Two Carmelite saints

July 16 is the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of the Carmelite Order. I am an associate lay member of the Carmelites in the Philippines together with my wife. We are members of the local community of Carmelites in Cebu. As lay members we live out the spirituality and charisma of the Carmelite Order.

Teresa of Avila and Teresa of Lisieux are two Carmelite nuns who both lived in a different time and in a different place. They are very much different from each other as far as their sainthood and their spirituality is concerned. Both of them lived in a different time and place and therefore in a different life situation to which each one responded in her own way.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was born in Spain. She was declared a saint in 1622 and a doctor of the Church in 1970. Teresa of Lisieux (1873-1897) was born in the last century and lived in France. She was declared a saint in 1925.

Teresa of Avila, in her time, traveled all over Spain and founded the first Discalced Carmelite Convent about 1562 and introduced her reform program in all the existing Carmelite Convents in Spain. She wrote her “The Interior Castle” in which she describes her spiritual experiences as a mystic. Her feast day is October 15.

Pope Francis at the occasion of the 5th Centennial celebration of Teresa of Avila wrote: “In the school of this wandering saint we can learn to be pilgrims. The image of her way is a good synthesis of the message of her life and her work. She saw her life as a road to perfection, along which God leads us toward Him, stage after stage, and in the same time towards our neighbors.

Teresa of Avila is a mystic for modern time. She appeals to us because of her radical and sometimes confronting search for the inner life. We must search for spirituality in our secular environment.

Teresa of Lisieux entered the Convent of Lisieux when she was 15 years old. According to canon law a minor was not allowed to enter the convent. But the story goes that she accompanied her father on a parish pilgrimage to the Vatican and asked the Pope if he could allow her to become a nun. Pope Leo XIII was blandly non-committed and said: “You will enter if God wills it.” And God did allow her to become a nun while she was only 15 years old. It shows how strong was her determination to enter. Once in the convent she started to write her autobiography with the title “The Story of a Soul,” which she was not able to finish because she died already at the age of 24. After her death the autobiography was published. Teresa describes in there how she was content to be ‘little'.

Teresa declared that she could never be a “great saint” like St. Teresa of Avila, she was content to be “little.” It was her famous “Little Way” of doing small things with great love for God, which proved her most lasting legacy. She says in her autobiography that she disliked praying the Rosary (“an instrument of penance”).

She once said, “If only I were a priest!” (Those who argue “she didn't mean that” might ask themselves why they are reluctant to take her at her word.) And on the edge of death, the Carmelite nun struggled with doubts about what awaited her in the afterlife.

“If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into”, she admitted to one sister. Many people in her time and even today would call her overly pious and more or less unreal. It is most surprising that God could coax such a unique flower from the overheated soil of nineteenth-century French Catholic piety.

Her spirituality finds resonance with anyone who has ever been humbled by life, confined by God's will or overwhelmed by the world. In other words, with everyone we may say: Little Flower, pray for us.

These two different Carmelite saints show us how you can be a Carmelite, either as a layman or a laywoman in the Church of today.-- From Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro