“Our Lord made me great promises — that He would take delight in the monastery; that Saint Joseph would keep guard at one door and Our Lady at the other; that Christ would be in the midst of us; that the monastery would be a star shining in great splendor…” –St. Teresa, Life Ch. 32:14
“Monastic Enclosure does not isolate contemplative nuns from the Mystical Body of Christ. Rather, it puts them at the very heart of the Church… All that you Carmelites are, all that you do every day, is sanctified and used by Christ for the redemption of the world.” (St. Pope John Paul II)
“Contemplative Nuns, by their vocation, are called to a life of intimate union with God through loving companionship with Him. The ‘call’ to leave everything and ‘follow’ Christ by a life of closer imitation and special intimacy in the cloister, is a privileged gift from God.
“His ‘call’ is a mystery of love by which He chooses, reaches out to, and embraces a soul, because He wishes her to belong to Him alone.” (Vita Consecrata 16)
“In the order of grace, there is a profound affinity between a contemplative who prays and a missionary who preaches.
“As an expression of pure love which is worth more than any work, the contemplative life generates an extraordinary apostolic and missionary effectiveness.” (Vita Consecrata 59)
“The Monastery is like a holy tabernacle in the desert or a solitary dwelling upon the mountain, where the nuns live alone and yet together in the ‘secret of God’s Face”. (Verbi Sponsa 8:5)
Our lives are filled with the thought of God, no matter what our work!
