Invitation to Prayer

To all the Order of the Teresian Carmel, Nuns, Friars, Secular Carmel, family, friends, associated congregations and groups:

HAPPY FEAST OF SAINT TERESA OF JESUS, our mother.

As one heart and one soul, rooted in Teresa’s passion for Jesus, for the Church, for humanity, we unite all together without delay, without withdrawal, with determined determination to follow the Captain of Love, Christ and to pray for Peace.

Today Teresa’s words are more meaningful and more heartfelt: “The world is on fire… this is no time to treat with God for things of little importance”. (Way of perfection 1,5).

Today Teresa’s transverberated heart for the passion of Jesus becomes in each one of us a heart pierced and wounded by the evils and sufferings of the world. Today the ecstasy and union with God becomes an embrace of every human being threatened, mistreated and displaced by the cruelty of war. Our prayer leaves no one out, it excludes none of God’s sons and daughters.

I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to pray in truth, justice and Peace, for the halt of all violence and the surrender of arms. We pray together that the destructive forces of evil and vengeance may be transformed into expansive seeds of new life. May the deadly virus of hatred within the hearts of many may transform into an antidote of reconciliation and hope.

I invite you all, brothers and sisters, to transform the rage and horror for every dead child, for every abused elderly person, for every displaced family, for every mutilated body, for every abandoned child, to transform all this pain into a relentless struggle for a new world.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem has invited us all to a day of prayer and fasting. Next Tuesday, the 17th, we will join in this cry for Peace in the land of Jesus. With the Palestinian people and with the Jewish people. Those who pray together are sowing peace. And may this peace begin in the heart of each one of us, in our communities and families.

Let us light a candle of Peace in our communities and homes as a sign of that light which is not overcome by the darkness of this world. Let us humbly and courageously light, with everyone, a hopeful cry for peace, the fruit of justice and truth.

With Mary and Joseph, let us join hands and hearts in a silence of communion. With Teresa of Jesus and all the Saints of Carmel. With Edith Stein, Jewish Carmelite who died in Auschwitz and with Mariam Bahuardi, daughter of the Palestinian land, martyr of love for Jesus and humanity. Edith and Mariam, daughters of Teresa of Jesus, enlighten our way towards a promised land of brothers and sisters.

To all, brothers and sisters, my blessings and my kiss of peace.

On the 17th of October 2023, next Tuesday, our lamps and hearts United, lit for Peace.

15th October 2023

fr Miguel Márquez Calle

Father General ocd

Originally shared at General Curia of the Teresian Carmel