Reluctant Carmelites

Understanding how everyone becomes Carmelites

10/01/2024

Lk 9:51-56 When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.

Before I came to Immaculate Conception, I spent 3 months considering becoming a Carmelite friar, and people laughed at me because they said I couldn’t stay quiet that long. But I believe in the latter stages of life, we might all consider becoming Carmelite friars and nuns. Why is that? Well, I visit my parents on Fridays, and their home has virtually become a Carmelite monastery.

They do not drive so they are stuck in their home, their cell. They watch Mass daily, or when the priest (me) comes to visit them. They have scheduled hours of prayer at morning, noon, and in the evening. They do not receive lots of visitors. Their life now consists of long days of silence, solitude, and suffering as they deal with the aches and pains of older and weaker minds and bodies. They have become reluctant Carmelites.

Today on the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, arguably one of the greatest Carmelite mystics and doctors of the Church, I want to share my discernment to become a Carmelite in the hopes of encouraging people like my parents who have become reluctant Carmelites. Sooner or later we all become reluctant Carmelites.

One way to understand the unknown Carmelite vocation is to contrast it with the well-known vocation of diocesan priests. Everyone knows what we diocesan clergy do: we baptize your babies, we hear your confessions, we celebrate your marriages, and we finally send you home to heaven at your funeral Mass.

Think of diocesan priests as electricians who fix your electrical problems at home. If your power goes out at home, you call an electrician and he investigates where the power outage occurred and remedies the problem. You are pleased, you pay him, and you go on with your life. But did you ever think: where does the electrical power originate that finally ends at your house?

It is generated in a far-away hydro-electric plant, a dam in a river, that sends power to hundreds of thousands of people in an area. No one ever hears of these hydro-electric plant workers. They spend their days in silence, solitude, and suffering because no one thanks them or pats them on the back after a long day. Nonetheless, they work at the very source of the power that we use – and take for granted – every day.

And that describes the life of Carmelites – even reluctant Carmelites like my parents – whose lives of silence, solitude, and suffering (and prayer) bring them close to Christ, the source of spiritual power that Christians rely on. Just like civilians cannot live without hydro-electric plant workers, so Christians cannot live without Carmelites dedicated to lives of contemplative prayer and penance.

In the gospel today Jesus prepares himself to launch a new chapter in his ministry as the Messiah, namely, traveling to Jerusalem for his suffering and death. We read in Lk 9:51 (a very significant verse): “When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” Another more literal translation has it, “he set his face like flint.”

This section of Luke’s gospel, from 9:51 to 18:14, is called the Lukan Travel Narrative, or LTN for short, where Jesus travels from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south. In a spiritual sense, Jesus prepares himself for his final days when he too will experience intense solitude, silence, and suffering, becoming in essence, a Carmelite at the end of his earthly life.

My friends, God calls a few chosen souls to the religious vocation of a Carmelite friar or a nun. But I believe he eventually calls everyone, especially in the latter stages of our lives, to become Carmelites, spiritually-speaking. When I visit hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living centers, or even my parents living in their own home, I feel I am visiting a Carmelite friar or nun in their cell, their little cubicle of contemplation.

They spend long swaths of time alone, often they are in pain or suffering, and when they turn off the television, there is golden silence. One elderly friend of mine likes to say, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.” And he has good reason for saying that because we all eventually become reluctant Carmelites, which ain't for sissies. And we would do well to “set our face like flint” as we, too, travel to Jerusalem.

Praised be Jesus Christ!