cuenco.

They had decided to take Cory to the convent for the night before her flight back to Manila because she was now a target for assassination by Marcos henchmen.

They arrived at the convent and were met by the sisters headed by Mother Ataviado.

?We were very excited and very happy. We could not believe Cory had come to us for her safety. She was in Cebu, advocating a disobedience campaign at the time but after receiving reports that Marcos wanted to liquidate her, that?s when they came to take shelter with us,? said Mother Ataviado, who described the former President Aquino as a very simple and prayerful person.

Aquino was joined by her daughter Kris and other supporters such as Raul Del Mar, brother Peping Cojuangco.

"I could still remember Kris suffering from mosquito bites," Ataviado recalled with a smile on her face.

But the expression on her face changed when she recalled how unidentified people came knocking heavily on their doors.

"We thought that we were under attack so we never opened the door until later on we learned it was the group of Ramon Mitra," Ataviado said, including other Cory supporters Aquilino Pimentel and John H. Osmeña.

Mother Ataviado said that the country should be happy that a woman of God is entering heaven and for the good life that she led.

[graciandelamadrededios]

Discalced Carmelite Nuns wearing Spanish Style Habit, Nogoya, Argentina.  Its a very good view of the front and back of the habit particularly the toque.  Two Sisters seems amused about one the the Nuns scapular.  If I am not mistaken, this monastery follows the 1990 Text.

 

Edited December 25, 2013 by graciandelamadrededios

[AnneLine]

Thank you for sharing that, Gratian!   Christmas blessings to you and all who read your thread!

 

http://lorettocarmel.org/content/christmas-carmel

 

[graciandelamadrededios]

Thanks to Anneline, I was discovered new photos of Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Loretto Carmel's website:

 

NEW POSTULANT ALBUM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[graciandelamadrededios]

New photos of Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Loretto Carmel's website:

 

NEW COMMUNITY MEMBER ALBUM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sister received her own copy of the Rule and Constitutions of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns 1991 Text - I have the same one on my bedside, well, actually two.

 

 

 

I love the above photo!  She looks very happy and beautiful! Radiant!  The habit fits her very nicely.....