Carmel Bulletin, 19 July 2015
The Year of Consecrated Life provides everyone in the Church with the opportunity to reflect on the witness that people in consecrated life give. Pope Francis has named three aims for the Church during this year; the same aims were named by St John Paul II for the whole Church at the beginning of the third millennium.
The third aim for the year is to embrace the future with hope.
This hope is not based on statistics or accomplishments, but on the One in whom we have put our trust (cf. 2 Tim 1:2), the One for whom “nothing is impossible” (Lk 1:37). This is the hope which does not disappoint; it is the hope which enables consecrated life to keep writing its great history well into the future. It is to that future that we must always look, conscious that the Holy Spirit spurs us on so that he can still do great things with us.
Apostolic Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to all Consecrated People on the Occasion of the Year of Consecrated Life, 21 November 2014
Pope Francis encourages everyone, especially those in religious life, not to be weighed down by the challenges of the day, but to look for hope in the signs of the times, to be watchful and ready. Carmelites do this in their contemplative community life, in the midst of the people.
It [being in the midst of the people] is also an expression of “the choice to share in the lives of “the little ones” (“minores”) of history, so that we may speak a word of hope and of salvation from their midst – more by our life than by our words.”
Carmelite Constitutions, no. 24
In every Eucharistic celebration, we embrace the future with hope. We intercede for the needs of the world, and go out to bring about the kingdom of God in our world today, seeking to make it more closely resemble the world to come. As we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the light of over eight centuries of Carmelite tradition, 2000 years of Christian faith, and nearly 70 years as a parish community, let us move forward in the same Christian hope of those who have gone before us.
Liturgy 