OUTLOOK

Published Monthly by the Discalced Carmelite Fathers, Our Lady’s Hill, Waverly, New York

Volume 1, No. 7 June 1962

Dear Friends of Carmel,

It was just six months ago last May 28 that we moved into our new monastery here at Our Lady’s Hill. In that time quite a few changes have taken place. We moved into a complete shambles; now the place is quite livable. Of course there still remains a considerable amount of work to be done. We have completed only one-fourth, approximately, of the painting; we have only just now begun stone-tiling the first floor; and we have yet to start building furniture for the individual cells. Thank God one very important and difficult task has been completed, namely, clearing, seeding and fertilizing our grounds for a lawn. This last was accomplished with the very generous assistance of Mr. Edwin O’Brien, who sent up two of his men to devote 8 hours a day, four days a week for several weeks to this project. As a matter of fact, we have to credit a great share of everything that has been done here to the help of our friends.

Actually, the biggest and most striking difference between then and now is a change in mentality. We have discovered that it is “not ours to know the times and seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority”; that it is impossible to foresee or to anticipate the workings of Divine Providence. We have discovered in particular that we can’t force the Wisdom of God into our own narrow, petty categories.

When moving in, you see, we were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project that lay before us. We just couldn’t see how we could possibly make a go of it. This feeling was magnified by the many entirely unexpected complications that set in. Naturally, we had recourse to prayer, but in doing so we used to think of our prayers being answered in terms of a windfall, for example, by winning the Irish Sweepstakes, or by being remembered in the will of a multimillionaire. Very quickly we discovered that these thoughts are not the thoughts of God, and we could almost sense the divine displeasure when we allowed ourselves to hope for such a solution. In fact, when we did direct our frequent appeals to Our Lord and Our Lady we could almost sense their answer, too, a rather curt, WORK”. It is almost always painful, but we invariably end up thanking our friends for letting us have it straight from the shoulder.

This must explain why the wolf has not come to our door, as we feared at first he would. He must suspect that if he did we would capture him and put him to work. It would be easy to rig up a treadmill for him to operate, and then we could harness it to the cement mixer. Apparently, he is looking out for his own skin.

We are also grateful for the help rendered by many of the readers of OUTLOOK. How consoling to see how they take an interest in us and even “adopt” us. There have been times when their assistance has come just at the opportune moment, almost as if it had been planned. We like to think this is a proof of God’s ever-vigilant Providence.

Speaking of OUTLOOK, though, we are still not sure of how it is being received by the majority of those to whom we send it. We shudder when we think of the reception accorded it by my own brother’s mother-in-law, who had no warning that it was being sent to her. When it arrived she opened the envelope, took it out, didn’t recognize it, and threw it into the wastebasket. (No doubt the solid columns of close printing had discouraged her). Ah! But there is a happy ending. Fortunately it landed in the basket with my name facing up. Seeing it, she fished it out, read it, and has become one of our staunchest supporters.

It seems therefore that it is about time that we restate the reasons for this monthly letter. Since our mailing list has more than doubled since the first issue of last December, many of our readers may not know our purpose in publishing it. The first of our two reasons is a spiritual one. We hope that our remarks and instructions on spiritual matters will help the reader to grow in appreciation and love of the Catholic Faith, and to find joy and peace in its Truths and its discipline. In particular, we hope they will be encouraged to cultivate a closer friendship and greater intimacy with Jesus and Mary. All of this we propose to do by writing about the Blessed Virgin, the Brown Scapular devotion, Prayer (things which constitute the nucleus of the centuries-old Carmelite tradition), the chief Mysteries of the Liturgical cycle, the Mass, Sacraments, etc. With the help of God, we think we may be able to attain this objective.

Our second motive is mercenary. (After six months we are not afraid to call a collection basket a collection basket. Or would you rather, those of you who have been reading what is said here each month, have me say, “Call a shovel a shovel”). It is our hope that our readers will be inspired to send us Mass offerings once in a while, or enrollments for our Purgatorial Guild, or even modest alms now and then. This would provide the badly needed supplement to the income earned by the few Fathers who are stationed here. They engage in all forms of preaching and in parish assistance. It is in regard to this second motive that we are not sure how OUTLOOK is received. After all, it is probably not often that the average person has cause to have a Mass offered, and even if he did, we could not expect him to stop having them said in his own parish church or to stop sending them to his favorite Religious Order. Nevertheless, we hope that from time to time our readers will help us in this way.

In our first issue we had also asked our readers to send in requests and petitions to be recommended to Our Lady of Mount Carmel in our weekly Saturday votive High Mass in her honor. We even dreamed (another proof that God’s ways are not our ways) that Our Lady would work miracles for our benefactors. There has been one miracle, though, worked on our behalf. We have been able to scrape through and pay our bills each month without having to be a drain on the Province.

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Someone ought to compile an omnibus of typing errors and the ideas they invoke. The other day I was writing to Father Damian, delegate-Provincial in charge of our Third Order chapters, and wrote by mistake, when addressing the envelope, Ref. Father Damian, O.C.D. This is no reflection on our dear, dear Tertiaries, but I couldn’t help thinking that this is not too far wrong. Many times a priest has to act as referee between warring factions. (Blessed are the peacemakers…).

In another instance I wrote by mistake “up to this pint” instead of “up to this point: Was this my subconscious suggesting a very easy way out of our difficulties?

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Having spoken at great lengths so far, and knowing how much I will be saying (stop reaching for that pint) about the Holy Spirit, I think it prudent to forego featuring a Carmelite in this issue. The one I intended to tell you about next is Very Rev. Father Thomas Kilduff, O.C.D. He is the first native of the northeastern part of the United States to enter the Discalced Carmelite Order, and he is one of the founding Fathers, one of the pillars of our province. His life is very interesting, too; so much so that it would be possible to devote an entire issue to him. Besides we don’t have a picture of him to include in this month’s issue. (He is always away earning our bread by preaching, God bless him!) We will speak of him next time.

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Of all the feasts of the Liturgical Year, Pentecost is the one, which has the most important consequences. Although the texts of the Mass and the Divine Office focus our attention upon the historical fact of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and their companions, the Church wants us to keep uppermost in our minds the fact that the Holy Spirit descends into the soul of each and every member of the Mystical Body. The Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity enters there in order to bestow supernatural life, to sustain it and to assist in its growth and development.

“Nor is there any other nation so great which has its gods approaching as near as our God is to us”. (Deut. 4,7). The approach of our God does not consist in local motion obviously, but in the communication of the divine attributes. When, in our thought life, affective life and moral life, we mirror without distortion the perfections and virtues of God, His approach to us is terminated. Then we are ready to be united directly to the Godhead in the Beatific Vision.

Revelation History makes it clear that the movement of God towards us took place in three distinct steps, each of which brought Him closer to us. It tells us also, that one step is to be attributed to each of the three Divine Persons. God the Father initiated the process by calling us into existence, by bestowing upon our human nature a supernatural destiny, and by planning and providing the means necessary to see it through to fulfillment. God the son took the second and a closer step in our direction by taking to Himself a human nature and stepping into our earthly arena. While here, He showed us the Father. By his life and His teachings He interpreted the Divine nature in terms of human concepts. (“Philip, he who sees me sees the Father.” John 14, 9). What is more, Our Divine Lord brought the Godhead closer to us by breaking down the wall of separation that was erected between the human race and God by original sin. Not only that, He remains standing in the breach both to keep it open when we would build it up again by our personal sins, and to act as Mediator, delivering to mankind the blessings of the Father and offering Him in return our due homage and service.

Indisputably, the work of Jesus represents a giant stride in our direction, but it still fell short of putting us into intimate contact with the Divinity. Jesus Christ remains a person outside of ourselves, acting at a distance. His influence upon our life and our conduct, our intellect and our will doesn’t differ, in its mechanics, from that of other human beings. In fact, He is at a disadvantage but He is not one of our contemporaries. Psychologically, His influence is not as effective as that of our loved ones whom we can see and whole physical presence we can enjoy.

That this is so is demonstrated by the earnest efforts we expend in trying to recapture His presence in the practice of Mental Prayer. We let our memory, imagination and understanding accompany Him through the entire course of His earthly life. We let the knowledge and the insights gained act upon our hearts to nourish and deepen our love for Him. We supplement this by receiving Him frequently in His sacramental presence. But to remain close to Jesus Christ in loving attention and with attentive affection is far from easy. It requires great faith and unremitting effort.

Furthermore, the work of Jesus was done once for all. It is not necessary for Him to repeat it; He redeemed us all ‘in globo’. So, close as He comes to us, Jesus does not approach quite as near at the Holy Spirit, who does indeed, terminate the process and perfect it.

Without the Holy Spirit, we would not participate in the life of God. It is He who communicates sanctifying grace, the formal cause of our share in the divine nature. His work within us is of a kind that enables us to function on a supernatural level. Our minds, of themselves capable of comprehending only finite truths, are made capable of knowing the God of infinite perfection and the things pertaining to God. Our hearts, of themselves capable of embracing only finite goodness, are enabled to love God above all else. Human nature of itself is totally unequal to the demands of Faith and Charity. But that we can and do, for the most part, love up to them is attributable to the Holy Spirit busy at work within us.

The work of the Holy Spirit differs from that of Jesus in that the former accommodates his action to suit our individual nature, temperament and characteristics. He brings us into conformity with the will of God according to the manner dictated by our psychic as well as spiritual states of soul. What He does for one, therefore, He does not necessarily do for the other, at least not in the same manner. Neither does He remain a person outside of ourselves. He comes so close as to become the life of our life and the soul of our soul. What our soul is to our bodily life, the Holy Spirit is to our soul, as far as divine life is concerned. For these reasons, then, Jesus could say to His disciples, “It is better for you that I depart. But if I go, I will send Him to you.” (John 16, 7). Our Saviour had come as close as He could, in His own Person, to His disciples. Then He went back to Heaven so as to send His spirit right down into the depths of their souls.

Such is the lesson we learn at Pentecost. In the Liturgy, the Church has always presented the Holy Spirit to us as the interior principle of divine life. In the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” she asks, “Visit the mind of our own, fill with heavenly grace the hearts which you created.” The rest of the hymn goes on to make explicit the various ways in which the Holy Spirit sets about divinizing our human nature. He is a fount of life in that it is His to diffuse in our souls the life of grace and Charity, the fundamental and proper act of divine life. (“The Charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us.” Romans 5, 5). When we call Him ‘fire’ we think of the warmth that is associated with our bodily life and which is a sign of life.

Of special interest is the title “spiritual ungent (anointing)”. We may think of an anointing in two ways, either as a consecration or as a medicinal, curative remedy. Both of these apply to the Holy Spirit because we are anointed by Him, we are consecrated, that is, set apart for sacred purposes as in the Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders. His taking up His abode in our souls sets us apart from the profane world and commissions us to take part in Divine Worship.

As a medicinal ungent, the Holy Spirit penetrates and mollifies our humanity, makes it pliable and supple, capable of being bent to the will of God and the demands placed upon us by divine grace. This may be compared to the manner in which medical emollients penetrate and soften our flesh making it more susceptible to the power of recovery and the healing power inherent in our bodily organism. The Holy Spirit is the ointment that soothes and relieves the suffering involved in doing violence to ourselves in the exercise of supernatural works, much in the same way that medicinal salves soothe and relieve the aches and pains of working too hard, of using our muscles beyond their capacity.

Not the least of the benefits bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit are His sevenfold Gifts. These play a very important role in our spiritual life. They may be thought of as supernatural instincts, which incline us from within, sweetly, to do those things, which foster the life of God in our souls, and to avoid those things, which threaten to extinguish it. Just as we have an instinct for good food, rest and recreation, so also we have, by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, an instinct for prayer, for the Bread of the Eucharist and instinct to judge all things in the light of Faith. Just as we have instinctive mechanisms of defense against what would injure our bodily life, so also we have, by the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, the instinct to shy away from occasions of sin and to react promptly and effectively against temptations. When the Gifts of the Holy Spirit have ‘taken over’ in our life we are perfect and ready for divine union.

In spite of the fact that He comes so close to us, the Holy Spirit remains the most mysterious, as a Person, of the three Divine Persons. He is as mysterious to us as our own souls. Scripture itself is no help on this point. It represents Him to us under the figures of a dove, tongues of fire, and a mighty wind. The reason, of course, is to emphasize the nature of His work. But who ever heard of a man striking up a friendship with a dove, or with a flame of fire, or with a mighty wind (even though he may number mind-bags among his friends.) We should, nevertheless think of Him as a Person (which, of course, he Is) and to invoke Him as a friend. We all have sense enough to remain close to those persons upon whom we depend for our happiness and fulfillment here on earth. Thus we who have professed a determination to sanctify ourselves are strictly obliged to cultivate the friendship of the Holy Spirit and try to render ourselves perfectly docile to His sanctifying activity in our minds and hearts.

Cordially yours in Our Lady,

Father Bruno, OCD, Prior

(With permission of Religious)

(And Ecclesiastical Superiors )

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Note to the reader: This newsletter was written in the 60’s and Waverly Novitiate no longer exists, however, the Carmelites are always in need of funds to carry out their work. If anyone wishes to contribute to the cause of the Discalced Carmelite Friars, please send your donations to: In appreciation for Fr. Bruno's Works, Mission Procurator, P.O. Box 270136, Hartford, WI 53027.