Salt + Light Television | A Day in a Life: The Carmel of St. Joseph

1. Why is it important to hold on to the way of life St. Teresa founded centuries ago?
2. Why is the Carmel’s cloistered way of life vital for the Church today?
3. Explain the meaning and value of contemplation in the life of the Carmel
4. Explain the meaning and value of the enclosure and the grate
5. What does the grate symbolize?
6. Explain the meaning and value of recreation in the Carmel
7. Explain how everything you do is directed and focused on prayer
8. Explain the importance of silence
9. Explain your Charism. What distinguishes you from other communities?
10. What is the Novitiate?
11. Explain your vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience
12. Explain the importance of praying for the Church and for the World
13. How do you get your information about what to pray for?
14. Why is the day structured the way it is? Is there a reason for the daily schedule?
15. How do you assign roles in the Carmel. For example, how do you decide who cooks or who makes jams?
16. Do you rely on donations from people?

1. Why is it important to hold on to the way of life St. Teresa founded centuries ago?

It is important because only the radical following of the Gospel can cure the ills of mankind. Our way of life was the fruit of St. Teresa’s experience of the love of God. It was her response, her way of following Jesus and encouraging others to do the same. To understand the importance of this way of life it helps us to know who St. Teresa was and what were her motives in establishing this from of contemplative life. St. Teresa was born in Spain in 1515. She entered the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila when she was about 20 years old. The nuns followed the Carmelite way of life but were not enclosed. They had an elaborate liturgy but no regulated time for silent prayer. The house was large with about 200 persons; some were seculars (nieces and sisters of the nuns). There was class distinction and the financial basis was unstable. Much time was spent in the parlous and outside the monastery so that the nuns would have something to eat. St. Teresa came from a wealthy family so she had a suite of rooms whereas girls from poorer families slept in a dormitory.

After years of struggling to lead an interior life St. Teresa realized that Our Lord was asking her for more. Through cooperation with grace she had grown in a deep personal relationship with Jesus. She agonized over the sufferings of the Church and the loss of many souls both in Europe and in far away America because they had never heard of Jesus and Mary. She felt that Our Lord had so few friends, that they should be good ones. She had both vision and determination. She believed that a small community united in praying for the Church and the needs of the world could draw down God’s love and mercy, obtain light for those whose duty it was to teach and preach. The past four centuries have proven the truth of her vision.

St. Teresa established a simple way of life founded above all on faith, hope and charity. She inculcated the need for fraternal love, detachment and above all, humility, as a basis for the life of prayer. All were to be equal, sharing in all the manual tasks of the monastery. All things were shared in common and all the sisters worked to help support the monastery. Enclosure was established to provide the atmosphere needed for a life of prayer.

There are some elements in St. Teresa’s style of life that we cannot follow today, but the basic structure is firm and adaptable to every culture and continent as witnessed by the spread of Carmelite monasteries throughout the world.
[Top]

2. Why is the Carmel’s cloistered way of life vital for the Church today?

Our cloistered life is vital for the Church today. For the Church has a missionary vocation to spread the Good News to everyone. We share in this vocation in a spiritual way, by our life of prayer, by sharing in the liturgy, by our daily self-offering, and thus call down God’s graces on the entire Church. There is an intimate connection between prayer and the spread of the Kingdom of God, between prayer and the conversion of hearts, between prayer and the fruitful acceptance of the Gospel.

St. Teresa of Avila wanted us to be such friends of Jesus that our prayers would be fruitful. In her day the Church was persecuted. Even today the Church is persecuted. Our shepherds, the bishops and priests need prayer as they strive each day to lead us to God. I would say that our life is even more vital today. It is a silent but eloquent witness to God, that He exists and is worth all this.
[Top]

3. Explain the meaning and value of contemplation in the life of the Carmel

St. Teresa of Avila compares contemplation to the living water that Our Lord promises to all those who ask for it. It is a special experience of God that He gives to souls. It is not something we can acquire of ourselves, but we can prepare ourselves to receive it. So by a life of fraternal charity, detachment and humility, these dispositions purify and open the soul to God’s action. We need to spend time with God in prayer, as in any deepening relationship. St. Teresa calls mental prayer a falling in love with God, a spending time alone with Him whom we know loves us. This love for God in the soul is so precious that St. John of the Cross wrote that “Truly a crumb of pure love is more precious in the Lord’s sight and of greater benefit to the Church than all the other works together.”

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the patroness of the Missions, found her vocation in the heart of the Church. She wrote, “Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is you, O my God, who have given it me this place; in the heart of the Church, my mother, I shall be love”. Though she never left her enclosure, St. Therese was proclaimed the Patroness of the Missions!
[Top]

4. Explain the meaning and value of the enclosure and the grate

In the mind of St. Teresa of Avila, enclosure is to be an expression and means of following Christ. She wanted enclosure to help foster and nourish a contemplative life and in order to combat spiritually for the Lord on behalf of His Church. Enclosure helps us to be free of attachments, so that we may more freely live in God’s presence, with liberty of spirit. In the monastery, all is directed to the search for the face of God, everything is reduced to the essential, because the only thing that matters is what leads us to Him. Monastic recollection is attention to the presence of God; if it is dissipated by many things, the journey slows down and the final destination disappears from view.

“I will allure her into the desert and there speak to her heart”. Yahweh says in the O.T.
[Top]

5. What does the grate symbolize?

The grate is an expressive sign of separation from the world and of forgoing the most cherished human things.
[Top]

6. Explain the meaning and value of recreation in the Carmel

We have two hours of recreation each day, one after dinner, and one after supper. In St. Teresa’s mind, recreation is very important. She wanted it as a means to facilitate and increase mutual love among the Sisters, and as a means of relaxation for the Sisters.
[Top]

7. Explain how everything you do is directed and focused on prayer

Our whole life is directed and focused on prayer. We have daily Mass where we surrender ourselves each day to Jesus, and with Him. The prayer of the Divine Office throughout the day helps us to refocus ourselves in God’s presence, the silence and solitude in which we work helps us to keep focused. Our recreation is a necessary means to recoup our energies to continue our life of seeking to live in the Divine Presence. Our work is a wonderful way to keep us close to God, for in quietly working we allow our meditations to seep into our souls.

Perhaps this is the time to mention how useful spiritual reading is to us. We try to do an hour of spiritual reading each day. This reading of the Word of God, and other good books is a wonderful way to come to know God better, and thus to love Him more.

St. Elias said, “God exists in whose presence I stand”. All of our day is so arranged to help us to keep and foster this spirit of recollection.
[Top]

8. Explain the importance of silence

Silence is essential to our life. It helps foster the prayerful and solitary atmosphere that is a hallmark of Carmel. We strive to live in silence throughout the day, except for what is necessary or of charity, and we have Grand Silence from after Compline until after Lauds of the next day.

Silence is, however, a means to an end. It helps create an inner silence, a quieting down of the inner faculties in order to be attentive to reality; first of all, to the presence of God, then to my neighbour, and then myself. We need to listen to God, to be recollected in order to become aware of Him and what He wishes to tell us, even if He wants to say nothing, and only wants us to love Him.

It is so easy to be dispersed, flying after every thought, whim, and desire that are often contradictory. Silence helps us to focus on the one thing necessary, to be in the presence of God where love, life and truth are found. This is why we have the eremitic spirit, like the early Carmelite hermits on Mount Carmel, who sought to find God in solitude and silence.
[Top]

9. Explain your Charism. What distinguishes you from other communities?

The genius of our Holy Mother St.Teresa’s charism was her utterly original plan of forming a way of life in which prayer would be the centre of everything else. No other activity in day to day living must be allowed to obstruct prayer. Every other duty was to be at the service of prayer and every prayer was to be ecclesial. This was a very original and very strong passion in our Holy Mother. Other founders have had original ideas. St. Francis of Assisi was original in his particular stress on poverty, St. Ignatius in his idea of being a captain fighting for the Church and sending his soldiers all over the world.

Another original aspect of St. Teresa’s charism is that each community should remain small, no larger than 21 sisters. We have kept to a ‘hermit’ or what is known as an eremitical life lived in a community. We each have our own rooms,( we call them cells,) where we work by ourselves. We do not have a common workroom.

Our one and only apostolate is prayer, especially for priests. We live this contemplative prayer life in self-denial and cheerful penance in response to God’s great and tender love of us.
[Top]

10. What is the Novitiate?

The novitiate is a time of initial formation. This is the time to lay deep foundations for a contemplative journey that will last a whole lifetime. Its chief purpose is the interiorization by the novice of our spirit in following Christ in the form specific to the contemplative Teresian Carmel.

In our Carmel, it includes:

1 year of postulancy- a time of transition from life in the world to that of a religious. She will be introduced to the Divine Office and the fundamentals of the spiritual life.
2 years as a novice – she begins her religious life by receiving the Holy Habit and receiving her religious name –example: Sister Mary of the Angels.

During this time she will learn about our Holy Rule and Constitutions.

She will be guided by the Mistress of Novices on an individual basis as well as having classes on Sacred Scripture, the history of our Order, the lives of our Carmelite Saints, the Charism of our Order, and most especially the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

In an intense dialogue with God in prayer, throughout her formation, the sister will bring her most profound desire face to face with the charism of Carmel which is being offered to her. This lengthy process of discernment will lead her, like the Virgin Mary, to say her truly free and personal ‘yes’ on the day of her definitive commitment.

At the heart of the Church, and in communion with the Virgin Mary, community life enjoys a privileged role in formation at every stage. It is through the community, and in its midst, far more than beautiful ideas, that the candidate will have the lived experience of the Teresian Charism.
[Top]

11. Explain your vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience

In its most profound sense, the call to religious life is a call to spousal love.

The vows are called ‘evangelical counsels’ because they are a radical response to the Gospel invitation and given to us as a gift from the Trinity, to His chosen ones.

In Chastity, we proclaim that Christ is to be loved by an undivided heart – we surrender our being, body and soul to Jesus our Bridegroom. In Poverty, we claim Christ as our priceless treasure and we surrender all we have to Jesus and possess nothing of our own so that all our riches are in Him.

In Obedience, we proclaim that Christ is our only Lord, and we surrender our will to Jesus, seeking to do always that which pleases His Father, and become a living sacrifice of praise.
[Top]

12. Explain the importance of praying for the Church and for the World

It is extremely important to pray for the Church and for the world, because the value of a soul is infinite. St. Teresa said that Our Lord was more pleased by souls being saved by her prayers than anything else she could do. It is the reason Our Lord came to earth for the redemption and salvation of mankind. We are commanded to love our neighbour, and this must always include prayer for him. St. Teresa wanted our whole life to be ecclesial and apostolic. Our apostolate is a purely contemplative one. It consists in prayer and immolation with the Church and for the Church. In our Constitutions we are asked to pray, in particular, for those who spread the Gospel, for an increase of vocations, for the unity of Christians, and for the evangelization of peoples, so that they may be open to the message of Christ.
[Top]

13. How do you get your information about what to pray for?

In keeping with the need to have an informed awareness of the Church and its needs, of the intentions and teachings of our Holy Father and our Bishops, and other issues, we receive the published teachings available.

We receive many intentions through correspondence and through the telephone.
[Top]

14. Why is the day structured the way it is? Is there a reason for the daily schedule?

Yes, there is a reason for the schedule and for why it is so structured. The Holy Mass is the central part of our day; our Carmelite Rule says, “An oratory should be built ….among the cells where you are to gather each morning to participate in the celebration of Mass.” Then the Divine Office that we pray, the official prayer of the Church, was traditionally arranged for different hours of the day, for example Terce was prayed at the third hour of the Roman day which would be approximately 9:00 a.m. The reason was so that each part of the day would be blessed by prayer. The daily scheduled is so arranged so there will be a healthy balance for the Sisters and as a aid to remain in the spirit of prayer.
[Top]

15. How do you assign roles in the Carmel. For example, how do you decide who cooks or who makes jams?

Usually when it comes to cooking, the Sisters take turns. For the other duties around the Monastery, often they are given to various Sisters who have the necessary talent, strength and time. Our life is like that of a family where we all try to help, but it is the duty of the Prioress to assign the tasks and to instill a spirit of active collaboration, detachment and interior freedom.
[Top]

16. Do you rely on donations from people?

Our reliance is on Divine Providence. Yes, we

do try to do all we can to support ourselves, and by relying on God who cares for those who trust Him, He always sees to it that we receive the necessary alms to continue our life. Ever since the beginning of our foundation our Bishop arranged to found two organizations of committed Catholic men and women to help us, the Committee of the Carmelite Nuns, and the Guild of the Carmel of St. Joseph. I should state here that we pray daily for our benefactors.

[Top]
[Back to A Day in a Life: The Carmel of St. Joseph]

Carmel of St. Joseph: FAQ Interview with Mother Celeste
1. Why is it important to hold on to the way of life St. Teresa founded centuries ago? 2. Why is the Carmel’s cloistered way of life vital for the Church today? 3. Explain the meaning and value of contemplation in the life of the Carmel 4. Explain the meaning and value of the enclosure and the grate 5. What does the grate symbolize? 6. Explain the meaning and value of recreation in the Carmel 7. Explain how everything you do is directed and focused on prayer 8. Explain the importance of silence 9. Explain your Charism. What distinguishes you from other communities? 10. What is the Novitiate? 11. Explain your vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience 12. Explain the importance of praying for the Church and for the World 13. How do you get your information about what to pray for? 14. Why is the day structured the way it is? Is there a reason for the daily schedule? 15. How do you assign roles in the Carmel. For example, how do you decide who cooks or who makes jams? 16. Do you rely on donations from people? 1. Why is it important to hold on to the way of life St. Teresa founded centuries ago? It is important because only the radical following of the Gospel can cure the ills of mankind. Our way of life was the fruit of St. Teresa’s experience of the love of God. It was her response, her way of following Jesus and encouraging others to do the same. To understand the importance of this way of life it helps us to know who St. Teresa was and what were her motives in establishing this from of contemplative life. St. Teresa was born in Spain in 1515. She entered the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila when she was about 20 years old. The nuns followed the Carmelite way of life but were not enclosed. They had an elaborate liturgy but no regulated time for silent prayer. The house was large with about 200 persons; some were seculars (nieces and sisters of the nuns). There was class distinction and the financial basis was unstable. Much time was spent in the parlous and outside the monastery so that the nuns would have something to eat. St. Teresa came from a wealthy family so she had a suite of rooms whereas girls from poorer families slept in a dormitory. After years of struggling to lead an interior life St. Teresa realized that Our Lord was asking her for more. Through cooperation with grace she had grown in a deep personal relationship with Jesus. She agonized over the sufferings of the Church and the loss of many souls both in Europe and in far away America because they had never heard of Jesus and Mary. She felt that Our Lord had so few friends, that they should be good ones. She had both vision and determination. She believed that a small community united in praying for the Church and the needs of the world could draw down God’s love and mercy, obtain light for those whose duty it was to teach and preach. The past four centuries have proven the truth of her vision. St. Teresa established a simple way of life founded above all on faith, hope and charity. She inculcated the need for fraternal love, detachment and above all, humility, as a basis for the life of prayer. All were to be equal, sharing in all the manual tasks of the monastery. All things were shared in common and all the sisters worked to help support the monastery. Enclosure was established to provide the atmosphere needed for a life of prayer. There are some elements in St. Teresa’s style of life that we cannot follow today, but the basic structure is firm and adaptable to every culture and continent as witnessed by the spread of Carmelite monasteries throughout the world. [Top] 2. Why is the Carmel’s cloistered way of life vital for the Church today? Our cloistered life is vital for the Church today. For the Church has a missionary vocation to spread the Good News to everyone. We share in this vocation in a spiritual way, by our life of prayer, by sharing in the liturgy, by our daily self-offering, and thus call down God’s graces on the entire Church. There is an intimate connection between prayer and the spread of the Kingdom of God, between prayer and the conversion of hearts, between prayer and the fruitful acceptance of the Gospel. St. Teresa of Avila wanted us to be such friends of Jesus that our prayers would be fruitful. In her day the Church was persecuted. Even today the Church is persecuted. Our shepherds, the bishops and priests need prayer as they strive each day to lead us to God. I would say that our life is even more vital today. It is a silent but eloquent witness to God, that He exists and is worth all this. [Top] 3. Explain the meaning and value of contemplation in the life of the Carmel St. Teresa of Avila compares contemplation to the living water that Our Lord promises to all those who ask for it. It is a special experience of God that He gives to souls. It is not something we can acquire of ourselves, but we can prepare ourselves to receive it. So by a life of fraternal charity, detachment and humility, these dispositions purify and open the soul to God’s action. We need to spend time with God in prayer, as in any deepening relationship. St. Teresa calls mental prayer a falling in love with God, a spending time alone with Him whom we know loves us. This love for God in the soul is so precious that St. John of the Cross wrote that “Truly a crumb of pure love is more precious in the Lord’s sight and of greater benefit to the Church than all the other works together.” St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the patroness of the Missions, found her vocation in the heart of the Church. She wrote, “Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is you, O my God, who have given it me this place; in the heart of the Church, my mother, I shall be love”. Though she never left her enclosure, St. Therese was proclaimed the Patroness of the Missions! [Top] 4. Explain the meaning and value of the enclosure and the grate In the mind of St. Teresa of Avila, enclosure is to be an expression and means of following Christ. She wanted enclosure to help foster and nourish a contemplative life and in order to combat spiritually for the Lord on behalf of His Church. Enclosure helps us to be free of attachments, so that we may more freely live in God’s presence, with liberty of spirit. In the monastery, all is directed to the search for the face of God, everything is reduced to the essential, because the only thing that matters is what leads us to Him. Monastic recollection is attention to the presence of God; if it is dissipated by many things, the journey slows down and the final destination disappears from view. “I will allure her into the desert and there speak to her heart”. Yahweh says in the O.T. [Top] 5. What does the grate symbolize? The grate is an expressive sign of separation from the world and of forgoing the most cherished human things. [Top] 6. Explain the meaning and value of recreation in the Carmel We have two hours of recreation each day, one after dinner, and one after supper. In St. Teresa’s mind, recreation is very important. She wanted it as a means to facilitate and increase mutual love among the Sisters, and as a means of relaxation for the Sisters. [Top] 7. Explain how everything you do is directed and focused on prayer Our whole life is directed and focused on prayer. We have daily Mass where we surrender ourselves each day to Jesus, and with Him. The prayer of the Divine Office throughout the day helps us to refocus ourselves in God’s presence, the silence and solitude in which we work helps us to keep focused. Our recreation is a necessary means to recoup our energies to continue our life of seeking to live in the Divine Presence. Our work is a wonderful way to keep us close to God, for in quietly working we allow our meditations to seep into our souls. Perhaps this is the time to mention how useful spiritual reading is to us. We try to do an hour of spiritual reading each day. This reading of the Word of God, and other good books is a wonderful way to come to know God better, and thus to love Him more. St. Elias said, “God exists in whose presence I stand”. All of our day is so arranged to help us to keep and foster this spirit of recollection. [Top] 8. Explain the importance of silence Silence is essential to our life. It helps foster the prayerful and solitary atmosphere that is a hallmark of Carmel. We strive to live in silence throughout the day, except for what is necessary or of charity, and we have Grand Silence from after Compline until after Lauds of the next day. Silence is, however, a means to an end. It helps create an inner silence, a quieting down of the inner faculties in order to be attentive to reality; first of all, to the presence of God, then to my neighbour, and then myself. We need to listen to God, to be recollected in order to become aware of Him and what He wishes to tell us, even if He wants to say nothing, and only wants us to love Him. It is so easy to be dispersed, flying after every thought, whim, and desire that are often contradictory. Silence helps us to focus on the one thing necessary, to be in the presence of God where love, life and truth are found. This is why we have the eremitic spirit, like the early Carmelite hermits on Mount Carmel, who sought to find God in solitude and silence. [Top] 9. Explain your Charism. What distinguishes you from other communities? The genius of our Holy Mother St.Teresa’s charism was her utterly original plan of forming a way of life in which prayer would be the centre of everything else. No other activity in day to day living must be allowed to obstruct prayer. Every other duty was to be at the service of prayer and every prayer was to be ecclesial. This was a very original and very strong passion in our Holy Mother. Other founders have had original ideas. St. Francis of Assisi was original in his particular stress on poverty, St. Ignatius in his idea of being a captain fighting for the Church and sending his soldiers all over the world. Another original aspect of St. Teresa’s charism is that each community should remain small, no larger than 21 sisters. We have kept to a ‘hermit’ or what is known as an eremitical life lived in a community. We each have our own rooms,( we call them cells,) where we work by ourselves. We do not have a common workroom. Our one and only apostolate is prayer, especially for priests. We live this contemplative prayer life in self-denial and cheerful penance in response to God’s great and tender love of us. [Top] 10. What is the Novitiate? The novitiate is a time of initial formation. This is the time to lay deep foundations for a contemplative journey that will last a whole lifetime. Its chief purpose is the interiorization by the novice of our spirit in following Christ in the form specific to the contemplative Teresian Carmel. In our Carmel, it includes: 1 year of postulancy- a time of transition from life in the world to that of a religious. She will be introduced to the Divine Office and the fundamentals of the spiritual life. 2 years as a novice – she begins her religious life by receiving the Holy Habit and receiving her religious name –example: Sister Mary of the Angels. During this time she will learn about our Holy Rule and Constitutions. She will be guided by the Mistress of Novices on an individual basis as well as having classes on Sacred Scripture, the history of our Order, the lives of our Carmelite Saints, the Charism of our Order, and most especially the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. In an intense dialogue with God in prayer, throughout her formation, the sister will bring her most profound desire face to face with the charism of Carmel which is being offered to her. This lengthy process of discernment will lead her, like the Virgin Mary, to say her truly free and personal ‘yes’ on the day of her definitive commitment. At the heart of the Church, and in communion with the Virgin Mary, community life enjoys a privileged role in formation at every stage. It is through the community, and in its midst, far more than beautiful ideas, that the candidate will have the lived experience of the Teresian Charism. [Top] 11. Explain your vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience In its most profound sense, the call to religious life is a call to spousal love. The vows are called ‘evangelical counsels’ because they are a radical response to the Gospel invitation and given to us as a gift from the Trinity, to His chosen ones. In Chastity, we proclaim that Christ is to be loved by an undivided heart – we surrender our being, body and soul to Jesus our Bridegroom. In Poverty, we claim Christ as our priceless treasure and we surrender all we have to Jesus and possess nothing of our own so that all our riches are in Him. In Obedience, we proclaim that Christ is our only Lord, and we surrender our will to Jesus, seeking to do always that which pleases His Father, and become a living sacrifice of praise. [Top] 12. Explain the importance of praying for the Church and for the World It is extremely important to pray for the Church and for the world, because the value of a soul is infinite. St. Teresa said that Our Lord was more pleased by souls being saved by her prayers than anything else she could do. It is the reason Our Lord came to earth for the redemption and salvation of mankind. We are commanded to love our neighbour, and this must always include prayer for him. St. Teresa wanted our whole life to be ecclesial and apostolic. Our apostolate is a purely contemplative one. It consists in prayer and immolation with the Church and for the Church. In our Constitutions we are asked to pray, in particular, for those who spread the Gospel, for an increase of vocations, for the unity of Christians, and for the evangelization of peoples, so that they may be open to the message of Christ. [Top] 13. How do you get your information about what to pray for? In keeping with the need to have an informed awareness of the Church and its needs, of the intentions and teachings of our Holy Father and our Bishops, and other issues, we receive the published teachings available. We receive many intentions through correspondence and through the telephone. [Top] 14. Why is the day structured the way it is? Is there a reason for the daily schedule? Yes, there is a reason for the schedule and for why it is so structured. The Holy Mass is the central part of our day; our Carmelite Rule says, “An oratory should be built ….among the cells where you are to gather each morning to participate in the celebration of Mass.” Then the Divine Office that we pray, the official prayer of the Church, was traditionally arranged for different hours of the day, for example Terce was prayed at the third hour of the Roman day which would be approximately 9:00 a.m. The reason was so that each part of the day would be blessed by prayer. The daily scheduled is so arranged so there will be a healthy balance for the Sisters and as a aid to remain in the spirit of prayer. [Top] 15. How do you assign roles in the Carmel. For example, how do you decide who cooks or who makes jams? Usually when it comes to cooking, the Sisters take turns. For the other duties around the Monastery, often they are given to various Sisters who have the necessary talent, strength and time. Our life is like that of a family where we all try to help, but it is the duty of the Prioress to assign the tasks and to instill a spirit of active collaboration, detachment and interior freedom. [Top] 16. Do you rely on donations from people? Our reliance is on Divine Providence. Yes, we do try to do all we can to support ourselves, and by relying on God who cares for those who trust Him, He always sees to it that we receive the necessary alms to continue our life. Ever since the beginning of our foundation our Bishop arranged to found two organizations of committed Catholic men and women to help us, the Committee of the Carmelite Nuns, and the Guild of the Carmel of St. Joseph. I should state here that we pray daily for our benefactors. [Top] [Back to A Day in a Life: The Carmel of St. Joseph]