OUTLOOK

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

Volume II, No. 11 October 1963

Dear Friends of Carmel,

When I first began to give some thought to this October OUTLOOK (I suspect most of you won’t believe I try to make it rational), it occurred to me to try to obtain the services of a ghostwriter. You see, from the day I gave the printer the text for the September OUTLOOK until now, I have been away from the monastery so much of the time (no connection between my handing him the text and then leaving town, though there might well have been), that I didn’t feel qualified to tell you what went on here at the Novitiate during the interval (nor daring enough to tell you what happened on my travels). But I decided against using a ghost writer, first, because many times before I have had nothing to say, nevertheless easily managed to fill all four of these pages, and second because what I say here may well give you that cold, clammy, creepy feeling as effectively as any ghost. Besides, a decent ghost wouldn’t be found DEAD writing for OUTLOOK.

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In the last issue I complained about the unseasonably cold weather. Shortly after that I began to be disturbed about the extended run of beautiful warm weather. It isn’t the weather, really, but the course in Statistics I was exposed to several summers ago. According to that usually reliable science, with each successive day of nice weather, the probability that the ‘next day’ will bring terrible weather increases. Well, it has been balmy out for so long that for at least two weeks it has no longer been probable, but certain that ‘tomorrow’ will be absolutely wretched. So sure was I of this that in the travels mentioned I dressed prepared for blustery if not blizzardy weather. Instead I had to chafe uncomfortably (I don’t mean to imply that its possible to chafe comfortably) in my winter suit and rather heavy topcoat. Although it hasn’t made me frantic, I still feel ill at ease being frustrated of my expectation day after day. When the foul weather finally does come, my friends (I do have one or two) will be surprised to see how happy I will be.

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We continue to have the pleasure of welcoming visitors to the Monastery. On October 5^th a busload of our Discalced Carmelite Tertiaries from the New York City Chapter came up to see the place. Fortunately for them, our Provincial, Father Christopher, was here. He graciously lifted the law of Enclosure long enough to permit them to have a tour of the entire first floor. They (most of them were women) were thrilled to see what is inside a monastery, and seemed to be impressed and touched by the amount of work the Novices have had to do, and by the amount that remains to be done. At any rate, they left us a generous alms when leaving. Also, they were kind enough to sign up to be placed on the mailing list for OUTLOOK. Alas, to think that in return for their goodness they will be made to suffer by receiving this publication! The irony of it all! (Or would you call it brass?)

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Maybe you think the disparaging remarks I am making about OUTLOOK aren’t warranted? (Please don’t answer that). Well, while I was at our Monastery in Brookline, Mass., for the meeting of the Superiors of the various monasteries of the Province (sounds frightfully important, doesn’t it?), one of the brethren made a reference (a kindly one) to my “little paper, OUTCAST, or OUTLAW, or OUTRAGE, OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT”. And another told me that it is “read feverishly by a lot of people around here”. To say it makes them feverish must be a polite way of saying it makes them sick. So, for these reasons, I have been speaking of it as I do.

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As I was saying about visitors: a day or so before our Tertiaries came, we also played host to two of our Carmelite Confreres. One was the Very Rev. James Meldrum, O.C.D., who stopped in on the way back to his monastery after having preached the Novena in honor of the Little Flower at the Carmel of Elysburg, Pa. He is the Superior of our monastery at Youngstown, Ohio. Speaking of Youngstown, by the way, makes me realize that some of us Carmelites live dangerously. Father James and his community live in a city that was featured recently in a nationally known magazine under the title “Murdertown, U.S.A.” And we here at Waverly send a man each weekend to Apalachin, New York to engage in parish assistance at St. Margaret Mary Church there. Apalachin, as you recall, is the site of that now famous, or better, infamous meeting of the heads of the families of the ‘Cosa Nostra’. Maybe we should include in our vocation brochure the blurb: “Be a Discalced Carmelite and live dangerously”. For that matter, we might well include the slogan (I’m thinking of my recent travels): “Join Carmel and see the U.S.A.”

We were also honored by a visit from one of our valiant missionaries, Rev. Father Giles Dzuban, O.C.D., who is back in the States for a few months after a strenuous six-year tour of duty in the Philippines. It was especially good to see Father Giles again, for when I entered the Novitiate back in 1952, he was my Prior. I was going to ask him what is worse, being Prior of a Novitiate or doing missionary work (under very adverse circumstances) in the Philippines. But I didn’t because I suspected what his answer would be, and I am afraid I might volunteer for the missions for no other reason than to escape into work less trying than this office of Prior. Father Giles had also just finished preaching a Novena in honor of the Little Flower, and since he was relatively close by (Schenectady, New York), he seized the opportunity to come and pay us a visit. It is a shame I didn’t think of taking his and Father James’ pictures while they were here.

But that’s not all. Even a foreign Carmelite came here to visit us: Pere Elisee of the Virgin, a member of the Province of Southern France. He and others of that province came to Canada not too many years ago to lay the foundation for a French-Canadian Province of the Order. They began by opening a retreat house in Nicolet, Quebec, but already have attracted a sufficient number of candidates to warrant opening a Novitiate. Pere Elisee (poor man!) was the one selected to be the Novice Master, and he came down here to see our set-up. Nothing like adding an international flavor to the atmosphere.

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Perhaps the warm, dry weather is a Godsend, for it has made it possible for work in the cloister garden to continue. At present, the large cement discs of various dimensions mounted on their pillars have been finished (giving them the appearance of oddly proportioned mushrooms), the ground between the walkways has been dug out, holes have been prepared for the shrubs and now Brother Maurice is continuing the construction of the bridge. The discs are set at different levels, and on the highest of them a statue of Our Lady will be mounted. From under the base of the statue a fountain will spring out, and the water will cascade in an intricate pattern from disc to disc until it finally spills back into the fishpond. It should look beautiful when it is in operation.

The soil in the garden poses a special problem. It was so rocky (and we weren’t happy) that it refused to support anything with a root system more sophisticated than that of grass and weeds. Now that those areas are dug out, we will fill them with soil that will sustain some decent shrubbery. In the next issue I will have more pictures of the garden. If by next summer the bridge and the landscaping will have been completed, I may be able to prevail upon Father Provincial to allow us to lift the rule of Cloister on Sunday afternoon in order to allow us to hold Open House. I am very anxious to show off the handiwork of our chain ga…, I mean, Novices and Postulants. Those of you who have been through the monastery when we first came will be surprised when you see the progress that has been made.

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Ordinarily, I am not impressed by flowers, but during the summer I couldn’t help being taken with some beautiful little flowers springing up of their own accord in between the flagstones of the walkways in the garden. When I first saw them, they looked at a distance to be miniature roses. But upon investigation, they appeared to more closely resemble poppies. There was only one plant at first and it yielded yellow blossoms. As other plants began to appear, the colors of their blooms were successively darker, running into ever-deeper shades of reddish orange. Finally, on October 21, I noticed that the newest plant had brought forth a nice red flower. These fetching little creatures, I was told, are called portulacca. What amazes me, besides the fact that each new plant produced successively more reddish flowers, is how they can thrive in ordinary sand, in dry weather, and squeezed in between the flagstones. Upon reflection, it occurred to me that they make an excellent symbol for Carmel. The life and setting here in Carmel is like dry sand, devoid of luxuries, comforts, diversions and ‘kicks’ so gratifying to the sense appetite. We are also hemmed in by the strictures of the Rule, the Vows, and the religious observance. For all this, this ‘soil’ of Carmel is able to nourish beautiful flowers of virtue. It causes the seeds of delightful and attractive qualities inherent in a soul, provided it is deeply rooted in Carmel, to germinate and to yield by the hundred-fold. And, marvelous to tell, each of the good qualities and virtues appears successively more deeply tinged with the red of the fire of charity. God grant that all we little souls in Carmel may render flowers of virtue as ravishingly beautiful as the blossoms of the tiny portulacca.

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By the time you receive this issue of OUTLOOK, it will have been over 3 months since our new men arrived. Father Master says they seem to be a group of very fine young men, though as yet none of them appears to be exceptionally talented. I would say it depends upon how you spell it. If the tenacity with which they are ‘hanging on’ is any basis for a judgment (we still have 20 out of the original 22), then we would have to admit that they are extraordinarily ‘talon-ted’. So it seems opportune now for me to list their names, both old and new, and to tell from what part of the country they hail.

Nine of the new men are Clerics. A Cleric is a candidate for the Priesthood. All of them received the habit on August 14, and are now taking their year of Novitiate training. They are: Wilfred of the Trinity, from Somerville, MA, Robert of the Holy Cross, from Milwaukee, WI, Augustine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Bonificace of Jesus and Mary, Halethorpe, MD, Theophane of Jesus, Erie, PA, Brian of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Brooklyn, NY, Mark of the Trinity, British Columbia, Cullan of Jesus Crucified, Lawrence, MA, and Joseph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, from Brooklyn, NY.

The ten others are lay brother candidates. They are not yet Novices, but Postulants, for they are required to spend six months in the attitude of ‘postulating’, i.e., asking to receive the habit and to begin their Novitiate. They are as follows: Paul of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Buffalo, NY, Christian of the Holy Family, Dearborn, MI, Vincent-Mary of Our Lady Queen of all Hearts, Warwick, RI, Trinian of the Queenship of Mary, Lyon Mountain, NY, Dennis of the Incarnation, Wyandotte, MI, Peter of the Holy Family, Philadelphia, PA, Columbiere of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Cleveland, Ohio, Noel of the Infant Jesus, Brooklyn, NY, Gilbert of Our Lady of Sorrows, East Chicago, Indiana. That makes nineteen. The 20^th man really doesn’t belong to us. He is Elisee of the Virgin, from Moonbeam, Ontario. He is a candidate for membership in the French-Canadian Province that is presently being founded. We agreed to have him begin his training here with us until the Novitiate at Nicolet could get underway. It began on October 14, so on October 13 he departed Waverly to continue his postulancy in Canada.

We do hope you will remember these young men in your prayers that they may all persevere. We have no desire to limit the size of our Carmelite Family. We love our way of life so much we want many others to share the joy of participating in it, and we want to feel sure that in the future there will be a large number of worthy Carmelites who will carry it on and to share it with numberless other young men.

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My having been away so much during the past month has put me way behind in my work schedule, and in order to catch up somewhat, I find I will have to forego working something up for this months’ spiritual ‘feature’. But before you begin to rejoice, I want to say that I don’t intend to omit it; I intend instead to use up some thoughts left over from the Novena I conducted at the Carmel of Loretto, PA, in honor of the Little Flower. What I say will be out of date, in that it will be November by the time you read these lines, and St. Therese’s feast day was October 3, but it’s getting so late that I can’t afford to scruple about that.

It was about 12 years ago that I last read the works of St. Therese. I was obliged, therefore to re-read them when preparing the Novena talks. To my great amazement, I discovered in her writings a store of hidden gems and sacred veins of spiritual gold, which I had overlooked the first time. No doubt it has been the over 11 years of being in Carmel that improved my spiritual eyesight. The remarkable thing about her is that she is first of all an authentic Carmelite, who has learned extraordinarily well and applied so perfectly in her own particular circumstances the lessons handed down by Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross and Our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Jesus, and at the same time is so ideally suited to be a spiritual guide for the faithful, regardless of their place in the spiritual spectrum, i.e., regardless of the vocation in life they have embraced. Her teaching shows how perfectly compatible the spirit of Carmel is with any and every walk of life. There isn’t anything in her life and interior dispositions that cannot be reproduced (save actually living in the Cloister) in the lives and interior dispositions of the laity.

While thinking about her life and her doctrine against the background of the dominant spirituality of her own times, and particularly when comparing her mentality to the temper of present day society, I was startled by the thought that the role given her to play, in the unfolding of Salvation history, is very much like the role played by St. John the Baptist at the dawning of the Christian era. A superficial inquiry into this interesting comparison not only failed to quash the notion; it served rather to confirm it, by bringing out how much they have in common.

The lives of both unfolded within the context of the eremitical tradition. Both, from their early youth, dwelt apart from their contemporary society. Living in austere circumstances, they delivered themselves up to the contemplation of divine things. It was while their minds and hearts were preoccupied with the deposit of Revelation, and meditating upon the plans and promises made by God to the human family, that the Holy Spirit was able to prepare their souls for the work, which, in His Providence, He had destined them to fulfill. Upon both of them fell the task of announcing Christ, namely, to tell their hearers with what dispositions of soul they should prepare for His coming, and to point Him out when He finally appeared.

Simple, indeed, was the message of St. John the Baptist, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Certainly he wanted them to repent of their sins. But more profoundly, he wanted them to repent of their false notions concerning the nature of the Kingdom of God, and concerning the Messiah Himself, his personal attributes and the means with which He was to establish that Kingdom.

Never did St. John forget his relationship of precursor to the Christ. He freely admitted he was “The voice of one crying out in the desert, make ready the way of the Lord, make straight His paths. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked ways shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth.”

Neither was he grasping of the affection of followers. His primary concern was to send them, as soon as possible, to Jesus Christ, to become His disciples. When those who loved him dearly complained to him that his followers were abandoning him to follow the Galilean, he said, “He must increase, I must decrease.” And as if to shake off those who clung to him tenaciously, whenever He would see Jesus walking by the Jordan, he would say to them, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world.” And “I indeed baptize you with water…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

St. Therese never said it in words, but if we read between the lines we see that her message was much the same: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” She would have us repent particularly of our false notions concerning holiness, that is, the means to attain to it, and of our gross misunderstanding of the paternal heart of God. In fact, it was she herself who with the discovery of the Little Way shows us how to fulfill the words spoken by St. John the Baptist: Every valley shall be filled (how to supply for the absence of talent, virtue, strength in ourselves), and every mountain and hill shall be brought low (how to bring the heroism of the greatest saints down to within the grasps of little folk), the crooked ways shall be made straight, and the rough ways smooth (how to find a straight, sure, direct way to heaven that has nothing in it of complicated, harsh, ascetical practices.)

We see also that St. Therese understood well that her work was to show others the way to Jesus Christ. How fervently she prayed that He would see fit to choose for Himself an entire legion of little souls, souls who shared her insignificance, and pour out upon them a torrent of His mercies. Hers was the desire ever to decrease, to become smaller, that Jesus might increase within her. Also, we can thank her for showing us that Jesus is ever walking along beside the mainstream of our life, that in this or that trial or circumstance we are to recognize that it is He, the Lamb of God come to take away our sins and to further in us His work of salvation and sanctification.

Marvelous as is this similarity between them, we must say that there are, nevertheless, certain features of the life of St. Therese that do not find a counterpart in St. John the Baptist. Their counterpart is to be found instead in the life of Our Lord.

Our Divine Saviour came upon earth, besides to redeem us, to reveal to us what His Father is like. As St. John the Evangelist said, “No one has at any time seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him.” Jesus alone was qualified to discover to us the nature of the Hidden God for He alone enjoyed the Beatific Vision while living upon earth in the quality of man. He alone could, in the events of His everyday life, and in as much as human nature was capable of it, show us what God is like. And this He did, for to the disciple, who said, “Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us”, He replied, “Philip, he who sees me sees also the Father.” It was the fact of His always gazing upon the Face of God that made Jesus to speak and act as He did, and to be what He was: “Now we are the children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be (i.e., in glory). We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3,2).

Now it was the divinely appointed task for St. Therese to reveal to us the mysteries of love hidden in the paternal Heart of Jesus Christ. It was given to her to make known the nature and extent of that love. Therese was the one who has brought to light the fullest, the most logical implication of that love. But whence derives her special competence? From her most fervent, sympathetic devotion to the Face of Christ. The gaze of her soul rested always upon that most Sacred Countenance, bruised, battered, bloody, covered and hidden by dust and sweat and tears during the hours of His most sacred Passion. It was this Holy Face that spoke to her so eloquently of the love of the Heart of Jesus, Father and Spouse. It was this blessed contemplation that was the source of her profound and dazzling insights into the nature of Jesus’ love for us. She herself tells us that after her death she would return to earth to make Love loved. But it was only because while alive, in her life and in her writings, he has made love better known.

One basic fact that we can draw from her works is that what glorifies Our Lord the most, what brings greatest joy to His heart, is that He be allowed to love. Since God is love, and He is God, Jesus has no other desire, no other inclination in our regard than to love us, that is, to enrich us and fill us with every good thing. To do that, He must communicate Himself to us, for in Him are all the wisdom and treasures of God.

In giving us free will, Our Lord has given us power of life and death over Himself, so to speak. For God to love is for God to be and to live, for God IS Love. Well, we have the power to accept Jesus’ communication of Himself to us in the gift of sanctifying grace, or to refuse it. When we accept it, we allow Our Lord, we allow the entire Trinity to live in us, to BE in us. When we refuse to remain in the state of grace, we extinguish Divine Life within us.

This fact brings in its train some truly remarkable implications. For one thing, it led St. Therese to her altogether previously unheard of concept, that of a Victim of Merciful Love. From the very wording of her act of Oblation to Merciful Love, we see that she thought of the Heart of Jesus as containing within itself a kind of fountain. From it there was continually springing up new graces, new favors, new mercies that He longed to bestow upon the souls of men, particularly on the souls of His chosen ones. But, unhappily, many of these graces were forced to remain ‘pent-up’ in His Heat, because there are so many who are not ready to receive these blessings, who are not ready to abandon themselves to Divine Providence. Thus, the Little Flower seems to have thought of these pent-up graces as exerting a pressure upon the heart of Christ, such that it caused Him great pain, and that this pain went on increasing as the number of blessings His love would invent and prepare exceeded the number of graces that were being accepted by His children, the faithful. At any rate, Therese offered herself to be one soul who was willing to accept these graces that went begging for someone to receive them. In this way she knew she would bring joy to His Heart, for thus in her He would be able to be Himself, to communicate His riches, to be Love, in other words, and this would ease the pain and repair for the injuries of His loving kindness so many refusals had inflicted upon His merciful heart.

Not the least among her penetrating insights into love was concerned with her appreciation of littleness. It is so logical we are surprised we didn’t meet it centuries earlier. Since the best way to love God is to give Him unqualified ‘permission’ to enrich us with His love, it follows that the less we have, the weaker we are, the more little we are, in other words, the more capable we are of pleasing God, in loving Him, because the smaller we are, the more we are able to receive from Him. It doesn’t seem possible to find a concept more consoling for us little folk who are so devoid of talent and virtue. Of course, what she says is not really new, for Scripture says, “God resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble.” What Therese has done is to paraphrase this in a way that is much more meaningful: “God resists (because he finds resistance in) those who are filled up with themselves, that is, who consider themselves to be replete with goodness and virtue, and communicates Himself, with all His spiritual treasures, to those who recognize and admit their littleness and lack of virtue and merit.”

As she drew closer to the summit of sanctity, St. Therese was disturbed by desires that seemed to her to be not only foolish but also unrealistic. She had ardent desires to fulfill every possible vocation in the Church, that of an Apostle, a Martyr, a Crusader, a Priest, a Prophet, a Doctor of the Church, and she desired to exercise all these vocations not merely for the limited time of a life span, nor in a limited area on the face of the globe, she wanted to exercise all of these offices for all time and in every place on earth. Not being able to rid herself of these longings, she sought an answer in Scripture and the Holy Spirit showed her how to realize them. She was granted the insight to see that since the Church is a body consisting of different members, it obviously would not lack the heart, its noblest member. Her understanding was illumined by the truth that the Heart to the Church was Love, and that if there were no love in its heart, then its life would cease, the Apostles would not preach, the martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. Then she understood that her vocation to be Love in the Heart of the Church, and in that way all her desires would be fulfilled. She would thereby be identified with every member of the Church and share in its works. In this way her vocation would transcend space and time, it would be eternal, and that all the good works performed by the Saints from one end of time to the other would be ascribed to herself, in accordance with her desires.

There is no space to speak of her insight into the value of suffering as a means of nourishing love and giving proof of love. Suffice to say, she was so enamored to pain and suffering that she began to wonder if she would be happy in heaven, since there all pain and sorrow is removed. In her, imminent suffering did not waken fear, panic and anguish of soul; rather, it made her deliriously happy. How desirable it is for us languishing in this vale of tears to participate in that love of hers for suffering. It would indeed turn this place of exile into a kind of paradise.

When all is said and done, we may say that God raised up Therese because He wanted there to be an affirmative answer, at least for our generations, perhaps for many centuries to come, to the question Our Divine Saviour posed during one of His discourses to His disciples, “When the Son of man returns, do you think He will find love upon the earth?” How fortunate we are to be little! How fortunate we are to have been born after Therese of the Child Jesus, for she has asked her Divine Spouse to choose from among the likes of us the legion of little souls worthy to be Victims of His Merciful Love, and thus it is through us, that she can and will, if we will only sit down to learn at her school, fulfill her promise to spend her heaven doing good on earth, and of returning to earth to make Love loved.

May God bless you all and make you more like the Little Flower. And please ask Him to make all of us here at Our Lady’s Hill, true Discalced Carmelites, as she was.

Cordially yours in Our Lady,

Father Bruno, OCD, Prior

[With permission of Religious]

[and Ecclesiastical Superiors ]

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Note to the Readers: 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.