Angelus was born in Florence or near there; the year is unknown but it was before 1386. He was the first member of the reformed observance of Our Lady of the Wood, was many times prior of various houses and noted for his work in preaching the Word of God. He died in Florence in 1438.
Bartholomew Fanti was born in Mantua: the year is unknown, but in 1452 he was already a Carmelite priest of the Congregation of Mantua. For thirty-five years at the Order's church in Mantua he was spiritual father and rector of the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which he composed a rule and statutes. He is especially remembered for his love of the Eucharist. He died in 1495.
Frances was born in 1427, probably in Thouars in France. She was the wife of Peter II, Duke of Britanny. After his death, and under the direction of Blessed John Soreth, the prior general, she took the habit of the Carmelite Order in the monastery she had previously founded in Bondon. Afterwards she transferred to another foundation in Nantes, also erected by her, where she held the office of prioress and nourished the sisters with wise teaching. She is considered the foundress of the Carmelite nuns in France. She died in 1485.
Hilary Januszewski was born on 11 June 1907 in Krajenki (Poland). In 1927 he entered the Order of Carmel and was ordained on 15 July 1934. In 1939, Poland was occupied by the Germans and one year later, Fr. Hilary decided to present himself in exchange for an older and sick friar. He was sent to Dachau, where he was a model of prayer life, encouraging others and giving hope for a better tomorrow. He died from typhus on 25 March 1945, a few days before the liberation of the concentration camp. Fr. Hilary Januszewski was beatified by John Paul II on 13 June 1999.
Bl. Jacques Retouret was born at Limoges in France on 15th September 1746 to a merchant family. He was a serious young man, a lover of books and greatly gifted. At fifteen years of age, he entered the Carmelite house in his native city. After ordination, his zeal and learning were widely admired and large crowds of people were attracted by his way of preaching.
The French Revolution did not spare him. Like the majority of his fellow clergy, Jacques refused to accept the civil law, unilaterally introduced by the state. He was arrested and condemned, together with many other priests and religious, and sentenced to exile in French Guinea in South America. Jacques died at Madame Isle on 26th August 1794 at the age of 48 years. He was beatified, together with 63 other priests and religious, as martyrs for the faith, on 1st October 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
Mother Euphrasia was born on October 17, 1877. Her pious mother taught her to pray the rosary and to participate in the Holy Mass. She had a vision of Mother Mary at the age of nine and she offered her virginity to God eternally. Her father was opposed to her entering the Convent but eventually gave her permission to go to the Carmelite Convent in 1888. For the rest of her life she was immersed in prayer, in contemplation or praying the Rosary. People began to call her “The Praying Mother.” She was most devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and had a great longing to be with the Eucharistic Lord and participate in the Holy Mass and adore the Blessed Sacrament. She was canonized by Pope Francis on November 23, 2014 in Vatican City.
Saint Kuriakos Elias Chavara, co-founder and first prior general of the congregation of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, was born at Kainakary in Kersala, India, February 10, 1805. He entered the seminary in 1818, and was ordained priest in 1829. He made his religious profession in 1855, in the congregation he founded. Throughout his life he worked for the renovation of the church in Malabar. Above all, he was a man of prayer, zealous for the Eucharistic Lord and devoted to the Immaculate Virgin Mary. He died at Koonammavu in 1871. Kuriakose Kathanar was beatified on February 8, 1986 and canonized on November 23, 2014.
Born about 1305 in southern Perigord in France, Peter Thomas entered the Carmelites when he was twenty-one. He was chosen by the Order as its procurator general to the Papal Court at Avignon in 1345. After being made bishop of Patti and Lipari in 1354, he was entrusted with many papal missions to promote peace and unity with the Eastern Churches. He was transferred to the see of Corone in the Peloponnesus in 1359 and made Papal Legate for the East. In 1363 he was appointed Archbishop of Crete and 1364 Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. He won a reputation as an apostle of church unity before he died at Famagosta on Cyprus in 1366.
Raphael Kalinowski was born to Polish parents in the city of Vilnius in 1835. Following military service, he was condemned in 1864 to ten years of forced labor in Siberia. In 1877 he became a Carmelite and was ordained a priest in 1882. He contributed greatly to the restoration of the Discalced Carmelites in Poland. His life was distinguished by zeal for Church unity and by his unflagging devotion to his ministry as confessor and spiritual director. He died in Wadowice in 1907.
From: Pope Francis
To: Monsignor Jesús García Burillo, Bishop of Avila
Dear Brother:
On March 28, 1515, a girl was born in Avila who in time would be known as Saint Teresa of Jesus. As the fifth centenary of her birth approaches, I turn my gaze to that city to thank God for the gift of this great woman and to encourage the faithful of the beloved Diocese of Avila and all Spaniards to know the history of this famous founder, as well as to read her books that, together with her daughters in the numerous Carmelite convents spread throughout the world, continue to tell us who and how Mother Teresa was and what she can teach us, the men and women of today.
In the school of this roving Saint we learn to be pilgrims. The image of The Way can synthesize very well the lesson of her life and of her work. She understood her life as a journey of perfection by which God leads man, dwelling after dwelling, to Him and, at the same time, starts on the path to men. On what paths does the Lord want to lead us, in the footprints and by the hand of Saint Teresa? I would like to mention four, which have done me much good: the path of joy, of prayer, of fraternity and of time itself.
Teresa of Jesus invites her nuns to “go, serving joyfully” (Way, 18, 5). True holiness is joy, because “a sad Saint is a sorry Saint.” Rather than being forced Saints, the Saints are the fruit of God’s grace to men. Each Saint manifests to us a feature of the multi-form face of God. In Saint Teresa we contemplate the God who, being “sovereign Majesty, eternal Wisdom” (Poem 2), reveals Himself to be close and a companion, who delights in conversing with men: God rejoices with us. And, born in the Saint on feeling His love was an infectious joy, which she could not dissimulate and which she transmitted to her surroundings.
This joy is a path that must be followed throughout life. It is not instantaneous, superficial, riotous. It must be procured already “at the beginning” (Life, 13, 1). It expresses the inner joy of the soul, it is humble and “modest” (cf. Foundations, 12, 1). It is not obtained by an easy path that avoids renunciation, suffering or the cross, but is found in enduring works and sorrows (cf. Life, 6, 2; 30, 8), looking at the Crucified and seeking the Risen One (cf. Way, 26, 4). So Saint Teresa’s joy was not egoistic or self-referential, but as that of Heaven. It consists in “rejoicing that all are joyful” (Way, 30, 5), putting oneself at the service of others with selfless love. As she said to one of her convents in difficulties, so the Saint also says to us today, especially to young people: “Do not cease to be joyful!” (Letter 284, 4). The Gospel is not a lead bag that is dragged with effort, but a source of joy that fills the heart with God and impels it to serve brothers!
The Saint also followed the path of prayer, which she described beautifully as a “friendship being often alone with the One we know loves us” (Life, 8, 5). When the times are “tough,” “strong friends of God” are necessary to support the weak (Life, 15, 5). To pray is not a way of fleeing, or putting oneself in a bubble, or isolating oneself, but of advancing in a friendship that grows all the more the more one addresses the Lord, “true friend” and faithful travel “companion,” with whom one can “suffer everything,” as He always “helps, gives strength and never fails” (Life, 22, 6). To pray “is not to think much but to love much” (Dwellings, IV, 1, 7); in turning one’s eyes to look at the one who does not cease to look at us lovingly and to suffer us patiently (cf. Way, 26, 3-4). God can lead souls to Himself on many paths, but prayer is the “sure path” (Life, 21, 5). To leave off prayer is to get lost (cf. Life, 19, 6). This advice of the Saint is of perennial timeliness. Go forward, then, on the path of prayer, with determination, without pausing, to the end! This is singularly true for all members of consecrated life. In a culture of the provisional, live the fidelity of “for ever, ever, ever” (Life, 1, 5); in a world without hope, show the fecundity of an “enamored heart” (Poem 5); and in a society with so many idols, be witnesses that “God alone suffices” (Poem 9).
We cannot go on this path alone, but together. For the reforming Saint, the path of prayer passes by the way of fraternity in the heart of Mother Church. This was her providential answer, born of divine inspiration and of her feminine intuition, to the problems of the Church and of the society of her time: to found small communities of women that, in imitation of the “Apostolic College,” would follow Christ, living the Gospel simply and supporting the whole Church with a life made up of prayer. “”He brought you here for this, Sisters” (Way, 2, 5) and this was the promise: “that Christ would go with us” (Life, 32, 11). What a lovely description of fraternity in the Church: to go together with Christ as brothers! To do this, Teresa does not recommend many things, but simply three: to love one another very much, to strip oneself of everything and to have true humility that “although I say it at the end is the principal base and embraces all the others” (Way, 4, 4). How she would desire, in these times, more fraternal communities where this path is followed: to walk in the truth of the humility that frees us from ourselves, to love others more and better, especially the poorest! There is nothing lovelier than to live and die as children of this Mother Church!
Precisely because she is a Mother with open doors, the Church is always walking toward men to take to them that “living water” (cf. John 4:10) that waters the garden of their thirsting heart. The holy writer and teacher of prayer was at the same time a founder and missionary on the roads of Spain. Her mystical experience did not separate her from the world or from people’s preoccupations. On the contrary, it gave her new impulse and courage for action and the duties of each day, because “the Lord is” also “among the cooking-pots” (Foundations, 5, 8). She lived the difficulties of her time, which were so complicated, without yielding to the temptation of bitter lament, but instead accepting them in faith as an opportunity to take another step on the path. Because, “it is always the time for God to do great favors to one who truly serves Him” (Foundations, 4, 6).
Teresa says to us today: Pray more to understand well what is happening around you and so to act better. Prayer conquers pessimism and generates good initiatives (cf. Dwellings VII, 4, 6). This is Teresian realism, which calls for works instead of emotions, and love instead of dreams, the realism of humble love in face of a laborious asceticism! Sometimes the Saint abbreviates her charming letters saying: “We are on the way” (Letter 469, 7.9), as an expression of the urgency to continue to the end with the task begun. When the world is burning, one cannot lose time in matters of little importance. May she infect all with this holy haste to go on the paths of our own time, with the Gospel in hand and the Spirit in our hearts!
“It is time to walk!” (Ana of Saint Bartholomew, Last Actions of Saint Teresa’s Life). These words of Saint Teresa of Avila, on the point of dying, are the synthesis of her life and become for us, especially for the Carmelite family, her Avila fellow countrymen and all Spaniards, a precious legacy to keep and enrich.
Dear Brother, with my cordial greeting, I say to all: It is time to walk, going on the paths of joy, of prayer, of fraternity, of time lived as a grace! Let us go on the paths of life by the hand of Saint Teresa. Her footprints lead us always to Jesus.
I ask you, please, to pray for me, as I need it. May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin take care of you.
Fraternally,
FRANCIS
