Prayer

By the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, where the Glory of the Father is manifested to us, we receive the testimony that God is superabundance of love.

God, wanting "to raise men to a participation of the divine life," places in us the desire to see Him face to face, in order that, in this vision, our soul may be consumed by the One who is like a devouring fire and may aspire ever more to be united with the bridegroom: "I have found the One whom my heart loves, I held Him and will not let Him go."

In this way mental prayer, pure dialogue of love, will take an essential place in our life, for it is the royal road which leads us to the knowledge of the One who is all Love: "Whoever does not love has not known God, for God is love."

Furthermore, remembering this word of the Lord, "If anyone is thirsty let him come to Me and drink," we want to make our way towards the spring of living water, the source of all grace, that alone can satisfy our thirst. With Saint Teresa of Avila we know that "the soul that drinks of this water will no longer thirst for the things of this life." We will therefore beseech our Lord to cover us, in his infinite goodness, with torrents of this water, "for this is an entirely supernatural favour which does not depend upon our will."

We will also be concerned to link, without fail, the practice of virtues to the exercise of mental prayer. We will thus more especially seek detachment, humility and love of the neighbour: "Anyone who does not love his brother whom he sees cannot love God, whom he does not see." The members of the Community will therefore commit themselves to spending at least one hour a day in mental prayer in simplicity and humility of heart and will exercise their will in fighting all temptations which would undermine this determination. They will learn, according to the spirituality of Carmel, to grow through the sustained exercise of vocal prayer such as the Pater Noster, the Rosary . . . This step should be rapidly overtaken to accede to mental prayer. This will "consist in considering or reflecting upon a subject chosen in advance in order to create within oneself a fruitful conviction or resolution. It is a "kind of discourse by means of images, forms and figures produced by the senses: such as imagining Christ crucified or bound to the pillar."

This will be superseded by a Prayer of Recollection in which the soul brings together its faculties in an effort of the will and "enters within itself with God." Knowing that the contemplation to which we aspire is purely a gift from God, we shall endeavour to "leave behind those palpable means" in order to enter into an exchange of pure love.

Thus we shall pass from active Recollection, acquired by our own efforts, helped by grace, to a passivity of the soul which is a pure surrender to the loving initiatives of God, "contemplating being nothing other than an infusion of God, secret, peaceful and loving, which, if we allow it, inflames the soul in the Spirit of Love."

The Lord will thus be able to lead us into Prayer of Quiet in which the will is suavely captive. A this point, our soul wishes nothing other than to remain with its God and says with the apostle Peter: "Lord let us put up three tents here."

Strengthened by the promises of Christ, "If anyone loves me he will keep my commandments, my Father will love him, we will come to him and we will make our home in him," we shall aspire to this state of union which mystical marriage is "Thus to the perfect fidelity of love God will respond with a perfect love which will make Him take definitive and complete possession of the soul which will thus become His true resting place."

But we shall also become aware that this path towards the transforming union cannot be brought about without purification through diverse nights. We shall remember these words of Saint Paul: "You must give up your former ways of life; and put aside your old self which gets corrupted by following deceitful desires in order to renew yourselves by a spiritual transformation and put on the new self. . ."

The Spirit, however, blows where He wills and the Lord can permit some souls to pass through the different stages of prayer life more quickly.

The Community therefore recognizes its principal grace as being the life of prayer. In it, "all of us, with faces unveiled, reflecting as in a mirror the Glory of the Lord, we shall be transformed into the same image, from glory to glory." We believe the contemplative life permits us to reach this beatitude which is to see God, to resemble Him, and to actualize the words of the apostle John: "When Jesus appears we shall be like Him because we shall see him as He is."

ELIJAH AND PROPHETIC EXISTENCE

Poverty

Only the man seized by the Spirit of God is truly poor, he is "anaw of Adonai." Fascinated by the Lord, he lives a disappropriation of himself. Poverty should not therefore be sought for its own sake, nor should it be the goal of an aesthetical approach, but the fruit of the life in the Spirit.

We will cherish poverty as the adornment of the bride, as the proof of love and of exclusive belonging to the Bridegroom. Beatitude of the poor for the Spirit, heirs to the still invisible Kingdom, how can the possession of visible things, of natural gifts and even of passing spiritual goods be preferred to it?

Poverty is equally the source of a great freedom, luminous, joyous and beautiful. Contrary to its diabolical counterfeit, destitution and avarice, which deface and shrink the image of God that is within us.

Let those charged with the management of goods and expenditures be fully permeated by the generosity that detachment fosters. May they never forget that the times are short and use the wealth of this world to gain friends in the world to come. Let them regard the gifts bestowed upon us as loans conceded to us until we meet one poorer than ourselves.

We will therefore have to be a living witness for the people of this generation, that our only happiness on earth lies not in the possession of material goods, but in the fact of loving God and of knowing that God loves us.

The example of Elijah takes us even beyond the mere non-possession of material things; he prefigures the man of the new covenant and the son of the Beatitudes, the disciple of Jesus the Messiah. He will do the same works as his master: multiplications, miracles, resurrections. Like him, he ascended into heaven and like him he was stripped of the glory that was his: the fire which he causes to descend from heaven upon Carmel does not belong to Him.

Martyrdom

True poverty, inseparable from the state of discipleship, is, before anything else, of a spiritual nature and finds its fulfillment in the witness par excellence: martyrdom, according to that which is promised to those who have left everything to follow Christ.

"No-one who has left home, brothers or sisters, mother or father, children or fields for My sake and for the Gospel will fail to receive a hundredfold in this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life."

The Church then considers martyrdom as an exceptional gift and as the fullest proof of love. By martyrdom a disciple is transformed into an image of his master by freely accepting death for salvation of the world - as well as his conformity to Christ in the shedding of his blood. Though few are presented such an opportunity, nevertheless all must be prepared to confess Christ before men. They must be prepared to make this profession of faith even in the midst of persecutions, which will never be lacking to the Church, in following the way of the Cross.

Chastity

Another form of prophetic poverty is chastity, which all the baptized are called upon to live, each one according to his strength, some practicing perfect continence, particularly those who have decided to remain single for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

This eminently eschatological virtue of purity could not remain the privilege of monks and nuns only. Marriage will have to be considered as a means of sanctification, in the practice of conjugal chastity, in the knowledge that human life and the responsibility of transmitting it are not limited to the horizons of this world and find neither their full dimension nor their full meaning here, but that they are always to be seen in reference to the eternal destiny of men.

This poverty of heart and body must be protected, avoiding anything that might disturb the senses, whether in readings, food, entertainments or conversations, so that, as St. Paul said: "it may not even be mentioned among you."

The cell will be like the reflection of this chastity. We will make it a rule that everything there be lived for the glory of God.

The superiors will see to the human equilibrium of couples and of single members, giving them medical and psychological teaching conforming not to the fashion of the world that is passing but rather to the traditional teaching of the Church.