Pilgrims on the Journey

 
Today we celebrate the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life...a day to give thanks for our own calling...to marvel at the gift...and to celebrate the call of those who share our lives in community.

To enter Carmel is to fall into a fortune!  It is to inherit the vast riches of our Carmelite Tradition.  It is to be welcomed into the heart of a warm loving family in whom that rich Tradition takes flesh.  We share the same ‘spiritual DNA’ and recognise it in each other.

 The Holy Spirit creates out of a very mixed bag of individuals of all ages and backgrounds, talents and temperaments, a communion of hearts and minds, a warm family spirit where all strive to be friends, where all love, cherish and help each other....for life!

The shared goal and mutual support along the hardships of the road bond us together.

I think Teresa would have loved Richard Gillard’s The Servant Song.  It captures the spirit she wished to see in her small Carmelite communities:

We are pilgrims on a journey, we are trav’llers on the road...

We are here to help each other, walk the mile and bear the load.

I often think the song was made for us...it captures the joys and sorrows of community life.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
in the night-time of your fear;

I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear. 

 I will weep when you are weeping. 
When you laugh I’ll laugh with you.

 I will share your joy and sorrow
‘til we’ve seen this journey through.

Whatever the day has brought, joys or sorrows, there comes a healing peace and togetherness at Night Prayer; the labours of the day are over, tomorrow’s troubles and challenges can wait ’til morning, now there comes rest and sleep for the weary pilgrims of love.  A deep sense of gratitude sweeps over me as I look at each of my sisters in all their vulnerability and hidden heroic efforts...the sheer beauty of human life, the privilege of walking the road, rubbing the shoulders of these saints-in-the making.

Yes, it is good to be here...

 

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