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Pope Francis’ address to superiors and delegates of the Discalced Carmelites Nuns
Consistory Hall – Thursday, 18 April 2024
I am happy to meet with you as you gather for reflection and work on the revision of your Constitutions, the previous ones of the 1990s, which you have been working on among yourselves.
This is an undertaking, not only because it responds to a natural human need, the contingencies of community life, but also because it is a “season of the Spirit”, an opportunity to devote yourselves to prayer and discernment.
Remaining inwardly open to the action of the Holy Spirit, you are challenged to discover new language, new ways and new means to give greater impetus to the contemplative life to which the Lord has called you, so that the charism of Carmel – the charism which is always the same – may be preserved, understood and attracted to many hearts, for the glory of God and the good of the Church. When a Carmel works well, it attracts, it attracts, doesn’t it?
It is like light with flies, it attracts, it attracts.
The revision of the Constitutions is precisely this: to remember the past– we must not deny this – in order to look to the future.
In fact, you make me think of how the contemplative vocation is not about tending embers, but rather about fanning into flame a fire that can continue to burn and give warmth to the Church and to the world.
The memory of your history and the elements of the Constitutions that have matured over the years iare thus a source of richness that must remain open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, to the ever newness of the Gospel and to the signs that the Lord shows us through the experiences of life and human challenges, and in this way a charism is preserved.
It does not change, it listens and it is open to what the Lord wants at each moment.
This is true in general for all institutes of consecrated life, but you, as cloistered women, experience it in a particular way, because your live embodies the tension between separation from the world and immersion in it.
Far from seeking refuge in interior spiritual consolations or in a prayer divorced from reality, yours is a journey in which you allow yourselves to be touched by the love of Christ and by union with him, so that his love may permeate your entire existence and find expression in all that you say and do.
The path of contemplation is by nature a path of love.
It serves as a ladder that leads us up to God, not to separate us from the world but to ground us more deeply in the world, as witnesses of the love we have received.
This is the lesson that your holy Mother teaches you with her wisdom and fervent faith.
She was convinced that the mystical and interior union by which God binds the soul to Himself, “sealing” it with his love, permeates and transforms our whole life, without ever withdrawing us from our daily responsibilities or suggesting a flight into spiritual things alone.
She made clear that time spent in silence and prayer is necessary, but must be seen as a source of apostolate and of all the daily duties to which the Lord calls us in service to the Church.
As she says: “Martha and Mary must entertain our Lord and keep him as their guest, nor must they be so inhospitable as to offer him no food.
How can Mary do this while she sits at his feet, if her sister does not help her?
His food is that we should draw souls to him in every possible way so that they may be saved and may praise him forever” (SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, The Interior Castle VII, IV, 17-18).
That is the quotation that you know better than I do.
In this way, the contemplative life will not risk degenerating into a spiritual inertia that withdraws from the tasks of daily life – a priest who did not know this type of mysticism called them “the drowsy nuns”, who live in sleep – and it will continue to provide the interior light necessary for discernment.
And what is the light that you need to revise your Constitutions and face the many concrete problems of monasteries and of community life?
This light is none other than the hope of the Gospel, yet always rooted in your founding fathers and your Mother foundress and in St. John.
Evangelical hope is different from illusions based on human calculations.
It means entrusting ourselves to God, learning to read the signs he gives us to discern the future, having yjr courage to make certain courageous and risky choices, even without knowing where they ultimately lead.
Above all, it means not thinking only in human and defensive terms when considering whether to keep or close a monastery, on structures of community life, on vocations.
Defensive strategies are often the fruit of a nostalgic longing for the past – that does not work, nostalgia does not work – whereas evangelical hope gives us joy in contemplating our history up to the present, but also empowers us to look ahead to the future with those roots that we have received.
This is called preserving the charism, the dream of going forward, and that really works.
Look ahead. That is my wish for you.
Look to the future with evangelical hope, with unshod feet, that is, with the freedom born of abandonment to God.
Look to the future with your roots in the past.
May your total immersion in the presence of the Lord always fill you with the joy of sisterhood and mutual love.
May the Mother of God accompany you on this path.
With all my heart, I bless you, your reflections in these days, and your communities.
I bless the nuns in the monasteries. I also ask you to continue to pray for me; for me, not against me.
