Solitude & Community
Solitude
“She lived in solitude and now in solitude has built her nest: and in solitude he guides her, he alone, who also bears in solitude the wound of love.”
— St John of the Cross
“The main disposition required for always living in this calm is the desire to rejoice solely in Christ, one’s Spouse. This is what they must always have as their aim: to be alone with Him alone.”
—St Teresa of Jesus
Solitude has a special place in St. Teresa’s Carmels as she returned to the eremitic origins of the Carmelite Order. Each Sister lives, works, studies and prays in her own cell – the ‘cloister within the cloister’ - and there is a hermitage in the garden where the nuns make their private retreats each year, and have their monthly days of recollection apart.
Community
“In this house all must be friends, all must be loved, all must be held dear, all must be helped.”
—St Teresa of Jesus
St Teresa also wanted her Carmels to have a warm, family atmosphere, where the Sisters would find the support and relaxation that is necessary for healthy living and human flourishing, as well as a natural complement to the elements of solitude and silence essential for a life of deep prayer. Another distinctive feature of St Teresa’s Carmels is the two periods of recreation each day, when we come together as a family built upon and held together by Christ’s love, to talk and work together in joyful simplicity and charity, times of spontaneous and friendly exchange which strengthens the bonds of sisterly affection between us.
“Fraternal life is a God-filled space in which the mystical presence of the Risen Lord is experienced: in a spirit of communion, nuns share the grace of the same vocation with the members of their own community, helping one another to follow the same path, advancing together towards the Lord, one in heart and soul.”
—Verbi Sponsa
“The common table is the symbol of family unity. The sisters' food is both a gift of Providence and the fruit of their labours. The religious will joyfully take their meals together with gratitude to God who is the giver of gifts and who blesses the work of their hands.”
—OCD Nuns’ Constitutions #93
Our cloistered vocation as St Teresa understood it.