Feast of Carmelite Saints

The Saints of Carmel are an immense number of our brothers and sisters who consecrated their lives to God, embracing the teaching of the divine Master and imitating His life, giving themselves to serve the Blessed Virgin Mary in prayer, evangelical self-denial and love for all people, even, sometimes to the shedding of their blood. Hermits of Mount Carmel, mediaeval mendicants, doctors and preachers, missionaries and martyrs; nuns who edified the people of God with the mysterious fecundity of their contemplative lives; religious who discovered the face of Christ in their brothers and sisters through their healing or teaching ministry, above all in missionary territories; members of the Secular Order who in the midst of the world knew how to incarnate the spirit of the Order.

The letter to the Romans (8:28-35,37-39) speaks of those God “chose specially long ago and intended to become true images of his Son.”In the Gospel (Matthew 5:1-12) Jesus preaches the Beatitudes remind us that God’s values are often very different from the values of the world.