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  Therese: our shining light
  Therese: an inspiration for our mission
  Therese teaches us to be contemplatives in action
  Therese teaches us to nurture the silence
  Therese teaches us to live in joy and simplicity
 Therese shows us the way of holiness
  Therese teaches us to live the commandment of love

 read the autobiography of st. Therese of the Chied Jesus and some excerpts from her other writings   (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1912; 8th ed., 1922)

  Chapel s. Teresa di Gesù bambino, Mother House of the Congregation, Santa Marinella  (Rome - Italy)

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face
in the spirituality of the Carmelite missionary
Another shining light in our journey of holiness is St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Pius XI said of her: “She is a gospel for mankind today, above all for her ‘way of spiritual infancy’ made up of love, humility and prayer”. Our founders, guided by the Spirit, have always put forward this young saint as a model of consecrated life and spirituality.
For us, Therese is she who was clearly aware of her own shortcomings and weaknesses, her inability to complete even a single step towards the fulfilment of God’s plan for her. As a result she placed herself entirely in the hands of the Father. She experienced His mercy and was therefore able to trust in Him without limits.
The young saint of Lisieux found her vocation in love, a strong and mature love, and made this vocation her mission: she had such love for God that she was above all else and those beside her, like those who can be found in every part of the world, as they are loved by God “rich in mercy”.
Our founders presented Therese to us as a teacher of life and model of charity, as the “apostle of the apostles”; they wanted our way to be the “little way”, which is born of the experience of a God who loves us with eternal love and wishes only for our happiness, who is “more gentle than a mother”. It is the way of those who no longer presume to deserve or to be capable of anything; of those who renounce even their own holiness, their own sacrifices to give satisfaction to themselves. Happy even to fall, in order to “experience even more the unlimited mercy of God”. It is a way which challenges every day the “complicated system” of our path towards God, as indeed - in the words of Little Therese - it is God who comes to us and calls us always.
This is a “way” of love and not fear, characterised by the abandonment and love of a child to its Father. It is the certainty of one who “even if she had committed every crime in this world”, could still go, penitent, into the loving arms of her Father.
The gospel that we bring to all, taught by her experience and her words, is that God “is mother and father” to his creatures, and has our name written on the palm of his hand and draws us to him.    (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today . Ratio Institutionis n. 28)

Saint Therese's lifestyle
in the daily path of the Carmelite missionary
There is another fundamental aspect of our charism. It derives from the spirituality of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and can be described as “infusing the world with the cement of Love”, of that divine and tender love which “descends” among men to draw them to Him and impel them towards Heaven, transforming them from within and healing their wounds with the salve of forgiveness.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus experienced this mercy in a direct and profound manner: “To me He has granted His infinite Mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love, even His Justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love. What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature”. She subsequently experienced it also with the sisters in her community: “I understand that perfect charity consists in bearing with others' faults, in not being surprised at their weakness, in being edified by the little acts of virtue that we see them practice; but above all I have understood that charity should not remain locked in the bottom of the heart”.
Mother Crocifissa exhorted: “Let us aspire to reach the degree of love which transforms us in God, let us seek to be worthy of the sublime vocation of achieving the science of the saints, or better, the wisdom of true lovers!”. Father Lorenzo echoes her: “Be sisters of infinite charity, of love towards God and your neighbours”.
This is the most profound reality of our identity: we are contemplative, we allow the Trinity to fill us with Love and we strive to reveal mercy with every gesture and every word. This is the response we are called to give to the questions of our society; it is a message which is always relevant, it is the heart of the Gospel and the charism of the Saint of Lisieux and should also be the heart of the “civilization of love” which we are called to build together with the men and women of our time.  (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis n. 19)

Called to follow the “little way”
In our daily engagement with the Word of God, in “constantly standing in the Presence of the Living God”, as well as in our personal and community prayers, we learn to find God in the “little things” of our everyday life, to recognise Him and welcome Him in events and people, to do and experience for him, with him and in him everything which he gives us to do and experience in our day-to-day.
Mother M. Crocifissa herself says this: “The tasks of the posts entrusted to us by obedience must not distract us from the spirit of Carmel, which is the spirit of prayer, of intimate union with the Eucharistic Heart... We must live in such intimacy with the Eucharistic Victim as to form the habit of delightful union with God... Let us aspire to this degree of love as this is the spirit of our holy Institution, this is the holiness of the saints of our Order and of the great Teresa and the little Therese”.
This contemplative lifestyle must permeate and characterise our every action and thought, our entire apostolate and the fraternal life of our community, as, in our charism, “prayer cannot be genuine unless it leads to apostolic action filled with the love of God and men; at the same time, no form of action is conceivable in it, much less apostolic action, which is motivated by mere philanthropy and which does not lead to God both the beneficiaries and the agents of such activity”.
Mother M. Crocifissa stresses and exhorts her daughters: “You may pray always, always: prayer is love, and if you love, you pray. Offer up your deeds, mortify your will, your nature...”.   (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis  n. 20)

The tradition of all of Carmel and of our religious family has always valued silence. Indeed, as we well know, “ ’The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, and he speaks it in an eternal silence; and in silence it must be heard by the soul’. To learn God's language and to begin to speak a few tentative words in response, we must allow ourselves, in every aspect of our lives (spiritual, psychological and physical), to adjust to the silent sound of God's voice and to God's light”. It is for us not just a particularly suitable means of creating an inner and outer environment conducive to an encounter with God, but is also intended to favour serenity of the inner person, sobriety in the use of things and in the management of relationships with our sisters.
An expert in life with God and her brethren, Mother M. Crocifissa writes: “I have read the few lines which speak of the entry of our little Saint into Carmel: her strength was in silence. ...Silence is the source of the Carmelite spirit, which is union with God”. Well aware of the wisdom of these exhortations, we know that both in our daily life, and in moments of retreat and spiritual exercises, “the quest for intimacy with God comprises a truly essential requirement for silence of the entire being”.   (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis n. 21)

From the beginnings of our Family, even in the darkest moments of our history, joy has characterised the lifestyle of our community, becoming an important aspect of the “special character of our charism”. Mother M. Crocifissa and Father Lorenzo frequently exhorted us to keep joy alive and to manifest it in the serene flow of our days, reminding us that every Christian, rooted in Christ by Baptism and committed to living with Him, “taking up their cross daily”, possesses in himself the source of that “joy which no one can take away”, as it is founded upon the rock of faith in Jesus who died and rose again, and on the certainty of the love of the Father. The grateful knowledge that we are, like Mary, “servants of the Lord” consolidates our joy in “belonging to Him always” and, transfiguring every day of our lives, makes us fruitful in love.
We have chosen “what is better” and this is enough for us: the person of Christ polarizes and attracts all of our energy and attention. Thus, in our way of living together as sisters, as in our relationship with the world beyond our community, in the way in which we dress and keep our houses and exercise our apostolate, we follow a lifestyle of simplicity, modesty and delicate frankness which bears witness to our total devotion to the values of consecrated life in Carmel.   (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis n. 22)

Our lifestyle of meditation and joyous simplicity is the result of treading daily the “little way” of holiness discovered by St. Therese of Lisieux which we are constantly exhorted to follow by Mother M. Crocifissa: “As we cannot imitate the Saints, the great and beautiful souls, in their great works, let us imitate the little and great Saint, the model of holiness given to us by Providence; let us imitate her in the constant self-denial which she practised so industriously even in trifling matters, which makes us great in the eyes of God”.
This is how St. Therese of the Child Jesus describes her “little way”: “I understand so well that it is only love which makes us acceptable to God that this love is the only good I desire. Jesus deigned to show me the road that leads to this divine furnace. This road is the abandonment of the little child who sleeps without fear in its father’s arms. ‘Whosoever is a little one, let them come to me’ - so speaks the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Solomon”.
It is no coincidence that our Foundress never tired of exhorting her daughters and “requesting their devotion in the practice of life, applying a genuine lesson in holiness, accessible to all: the holiness of little things, in which Therese of Lisieux is a precious ‘spiritual guide’ and ‘true example of sublime holiness’ ”.
While not absolving us of our responsibilities, this encourages us to experience in serene detachment our commitment to achieve what we plan in our community life and our apostolate, to remain serene in the face of difficulties, including spiritual or moral ones, and to not assign excessive value to material goods, to trust in Providence for our every need while applying ourselves in our work and in the careful management of what we do possess.   (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis n. 23)

In our daily life and work together we become familiar with our merits and faults, and those of the sisters beside us, putting into practice at every moment the commandment to “love in the greatest possible manner, laying down one’s life for one’s brethren” and the beatitudes of the merciful. Our teachers in this are St. Therese and Mother M. Crocifissa: “Love one another, comfort one another like true sisters. Such charity is the antechamber to Heaven. This is the happiness of religious life. Love one another, love one another always”.
We are called to become “experts in communion” by sharing life and spiritual and material wealth, by openness and attention to our sisters, by participating in community life.
All of this is reflected in the way in which we interact with others, including outside the community, exercising our apostolate in a spirit of sharing and “placing ourselves alongside”, never above, those with whom we work and to whom we offer our service.   (Called to make Carmel bloom once again today. Ratio Institutionis n. 24)

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