Catholic defiance of Democrat law pays off, sparing priests from the choice of jail or excommunication

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.theblaze.com/news/catholic-defiance-of-democrat-law-pays-off-sparing-priests-from-the-choice-of-jail-or-excommunication

Quote of the day, 4 October: St. Teresa of Avila

Being in prayer on the feastday of the glorious St. Peter, I saw or, to put it better, I felt Christ beside me; I saw nothing with my bodily eyes or with my soul, but it seemed to me that Christ was at my side—I saw that it was He, in my opinion, who was speaking to me.

I immediately went very anxiously to my confessor to tell him.

I could do nothing but draw comparisons in order to explain myself. And, indeed, there is no comparison that fits this kind of vision very well. Since this vision is among the most sublime (as I was afterward told by a very holy and spiritual man, whose name is Friar Peter of Alcántara and of whom I shall speak later and by other men of great learning) and the kind in which the devil can interfere the least of all, there are no means by which those of us who know little here below can explain it.

And what a good image of Christ God took from us now in the blessed Friar Peter of Alcántara! The world cannot at this time endure so much perfection. They say that our health is weaker and that these times are not like those of the past. Yet this holy man belonged to the present age.

But he was very old when I came to know him, and so extremely weak that it seemed he was made of nothing but tree roots.

Aware then of the little, or nothing at all, I could do to avoid these impulses [in prayer], which were so great, I also feared having them…. The Lord was pleased to remove a great part of my trial—and then all of it—by bringing to this city the blessed Friar Peter of Alcántara, whom I already mentioned….

He is the author of some small books in the vernacular on prayer that are now popular, for as one who practiced it well himself he wrote in a very helpful way for those who are given to prayer. He observed the first rule of the blessed St. Francis in all its rigor besides the other things mentioned to some extent above.

Afterward the Lord was pleased that I receive more help from him—through the counsel he gave me about many matters—than I did during his life. I have often seen him in the greatest glory.

Saint Teresa of Avila

The Book of Her Life, chap. 27, 30 (excerpts)

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: João de Deus Sepúlveda, Apparition of Saint Peter of Alcantara, 1760-61, oil on wood (with frame attached to the vault), Vault, Igreja de Santa Teresa, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, PI 2157B. Image credit: © Daniel Paza/PESSCA Archive.
Ojeda, Almerindo. Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA). 2005-2025. Website located at colonialart.org. Date Accessed: 10/02/2025.

#apparition #mysticalExperience #penance #StPeterOfAlcantara #StTeresaOfAvila

Penance (by jiusan naitang)

https://media.kbin.earth/26/8c/268cafe3cce62937bcaddf809aeae59c6a070f11028a70ae036f0ec2f7da09ee.jpg

Quote of the day, 6 June: Sr. Louise of Mercy, OCD

Of all the French nuns of the seventeenth century, none is more intriguing than Sister Louise of Mercy, the former Louise de la Vallière, the mistress of Louis XIV.

Louise de la Vallière was born at Orléans in 1645, the step-daughter of the Marquis de Saint-Rémy. She was brought to Paris and presented at the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, that absolute monarch who was driving and goading France to its point of greatest national prominence.

Louis XIV was a short, rugged, rather handsome man in a heavy-featured way, and he had a series of mistresses during his long reign. The young girl from Orléans caught his eye, and he immediately installed her as his mistress and court favorite. “Bid me die or leave me,” the king said to her.

Louise was apparently a woman of rare charm and she enchanted the court.

A blonde with sapphire eyes, she walked with a slight limp. The poet La Fontaine wrote of her that she had “grace more beautiful than beauty.” And an enemy of hers, commenting on her soft, low-pitched voice, said that “it was so sweet that no one who ever heard it could ever forget it.” Louise bore the king three illegitimate children and she seemed to be genuinely in love with him.

But she suffered the fate of court mistresses, and after a few years, the king replaced her with his then-current favorite, Madame Athénaïs de Montespan. Louise, then only twenty-four, was deeply stricken and she retired from court circles, depressed, confused, and anguished.

During a five-year period Louise recovered herself, repented of her past conduct, and embarked on a severe program of penance.

At the age of twenty-nine she sought admission to the Carmel on the rue Saint-Jacques [the first Discalced Carmelite monastery in France]. Bossuet preached the sermon at her profession a year later in 1675, and the event was the sensation of Paris.

Louise of Mercy spent the remaining thirty-five years of her life in the convent, and she was an exemplary nun, faithful, cheerful, and extremely penitential.

During the period immediately before she entered the convent, she had written a treatise about the mercy of God, and in 1680, the prioress published this monograph anonymously under the title Reflections on the Mercy of God. However, the authorship of the book published by the Carmel was quite evident, and it became the talk of Paris.

The most delightful scene in the life of Louise de La Vallière occurred shortly after she had entered the convent when she was visited by Athénaïs de Montespan, her successor as the king’s mistress.

It was a scene which could only have transpired between two women.

The lady of the court sat on the other side of the convent grille and chatted amiably with the nun who, according to witnesses, seemed to bear the visit with amused indifference. As Mademoiselle de Montespan rose to leave, she mentioned that she was returning to the palace and would see the king, and then asked: “Is there anything you would like me to say to the king for you?”

Louise bowed her head slightly toward her visitor.

“Whatever you like, Madame, whatever you like.”

Then she turned and walked slowly away.

Peter Thomas Rohrbach, OCD

Journey to Carith: Chapter VII, Expansion

Note: On 6 June 1710, Sr. Louise de la Miséricorde, O.C.D. (Louise of Mercy) died in the Carmel of Notre-Dame des Champs, Faubourg Saint-Jacques.

Rohrbach, P 1966, 2015, Journey to Carith: The Sources and Story of the Discalced Carmelites, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Note: This 1865 oil on canvas painting by M. Schmitz after artist Pierre Mignard includes one key phrase engraved at the base of the column; it epitomizes the motivation of the Duchess of La Vallière to embrace the hidden life of Carmel: Sic transit gloria mundi (“thus passes the glory of the world”). Others would leave the court and join her at the Carmel of the Incarnation in Paris, as well. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
Where is God asking me to walk away from worldly glory in order to live more freely in His mercy?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.

#mercy #NotreDameDesChamps #Paris #penance #sin #SrLouiseOfMercy

Quote of the day, 16 March: St. Teresa of the Andes

The Carmelite must ascend the Tabor of Carmel and be clothed with the garments of penance that will make her more like Jesus. And, as He, she wants to be transformed, to be transfigured in order to be converted into God.

The Carmelite must ascend Calvary. There she will immolate herself for souls. Love crucifies her; she dies to herself and to the world. She is buried, and her tomb is the Heart of Jesus; and from there she rises, is reborn to a new life and spiritually lives united to the whole world.

Saint Teresa of the Andes

Her Intimate Spiritual Diary, 58

Griffin, M D & Teresa of the Andes, S 2021, God, The Joy of My Life: A Biography of Saint Teresa of the Andes With the Saint’s Spiritual Diary, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The featured image is a detail from a stained glass window depicting the Transfiguration, located in the Church of Saint-Thurien in Plogonnec, Finistère, France. Created in the early 16th century, the window has undergone restorations in 1912 and 1956. Source details retrieved from pop.culture.gouv.fr. Image credit: Musée de Bretagne (Some rights reserved).

💜 Transformation comes through surrender. How is Christ calling you to be transfigured today?

#Calvary #Carmel #HeartOfJesus #immolation #penance #StTeresaOfTheAndes #Tabor #Transfiguration

CAN ONE BECOME A SANYASI BECAUSE OF DOMESTIC SUFFERINGS

#sanyas #sanyasi #rishi #rishimuni #meditation #penance #selfrealization #sanyaas #knowledge #wisdom

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Pope St. John Paul II affirms that “praying for the souls in purgatory is the highest act of supernatural charity.” The Church, ever conscious of her vocation to love, has always been animated by this fraternal charity, inviting her children to pray and do penance on behalf of the faithful departed. This is expressly approved by the Bible: “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Mac 12:46). In response to this invitation, the Carmelite Order through the centuries of her existence, has developed a strong sense of communion with the suffering Church (the souls in purgatory).

Read More →

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/11/03/carmelite-order-and-souls-in-purgatory-carmel-holy-land/

#Carmelites #church #dead #friars #HolyLand #penance #pray #purgatory #StJohnPaulII #StellaMaris