The Mexican friar, Father Gerardo Lopez Bonilla (born in Puebla on May 18, 1929) is a talented artist whose paintings are “powerful doorways to the metaphysical” and radiate deep “interior light.” Before finishing a year of theological studies in D.C. in 1960 with ordination to the diaconate, he gifted houses of the Province with several paintings. Now two of them still grace the main corridor of our monastery.

A localized way to celebrate St. Teresa Benedicta/Edith Stein’s feast on this Province Blog during the 80th anniversary year of her passing into eternal life would be to express thanks for the person who translated the story of Edith’s early years for us into English, Life in a Jewish Family: Sister Josephine Koeppel.

Today Carmelites welcome a new saint as Pope Francis canonizes Blessed Titus Brandsma at Saint Peter's in Rome.

With the Order planning to celebrate the Fourth Centenary of our holy mother Saint Teresa's canonization, it is worth pointing out that our monastery in Washington, DC has an iconic reference to that event gracing the walls of one of its parlors. This image shows an artistic tribute to that significant day in Church history:

Blessed Solemnity of St. John of the Cross! The following homily was given in Westminster Cathedral (London) to commemorate the 4th centenary of the death of St. John of the Cross. Although it was delivered 30 years ago, its message about the consoling love of God is perhaps one that we need to hear even more so today.

In the first half of this episode, we discuss what it means to be a part of the Discalced Carmelite family. Then, we have an interview with Fr. Kevin of the Blessed Trinity who has been a friar for over 65 years.

For Edith Stein the happy ending to a lengthy conversion process came with her baptism on the first day of 1922. This was preceded by her completed reading of the Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Jesus a few months previous in the summer of 1921, one hundred years ago.

Carmelites know how 16 nuns of the Compiègne Carmel during the French Revolution sang hymns on their way to their deaths on the guillotine. The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrude von le Fort was a novella that caused interest in their martyrdom at a time when Edith Stein was still alive.

The sabbatical I was granted after service as Provincial that lasted from August 2014 to November 2015 gave me the opportunity to extend my knowledge of Saint Teresa Benedicta (Edith) Stein and to speak about her to several audiences in Europe. The following fruit of those months spent at the Carmelite monastery in Kensington, England is now one way to show my appreciation and to open out on to a fascinating description created for the Vatican.

During this year commemorating the declaration in 1870 of Saint Joseph Patron of the Universal Church many people are revisiting sources of their devotion to the foster father of Jesus. We hear praise for Our Holy Mother Saint Teresa of Jesus for having stirred up practical devotion for Saint Joseph in the “modern” age, that is, in the period of church history that ran between the Middle Ages and our current era.

This year has seen some timid attempts at commemorating the 75th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II. With all the blockage derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, though, worthwhile attention to some events will be missed. This could be the case for Père Jacques of Jesus, the friar of the Paris Province who died, perhaps more tragically than others, not actually during the war, but a few brief weeks after its end when U.S. troops liberated him from German Nazi imprisonment in Austria.

Saint Thérèse enriched her teaching on the “Little Way” with several interesting images. She once spoke of herself as a small grain of sand but not “discouraged because God cannot inspire unrealizable desires”; and she more or less identified herself as a little chick protected by the mother hen that represented God in the protection of Divine Providence over her. There is another diminutive image she proposed that looks equally useful to the general public. She once advised her sister Céline “Before dying by the sword let us die by pin-pricks”

In this 50th anniversary year of her arrival among the proclaimed Doctors of the Church, and the first woman among them, we can only show appreciation for Saint Paul VI’s gesture and also the kindliness which led Bishop Shanley to leave to the house of our province devoted to studies such a beautiful image of Teresa of Jesus.

At the Carmel of Cologne Germany, home to the community Edith Stein joined in 1933, there is now a modern archive housing texts, studies, and memorabilia related to Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Once, Mother Amata showed me a manuscript containing a poetic meditation “From a Pentecost Novena.” Some sketches by the Saint placed at the end of the stanza for each day of her novena are worth reproducing here along with the fourth stanza of the poem that I found most gripping--both the thought/emotion of the stanza and the sketches demonstrate how sensitive a person Saint Edith was.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross’s writings display rich and numerous references to the saving instrument of our salvation, the Cross of Christ. Iconography for her helps impress the beneficial image and effect the Cross has on the lives of those who believe in Jesus.

Christmastide was a significant time of year for our Carmelite—Philosopher saint since she was baptized a Catholic on January 1, 1922, octave day of Christmas.

OUR Lady, was the one welcomed from our beginnings onward as the protector of those who harken back to the Wadi on Carmel. She is all we could wish to have as patron and promotor of our ongoing life as an Order.

Speak of strange and unexpected fulfillment of prophetic pronouncements. Edith Stein wrote that "what did not lie in [her] plan lay in God's plan." Years later as a contemplative nun living in a cloister in Cologne Germany she helped her Jewish sister Rosa prepare to follow her into the Catholic Church by receiving the sacrament of Baptism just as Edith did back on the first day of the year 1922.