Homily of Bishop John O. Barres, STD, JCL for the Feast of Our Woman of Mount Carmel on the Nationwide Shrine of Our Woman of Mount Carmel, Order of Carmelites given in Middletown, New York on July 16, 2026
I’m very grateful for the invitation from Brother Robert Chiulli, O. Carm, Prior Provincial of Saint Elias, to have fun Mass on the Feast of Our Woman of Mount Carmel at this Nationwide Shrine of Our Woman of Mount Carmel.
We have fun this Feast twelve days after celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Start of Our Nation and the Declaration of Independence.
As we speak, on this second of historical past, with our photographs and statues of Our Woman of Mount Carmel and sporting our St. Simon of Inventory scapulars, every considered one of us makes a Declaration of Dependence – a Declaration of Dependence on the fantastic intercession of Our Woman of Mount Carmel in our lives and within the international mission of the Catholic Church.
We additionally stay up for the Beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in St. Louis on September 24th.
It was Bishop Sheen, in his grasp of the historical past of philosophy, mysticism and the unfolding of world occasions and crises who stated in his basic work, Peace of Soul: “Within the Divine reckoning, it’s Carmelite (friars) and nuns and Trappist monks who’re doing extra to save lots of the world than the politicians and the generals. The alien spirit which preempts civilization might be pushed out solely by prayers and fasting.”[1]
We give particular due to our Carmelite Brothers and Sisters at this time for this vital vocation for the mission of the Church and the future of the world described so powerfully by Bishop Sheen.
Our Woman of Mount Carmel: Mannequin and Patroness of Contemplative Lectio Divina
And so we flip to Our Woman of Mount Carmel. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD writes: “The scapular, the little behavior, that Our Woman of Mount Carmel gives us, is barely the exterior image of her unceasing, maternal care: the image, but additionally the signal, the pledge of everlasting salvation…Those that want to dwell really dedicated to Our Woman of Mount Carmel, should comply with Mary into the depths of the inside life. Carmel is the image of the contemplative life, of life wholly consecrated to in search of God and tending wholly towards divine intimacy; and he or she who finest realizes this very excessive superb is Mary, Queen, Fantastic thing about Carmel.”[2]
Collectively, we make our existential Declaration of Dependence on her intercession for our progress in psychological prayer, our progress in liturgical prayer and the progress of our creativity in Catholic international worldwide mission and evangelization.
Particularly, I wish to discover Our Woman of Mount Carmel’s intercession for our day by day contemplative biblical lectio divina.
In each Deus Caritas Est 41 (2005) and Verbum Domini 28 (2010), Pope Benedict XVI writes: “The Magnificat – a portrait of her soul – is completely woven from threads of Holy Scripture, threads drawn from the Phrase of God. Right here we see how fully at dwelling Mary is with the Phrase of God, with ease she strikes out and in of it. She speaks and thinks with the Phrase of God; the Phrase of God turns into her Phrase, and her Phrase points from the Phrase of God. Right here we see how her ideas are attuned to the ideas of God, how her will is one with the need of God. Since Mary is totally imbued with the Phrase of God, she is ready to change into the Mom of the Phrase Incarnate.”
Our Woman of Mount Carmel fashions and guides the contemplative lectio divina of the good Carmelite saints and our contemplative lectio divina as nicely.[3]
Our Woman of Mount Carmel acknowledges our distinctive backgrounds and histories and the distinctive and personally intimate ways in which the Holy Spirit teaches us Psalm 119: “Could the Phrase of God be a Gentle and Lamp for our steps.”
I wish to look at two case research – the contemplative lectio divina of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) and St. Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906).
One of many ways in which the Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel ready the muse of St. Thérèse’s contemplative lectio divina was her expertise of her mom Saint Zelie’s intricate and ornamental lace-making enterprise and the intricate and exact embroidery and stitching concerned.
One of many ways in which the Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel ready the muse of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s contemplative lectio divina was by means of her rigorous musical coaching as a pianist on the Dijon Conservatory.
I’d like this to spark your personal reflection about how the Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel ready your basis for day by day contemplative lectio divina.
For myself personally, I majored in English literature at Princeton College but additionally studied fairly a little bit of American and Comparative Literature. The Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel ready the muse of my very own contemplative lectio divina by means of the instructing of my Professors – Professor T.P. Roche (Shakespeare, G.Ok. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot), Professor Andre Maman (French Literature and Grammar), Professor Victor Brombert (Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo) and Professor Joseph Frank (Dostoevsky) – who skilled me to be delicate to the nuances of literary texts; thus, getting ready me for deep contemplative research and prayer over the impressed texts of the Previous Testomony and the New Testomony.
So let’s begin with St. Thérèse.
Pope Francis on St. Thérèse’s Contemplative International Missiology and the Divine Mercy Missiology expressed in her Contemplative Lectio Divina on the Matthew 9:9-13 Picture the Desk of Sinners[4]
In 1927, Pope Pius XI declared St. Thérèse the Patroness of Catholic international worldwide mission and on this vocation of mercy she couldn’t neglect the Desk of Sinners in historical past and her empathy for his or her battle in darkness and her prayerful and mystical intercession for them.
Thérèse writes in Manuscript C of The Story of a Soul: “Lord, your baby has comprehended your divine gentle, she’s asking your forgiveness for her brothers, she agrees to eat for so long as you would like the bread of sorrow and he or she doesn’t want to rise, earlier than the day you may have indicated, from this desk stuffed with bitterness the place poor sinners are consuming…However can she not additionally say in her title, within the title of her brothers: Have pity on us, Lord, certainly, we’re poor sinners!…O Lord, ship us away justified…Could all those that aren’t enlightened by the luminous torch of Religion see it shine eventually…O Jesus, whether it is obligatory that the desk dirty by them be purified by a soul that loves you. I really want to eat alone the bread of testing until it please you to introduce me into your luminous realm.”
Thérèse’s specific use of the Desk of Sinners is grounded in Matthew 9:9-13 however can also be the fruit of her wealthy Previous Testomony and New Testomony lectio divina the place she attracts on a strong vary of parables, biblical characters and gospel mysteries connecting them to this desk of sinners.[5]
In his 2023 Apostolic Exhortation on St. Thérèse, C’est la Confiance, Pope Francis offers a very insightful evaluation of Thérèse’s Darkish Night time and trial of religion.
He writes: “Thérèse skilled religion most powerfully and certainly within the midst of the darkish night time and particularly amid the darkness of Calvary. Her witness culminated within the remaining months of her life, within the nice ‘trial in opposition to the religion’ that started at Easter of 1896. In her account, she straight relates this era of testing to the painful actuality of the atheism of her time. The final years of the nineteenth century had been the ‘golden age’ of recent atheism as a philosophical and ideological system. When she wrote that Jesus allowed her soul ‘to be invaded by the thickest darkness,’ when she was evoking the darkness of atheism and the rejection of the Christian religion. In union with Jesus, who took upon himself all of the darkness of the sin of the world when he willed to drink from the cup of the Ardour, Thérèse got here to understand its underlying sense of despair and sheer vacancy. But darkness can’t overcome the sunshine: Thérèse had been conquered by the One who got here as gentle into the world (cf. John 12:46). Her account reveals the heroic nature of her religion, her triumph in religious fight with probably the most highly effective temptations. She felt herself a sister to atheists, seated with them at desk, like Jesus who sat with sinners (cf. Matthew 9:10-13). She interceded for them ever renewing her personal act of religion, in fixed loving communion with the Lord.” (25-26)
Thérèse’s mom Zelie mastered the exacting craft of lace making which concerned 9 totally different stitches which had been joined by 9 lace makers.[6] St. Zelie taught St. Thérèse “the best way to patiently apply needlework and embroidery.”[7]
St. Thérèse was a contemplative grasp of biblical embroidery the place her contemplative lectio divinahelped her to deliver many biblical stitches collectively directly to light up the Matthew 9 Desk of Sinners. What Zelie achieved with lace, her daughter achieved with Sacred Scripture – all with the tender steering of Our Woman of Mount Carmel.
The Audacious Musical Interpretation and Self-discipline of the Dijon Conservatory Pianist and the Audacious Contemplative Lectio Divina of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity[8]
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity is an early 20th Century Contemplative Grasp of lectio divina and has a lot to show us within the 21st Century. Like St. Thérèse, she was impressed and guided by Our Woman of Mount Carmel.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar states: “Few have ever uncovered themselves so unreservedly to the phrase in its total breadth and depth with a view to let sanctification happen in them as did Elizabeth of the Trinity.”[9]
In his Apostolic Exhortation The Phrase of the Lord (2010), Pope Benedict XVI offers us a superb technique of praying particular person biblical passages, a technique of lectio divina or sacred studying of the textual content that features studying, meditating, praying, considering and residing the biblical textual content (86-87).
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity’s lectio divina had the contemplative rigor, consideration to element and zeal described by Pope Benedict.
In Evangelium Gaudium, Pope Francis states: “God’s phrase is unpredictable in its energy…The Church has to just accept this unruly freedom of the phrase, which accomplishes what it wills in ways in which surpass our calculations and methods of pondering.” (22)
This “unruly freedom of the Phrase” is an journey of discovery that St. Elizabeth of the Trinity embraced with Our Woman of Mount Carmel as her inspiration and information.
Elizabeth was a skilled and disciplined pianist and musician on the Dijon conservatory. She has a skilled “musical ear”[10] and with grace constructing on nature, she hears the Phrase of God with the self-discipline of the musician and the self-discipline of the Holy Spirit. If grace builds on nature, Elizabeth’s Trinitarian mysticism builds on her musical coaching as a pianist.
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity has a Pauline audacity in her confidence within the Phrase of God and within the phrases of St. Paul that she learn, meditated, prayed, contemplated and lived so profoundly. This identical phrase “audacity” is used to explain her daring interpretation of the musical notes on a web page as an achieved pianist throughout the Dijon conservatory.[11]
Elizabeth’s treatise The Final Retreat is woven and cast with Pauline texts in a dense and intense approach. Elizabeth approaches the Phrase of God by means of a deep, compelling and audacious Pauline Catholic Religion.
She discovers her vocation as Laudem Gloriae, Reward of Glory in St. Paul. It’s her audacious lectio divina “confrontation” with the Ephesians biblical textual content that leads her to her conviction about her Vocation as a Reward of Glory and it’s the motive why former Sulpician Basic and religious theologian of the 17th Century French Faculty, Fr. Raymond Deville states: “To grasp St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, you might want to perceive Elizabeth of the Trinity.”[12]
With St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, we’re referred to as to imagine with Pauline audacity and confidence and a spirit of apostolic journey that the Holy Spirit is dazzlingly current within the biblical texts we pray and that the Holy Spirit’s tongues of flame are connecting the textual content to our souls reworking us in mysterious and profound methods.
We keep in mind too that Elizabeth is a Reward of Glory liturgically within the Liturgy of the Hours and in her cosmic expertise of the Catholic Mass and her understanding of the unity of the earthly and heavenly liturgy. We do not forget that Eucharistic Prayer IV makes direct reference to the Ephesians textual content and phrase “Reward of Glory.”
The Phrase of God can’t be Chained
In Verbum Domini (2010), Pope Benedict XVI states: “The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of Scripture, simply as Scripture for its half illumines and explains the thriller of the Eucharist.” (55)
Deep contemplative lectio divina all the time leads us to the Eucharistic Altar of Sacrifice because the Liturgy of the Phrase leads us to the Liturgy of the Eucharist in each Cosmic Catholic Mass celebrated on the Altar of the World. [13]
Each St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, impressed and aided by Our Woman of Mount Carmel, train us to be daring in our day by day contemplative lectio divina. In addition they train us to be attentive to how the Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel have ready a singular basis for us to obtain the Phrase of God.
St. Thérèse’s contemplative lectio divina was ready by watching her mom St. Zelie and her co-workers do intricate, exact and detailed lace-making and embroidery – a mannequin for a way St. Thérèse laced collectively biblical passages, photographs and characters in her prayer.
St. Elizabeth’s contemplative lectio divina was ready in her rigorous musical coaching as a pianist. She was audacious in the way in which she interpreted music on her piano. She was audacious in how she interpreted the Phrase of God in her contemplative lectio divina.
How has the Holy Spirit and Our Woman of Mount Carmel ready your personal contemplative lectio divina and the way does it affect your prayer to at the present time?
St. Thérèse and St. Elizabeth train us with St. Paul in his second Letter to Timothy 2:9 that “The Phrase of God can’t be chained!”
The Phrase of God can’t be chained in our personal lives and in our experiences of the Cross of Jesus Christ!
The Phrase of God bursts by means of our sin, paralyses and resistances to vary and ignites our personal Highway to Damascus conversions!
The Phrase of God breaks down the self-imposed jail doorways of habit, ego, pleasure, selfishness and narcissism and refocuses our lives on Christ and his name to rejoice!
The Phrase of God can’t be chained by sin, struggle, terrorism, racism, injustice and disrespect for the sanctity and dignity of human life!
The Phrase of God can’t be chained within the international worldwide mission of the Catholic Church whatever the 21st century persecutions and martyrdoms she experiences![14]
The Phrase of God can’t be chained in regard to our deep and definitive response to our baptismal name to contemplative holiness and contemplative mission!
The Phrase of God can’t be chained by efforts of the Prince of Darkness to sunder advances in Synthetic Intelligence and expertise from religious and ethical reality.[15]
Cardinal Anders Arborelius stated that “Synthetic Intelligence must be guided by Religious Intelligence.” [16] He additionally advised Pope Leo XIV after they first met after his election: “St. Thérèse will enable you!”[17]
In 1887 in Rome, Pope Leo XIII is confronted with the Carmelite vocation of the 15 12 months previous Thérèse, and days into his Preach Pope Leo XIV lays a white rose on the Tomb of Pope Francis within the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in honor of St. Thérèse and invokes a bathe of her roses on a Church confronting the evolution of Synthetic Intelligence with the liberating ethical reality of the Catholic Church within the 21st Century Industrial Revolution.[18]
Could Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, be a lightweight of Christ’s love, reality and steering for the world.
And will our 21st Century Contemplative Revolution information the 21st Century Industrial Revolution!
Our Woman of Mount Carmel, Mom of the Phrase of God, pray for us!
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Physician of the Church, Patroness of Catholic international worldwide mission and Sister of Atheists, pray for us!
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Reward of Glory, pray for us!
[1] Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, (New York: Backyard Metropolis Books, 1951), 245.
[2] Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy, (New York: Desclee Firm, 1964), 1146-1147.
[3] For an intensive therapy of Contemplative Lectio Divina, see Bishop Barres’ January 2026 Pastoral Letter, God’s Phrase is Residing and Efficient: A Reflection on Father Simeon Leiva-Merikakis, O.C.S.O’s Commentary Fireplace of Mercy, Coronary heart of the Phrase: Meditations on the Gospel in keeping with Saint Matthew and its Contribution to Contemplative Catholic Biblical Theology, Scholarship, and Lectio Divina accessible at drvc.org.
[4] This part attracts on Bishop John Barres’ Deal with “St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), Physician of the Church and ’Sister of Atheists’: The Relationship between St. Thérèse’s ‘Night time of Religion and Daybreak of Hope’ and Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) Night time of Atheism and Darkness of Despair” delivered on August 2, 2025 on the St. Thérèse of Lisieux Symposium at Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, NY. The Deal with is on the market at drvc.org.
[5] See Thomas R. Nevin, The Final Years of Saint Thérèse: Doubt and Darkness, 1895-1897, (New York: Oxford College Press, 2013). See particularly Chapter Two, “Looking for Gentle within the Bible,” 17-75.
[6] See Thomas R. Nevin, The Final Years of Saint Thérèse: Doubt and Darkness, 1895-1897, 80-81.
[7] Mary Harper, “St. Zelie the Lacemaker,” July 12, 2026 Nationwide Catholic Register, 11.
[8] This part attracts on Bishop John Barres’ Deal with, “St. Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Pauline Audacity of her Lectio Divina and her Trinitarian Reward of Glory Catholic Mysticism,” delivered on August 9, 2024 on the Contemplative Symposium on “St. Elizabeth of the Trinity: the Thriller of Christian Prayer,” held at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie), Yonkers, New York. This deal with might be discovered at drvc.org.
[9] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Two Sisters within the Spirit: Thérèse of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity, (San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1992), 412.
[10] Elisabeth de la Trinite : L’Aventure Mystique (Sous la route de J. Clapier, OCD), (Toulouse: Editions du Carmel, 2006), Jean-Michel GRIMAUD, OSB, « Ouvrir Les Ecritures avec Elisabeth de la Trinite: Les Sources Pauliniennes et Johanniques de sa Pensee Theologique,», 19.
[11] See Pierre Barthez, “Elisabeth Catez: Une Vraie Musicienne!” in Elisabeth de la Trinite: L’Aventure Mystique (Sous la route de J. Clapier, OCD), (Toulouse: Editions du Carmel, 2006), 553-579, particularly 564.
[12] Fr. Raymond Deville, PSS (Superior Basic of the Society of Saint Sulpice at time of the interview, now RIP), Interview, Spring 1988.
[13] Pope Saint John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (8), April 17, 2003.
[14] See Robert Royal, The Martyrs of the New Millenium: The International Persecution of Christians within the Twenty-First Century, (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2025); and Bishop Robert Barron, What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution As we speak, (Elk Grove Village, Illinois: Phrase on Fireplace/Assist to the Church in Want, 2026).
[15] See Pope Leo XIV’s Could 15 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas accessible on the Vatican web site. See additionally Bishop John Barres’ February 10, 2026 Deal with, “Within the Workshops of Saint Joseph and Saint Josemaria Escriva: A 21st Century Catholic Theology and Spirituality of Work in an Period of Epochal Synthetic Intelligence Change and Industrial Revolution,” delivered for the Institute of Human Ecology at The Catholic College of America on February 10, 2026. It’s accessible on the CUA Institute of Human Ecology web site and at drvc.org.
[16] Cardinal Anders Arborelius, Sunday, August 3, 2025 Homily on the St. Thérèse Symposium on the Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York as heard and recorded in writing by Bishop Barres.
[17] Cardinal Arborelius advised this story to Bishop Barres at that very same St.Thérèse Symposium on the Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York, August 1-3, 2025.
[18] Pope Leo XIV’s Could 10, 2025 Deal with to the Cardinals: “Sensing myself referred to as to proceed on this identical path, I selected to take the title Leo XIV. There are totally different causes for this, however primarily as a result of Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social query within the context of the primary nice industrial revolution. In our personal day, the Church gives to everybody the treasury of her social instructing in response to a different industrial revolution and to developments within the area of synthetic intelligence that pose new challenges for the protection of human dignity, justice and labor.”
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This homily was first printed as a publish on Spiritual Revolution: A Journal of Mystical Theology and is reprinted right here with permission.
