Blessed Frances d'Amboise

(9 May, 1427 – 4 November, 1485)

Beatified: 16 July, 1863

Optional Memoria: 5 November

“Lay everything at the foot of His cross, and rest there in peace.”

Blessed Frances D’Amboise was born, probably at Thouars, France. At fifteen years of age, she was married to Peter II, Duke of Brittany and crowned with him in the cathedral at Rennes in 1450. She was widowed in 1457 and, not wanting a second marriage, she turned towards religious life. For this purpose, she built a Carmel for sisters at Bondon in 1463 following the advice of Blessed John Soreth, Prior General of the Carmelites.

However, she herself only entered the monastery in 1468. In 1477 she transferred to the monastery at Nantes, another of her foundations. To her is due the introduction of frequent communion (daily for those who were sick) and the fourth vow of strict enclosure.

During her last moments her testament was the phrase which she had said most often during her life: “In everything, do that which will make God loved the more!”

She was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1866.

Blessed Josepha Naval Girbes

(11 December, 1820 – 24 February, 1893)

Beatified: 25 September, 1988

Optional Memory: 6 November

“Sanctify yourself and sanctify others.”

Blessed Josefa Naval Girbés was a Spanish Secular Carmelite. She has been recognized across Spain for her commitment to Church life and in the field of education. She became well known for her personal holiness and the conduct in which she led her life.

Blessed Josepha Naval Girbes was born at Algemesi in the Archdiocese of Valencia, Spain. When she was a young woman, she took a vow of chastity. A member of the Third Order Secular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Teresa of Jesus, she had great devotion for the Virgin Mary. She always wore her scapular and her rosary.

Her mother died on 19 June, 1833 at the age of 35, and Josefa was forced to leave school in order to look after her siblings. She was the eldest of five children raised in a devout family.

Blessed Josefa lived a perfectly simple life, opening her home as a school for embroidery. She used the quiet hours of labour to instruct her young female students about the Catholic faith. She was well known for instructing her girls that their primary mission in life should be to “sanctify yourself and sanctify others.”

She worked with cholera patients towards the end of her life and this led to her death in 1893 combined with her heart condition that hastened her death. She began to feel chronic pains in 1891 due to a heart condition and was in great pain as a result of it. She died in 1893 after a long illness related to that heart ailment. Her last request was granted: to be buried in the brown tunic and white mantle of the Carmelite habit. 

Reformed Carmelites

A reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and our holy mother St. Teresa of Ávila was an important figure in this Reformation which is also called the Counter Reformation. 

She is considered as the Spanish religious reformer and credited with reviving Catholicism in the 1560s and 1570s when Protestantism threatened to bring down the church. Her most significant contribution was the founding of the Reformed Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelite Convent of San Jose, a Catholic order for women. At the time of her death in 1582 she had started seventeen new Reformed Discalced Carmelite convents, or religious houses, in Spain.

The Carmelites were formally known as the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The need for reform of the Carmelite order was recognized by the early sixteenth century, and some early attempts at reform were made then.

St Teresa started a reform movement among the nuns and then with the help of St John of the Cross, among the friars in 1568 in Spain. In 1592 this reform, called that of the "Discalced Carmelites" or of the "Teresians", became independent from the Carmelite Order and grew rapidly.

St John of the Cross began the first monastery of the Teresian reform for the friars.

The reformed Carmelites are also known as Discalced (shoeless) Carmelites and have produced many canonized saints.

So it is today in the 21st century the Discalced Carmelite friars and nuns continue to live this way of life begun on Mount Carmel and reformed by St Teresa of Avila. An important element of her reform was to rescue the practice of mental prayer.

The aim of the reform was to restore and emphasize the austerity and contemplative character of primitive Carmelite life. Because Reformed Carmelites wore sandals in place of shoes and stockings, they came to be called the Discalced, or barefooted, Carmelites, to distinguish them from the older branch of the order.

OCD

The Discalced Carmelites – OCD (Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum) or Teresian differ in that they follow the reforms of the Carmelite Order made by Saint Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) in the sixteenth century. One such reform is the wearing of sandals, no uppers to the shoe -- ‘shoeless’ – discalced, a sign of poverty and reform.

 

The crest of the OCD Carmelites uniquely features a cross at the summit of the mountain.

 

It is the largest branch of the Carmelite Family today and is present worldwide.

 

As Discalced Carmelites we are a family of men and women, both religious and lay, situated in many countries of the world with a deep friendship with Jesus Christ.

 

The Discalced Carmelites came to India in the beginning of the 17th Century.

St. John of the Cross

Saint John of the Cross or San Juan de la Cruz (24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a Spanish Carmelite mystic and poet. He is our Holy Father. He is the cofounder with Saint Theresa of the order of Discalced Carmelites.

Saint John of the Cross was born Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, in Fontiveros, Avila, Spain in 1542. He became a Carmelite monk at Medina del Campo, Spain, in 1563 and was ordained priest in 1567. St. John of the Cross is a spiritual master and Doctor of the Church.

Saint John of the Cross grew up in poverty and was drawn to the contemplative life. His soul longed for mystical union with God.

December 14 is the liturgical memorial of Saint John of the Cross who was locked in a cell six feet wide and ten feet long for nine months, with no light except that which filtered through a slit high. This happened because of a misunderstanding within the Carmelite Order.

He was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation. He was beatified in 1675 and canonized in 1726.

December 14 is one of the principal feast days of the Discalced Carmelite Order, the Solemnity of Our Holy Father John of the Cross

In the writings of St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest mystics in history, thousands of people have found a path for drawing closer to God.

John of the Cross is also one of the greatest poets in Spanish literature.

Dijon

Dijon is the largest city in the eastern French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is the capital of Burgundy and is at the heart of the Burgundy vineyards. Dijon is one of France's most appealing cities and twenty years after the death of Saint Teresa of Avila, Dijon was the third foundation of the Spanish Carmelites in France in 1605. Dispersed by the Revolution in 1792, the Carmel was rebuilt in 1865.

It was in this new monastery that Elizabeth CATEZ entered on 2 August 1901. But she died there five years later of Addison's disease.

When her father died, the family shifted near the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Dijon. The sound of the bells of the convent and the nuns' garden attracted the young Elizabeth. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, young prophet of the Presence of God (1880-1906), was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1984, and canonized by Pope Francis in 2016.

But because of various constraints, the Carmelites were forced to leave the city of Dijon. In 1979 the monastery was transferred to a silent hill, near the village of Flavignerot, 13 km south-west of Dijon.

 

Duruelo

Duruelo is a municipality located in the province of Segovia, Castile and León, Spain. It was here that the first convent of the Discalced Carmelite Friars was opened on November 28th, 1568.

The chapters thirteen and fourteen of the book of the Foundations recount the establishment of the first foundation of Carmelite friars in the village of Duruelo. This was shortly after our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Avila was introduced to a young Carmelite (John) who went on to become the great mystic and the father of our Order, St. John of the Cross!

In 1568, with two other Carmelites, he founded the first Carmelite reformed monastery at Duruelo.

St John of the Cross was the first friar to enter the first foundation at Duruelo.

 

Discalced Carmelites

In August 1562 Saint Teresa of Ávila founded a new style of Carmelite community in Ávila, Spain. It was to become the first of a new Order – the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD). Thus the Discalced Carmel acknowledges Saint Teresa as its mother and foundress. She envisioned an Order fully dedicated to poverty. She felt strongly about this and thus the virtue of poverty became integrally related to this Religious Order.

The Barefoot Carmelites is a more common name for the Discalced (from Latin: without shoes) Carmelites. The Discalced Carmelites are a Roman Catholic religious community of priests, brothers, nuns, and laity serving the Church. We embrace the religious life in friendship and service of Jesus Christ.

Our religious Order’s heritage reaches back to a community of hermits living on Mount Carmel in Palestine during the late-12th century. But in 1592 the Discalced Carmelites or of the Teresians became independent from the Original Carmelites (O Carms) and grew independently but be it the Teresian Carmelites or the O Carms, the ultimate vocation of the Carmelites is to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ who loves us.

 

India

The Discalced Carmelites came to India in the beginning of the 17th Century. They founded their first residence at Tatta in Sind, now in Pakistan, and the second, in Goa in 1620.

Sebastiani and four friars, the first Carmelite Missionaries, were sent to India by Pope Alexander VII and with them begins the history of Carmelites in our country. Fr. Benigno of St. Michael, Fr Leander of the Annunciation, who had been sent to the Persian mission, came to Goa in 1619 and the Carmelites were able to establish roots there in 1621. They began their mission in India at Old Goa. Carmelites were a prominent Order at Old Goa along with Jesuits, Franciscans and Augustinians since 1619 till the Portuguese suppressed religious orders in 1834.

The Carmelites, on their refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to the king, were expelled from Goa in 1707. The church fell into disuse and ruins soon after. Nothing remains of the Church of the Carmelites built in 1621, except the façade and a raised pavement which served as an altar. It is located to the south-east of the Church of St. Cajetan on a hill more or less contiguous to the hill on which the Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount stands.

Today there are around 1000 Discalced Carmelite friars and some 500 Discalced Carmelite nuns (34 monasteries) spread across India.

The present monastery building Convent do Carmo (Carmelite Convent/Monastery) was a novitiate house and was built in 1943. Today Carmelites have three foundations (Margao, Mapusa and Xellim) in Goa.

In 2019, the Discalced Carmelites celebrated 400 years of their presence in India.  This celebration was held from February, 8-10 in Goa.