Vocations Page
 
Welcome
to the vocations page of the
Discalced Carmelite Friars
of England and Wales.
 
It's here that you'll find some information about the way of life of a Friar, our formation programme and our prayer.
 
You'll find more information through the links which are listed elsewhere in this site.
 
 
Please get in touch if there's more you would like to know about us or if you would like to make contact with a member of our vocations team Fr. Philip McParland O.C.D.
 
Carmelite Life
The Carmelite life is a way of intimacy with Jesus. Through our prayer and our service of others we seek to become more like Jesus, our Master and our Friend. Our goal is to want only what God wants for us and to strive to discern His will and then to live it.
 
In our history we began in silent prayer on Mount Carmel. It is in prayer that we rediscover every day who we are. We are God's children, loved, forgiven and called to share in Christ's mission, making known our Father's loving compassion, the compassion we ourselves have first discovered in Jesus.
 
St. Teresa and St. John were passionate in their prayer, tireless in their work yet always deeply human in their friendships and their love of God's creation.
 
St. Teresa knew that loving God didn't consist in just warm spiritual feelings or mystical visions. Real love is shown in the way we live, in the way we treat our brothers and sisters. Community is the place where our love is tested and purified. We live together as brothers, sharing our prayer and our ministry, seeking to be a living witness to the values of the Kingdom of God.
 
Carmelite Friars are found today throughout the world. There are many different Provinces together numbering over 4,500 men, and the numbers responding to this call are growing steadily.
 
In England we have four communities: Kensington, Gerrards Cross (Berks), Oxford and Preston. Our ministry is varied and includes leading retreats, guiding people in their prayer, missionary work, parish ministry and collaborating with our Secular Order and Carmelite Sisters.
 
England forms a Region within the Anglo-Irish Province of Discalced Carmelites. This Province also has houses in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Australia and Nigeria.
 
Discernment and Formation

The call to follow Christ is lived in many ways. There are many "charisms" in the Church, ways in which the Holy Spirit has called men and women to live out the Gospel message. Many people are being called today to respond to God's generous love through the Religious Life

Carmelites take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to help us grow in our freedom to serve God and our neighbour. This way of life forces us to confront our real needs, to know ourselves and to learn to place our trust in God's providential love for us. It isn't an easy way of life but thousands of men and women still discover in Carmel a way of freedom and peace, a life of intimate joy with Christ.
 
Formation Accompaniment
Every Christian has a vocation. We are all called by Christ to follow him in service and love. It takes time and help to discover the Christian way of life that's right for you. Through spiritual direction and visiting our communities the choice of whether or not to become a Carmelite Friar can become clearer. Any decision can only be taken with prayer, self-knowledge and generosity to God's will for you.
 
Postulancy
After a process of discernment a period of postulancy takes place. This is a time to live in one of our communities in a less formal way, perhaps working outside the community. It is intended to make the transition from one way of life to another a little easier. At the moment our postulant house is in Preston, Lancashire.
 
Novitiate
"A year and a day" is spent in prayer, manual work and study of the traditions of the Order, closely accompanied by the novice master and the novitiate community. It is a time to learn how to live without some of the supports wmight have grown to depend on but might be holding us back from deepening our trust in God. At the completion of this year the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are taken for one year to be renewed annually for about five years when Final Profession of Vows may be taken. The novitiate house for the Anglo-Irish Province is in our community in Boars Hill, Oxford.
 
Studies
All our candidates spend several years of study to equip them for their life in the Order and our ministry. Many choose to study philosophy and theology in preparation for Ordination. Brothers who will not become priests take courses that will deepen their understanding of the faith and our tradition and help them contribute to our ministry of prayer and service. Our candidates for priesthood are presently based in Dublin, Ireland.
 
Ongoing Formation
Our whole way of life as Carmelites is ordered to ensure that we are always open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our greatest teacher. Many Friars take further courses of spirituality or scripture to aid the teaching of prayer, our retreat ministry, and the work of spiritual direction. All our God-given talents should be developed and used in the service of God's Kingdom.
If you would like to know more about our way of life please get in touch with me at the address below.
 
Fr. Philip McParland, O.C.D.
Carmelite Priory
Boars Hill
Oxford
OX1 5HB
e-mail:Fr. Philip McParland O.C.D.
 
From the Writings of St. Teresa of Jesus
 
Way of Perfection Cpt. 26
As you are alone, look for a companion and where will you find a better Companion than the Master who teaches you the Our Father, the prayer you are about to say? Think of this Lord as at your side, teaching you so lovingly and humbly. Believe me, you should stay with a Friend like this for as long as you possibly can. If you form the habit of remembering that He is always at your side, and He sees that you love His companionship and are always intent on pleasing Him, it will become impossible for you ever to send Him away and He will never let you down. He will be there, helping you to bear your trials and you will find Him everywhere. Do you consider it a small thing to have such a Friend as this at your side.
 
Exclamations 7
When I remember how You say that You find Your delights with Your human children, I am filled with joy … When Your Son was baptized, Your voice was heard declaring that You delighted in Him. Is it really true that You delight in us as in Him? Rejoice, my heart, that there is One Who Loves your God as He deserves. Rejoice that there is One Who fully knows His goodness and how great He is. Thank Him, my heart, for having given to our earth One who really knows Him - His only Son. With His protection you can approach His Majesty and entreat Him, that, since He delights in you, He will ensure that nothing on earth will deter you from finding all your delight in Him.
 
Interior Castle M 1 c 1
We so rarely reflect on the riches within our souls, who dwells there, or how precious they are, and so do little to preserve their beauty… As far as I can understand, the gateway to this castle is prayer and meditation. I am not referring only to mental prayer, for vocal prayer if genuine is necessarily meditative. If we do not reflect on Whom we are addressing and what we are asking for and what we are who are doing the asking and the nature of the One whom we ask then I cannot think we are praying at all even though our lips are busy mouthing prayers. It is true that sometimes we can pray without specifically averting to these things but that is because they have been carefully considered beforehand. But merely to utter words that we know by heart and that readily spring to the lips, that is not prayer - and God grant that none of us Christians ever speaks to God like that!
 
Letter to Don Teutonion de Braganza, 3rd July 1574
Don't take any notice of the impulse to give up in the middle of prayer time, just be grateful for the desire to pray which is God's gift. Your inmost heart loves to be with God but feelings of sadness and depression weigh you down and give you a sense of constraint. When you feel like this, try to find a place where you can see the sky and walk up and down a little; that won't interfere with your prayer in the least. We are human and have to handle our frailty carefully so that we do not overburden ourselves. Our hearts are seeking God all the time, and we seek the means that best lead us to Him. Our soul needs gentle treatment.
 
Letter to Fr. Jerome Gratian, 23rd October, 1576
The prayer that is most efficacious and pleasing to God is the one that yields results. I do not mean that, there and then, we should feel fervent desires, for, although felt desires are good, our self-love can easily overestimate them. The best effects, in my opinion, are those followed by actions, so that we do not merely desire the honour of God but really work for it, and use our minds thinking out how best to please Him and show Him our love more and more. Even if at prayer I am pestered by severe temptations and aridities and these make me more humble, I count it good prayer, for what I mean by the best prayer is that which pleases God most. We must not think that because we suffer in prayer we are not praying. Our very sufferings are a prayer-offering and we may well be praying much better than if we went off into a corner and cracked our brains in meditation.
 
Life Cpt. 22
In the beginning, when I had begun to make a little progress in prayer … I thought I had a sense of the presence of God … This sort of prayer is often sweet and delightful. And so, because I was conscious of the profit and delight it afforded, no one could have brought me back to contemplation of the Sacred Humanity; for that seemed to me to be a real hindrance to prayer… O lord, what an evil way I took! and I was straying from the way if You had not brought me back to it. When I see that You are near me, trials are easy to bear … He helps, He strengthens, He never fails, He is the true Friend. I see clearly, and since then have always seen, that if we are to please God and receive His great graces, everything must pass through the hands of His most Sacred Humanity … this is the door by which we are to enter, if we would have His supreme Majesty reveal to us His great secrets.
 
Way of Perfection Cpt. 21
You must not be dismayed at the number of things you have to consider before setting out on this Divine journey which is the royal road to Heaven. We gain such riches on this road that it is no wonder that the cost seems high. One day we shall realize that the price we have paid is simply nothing at all compared with the prize we have won. It is of the utmost importance - I cannot stress this enough - that those who wish to take this road in order to drink of the water of life, must make a good beginning by resolving with a most determined determination never to stop until they reach their goal; come what may, whatever happens to them, whether they reach their goal or die on the road, or feel they no longer have heart to face the trials they meet with; even if the world should crumble under their feet.
 
Life Cpt. 11
What can You do my Lord, that is not for the greater good of a soul that You know already belongs to You and which give itself up to You, to follow You wherever You go, even to the death of the cross; one who is determined to help You carry that cross and not leave you alone with it? Such a one has nothing to fear. No, no, spiritual people have nothing to fear … Close the eyes of your imagination, and do not ask why God gives devotion to this person in so short a time, and none to me after so many years. We must believe that all is for our greater good; let His majesty guide us whithersoever He will: we do not belong to ourselves but to God. It is privilege enough to be allowed to dig in God's garden and to be so near its owner. God is certainly near to us.
 
Foundations Cpt. 5
Wherein lies the highest perfection? Clearly, not in interior consolations and raptures, nor in visions or the spirit of prophecy, but in the conforming of our will to the will of God, so that there shall be nothing we know God wills that we do not wholeheartedly will ourselves, accepting the bitter as joyfully as the sweet since we know it to be God's will. This seems hard - not the mere doing of it, but the being pleased in the doing of what is repugnant in every way to our natural will. It is hard, certainly, but love, if perfect, is strong enough to do it and we forget our own pleasure in order to please God who loves us so much … our sufferings, no matter how great, become sweet when we know that we are pleasing God.
 
Interior Castle M 7 Cpt 4
Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be important to you. If His Majesty showed His love for us by what He did, expressing it in suffering beyond words, how can you think to please Him with words alone? Do you know what it is to be truly spiritual? It is to become a slave of God, branded with His seal, the sign of the Cross, a token that we have handed ourselves over to Him. He is free therefore, to sell us as slaves to the whole world, just as He was, and be doing us no wrong thereby, but rather a favour. During the whole of this short life, which may be much shorter for any of you that you think, we must offer our Lord every possible sacrifice, interior or exterior, and His Majesty will unite our offering with the offering He made of Himself to the Father on the Cross.
 
Foundations Cpt. 5
It is in the midst of temptation that love is known, not in secret places; and believe me, our gain will be incomparably greater, though there may be more faults and even some tumbles … We come to know what we are, and whether our virtues are real. Someone always alone, no matter how holy he imagines himself to be, cannot possible know whether he is patient and humble and has no means of knowing. O my God, if we only knew how wretched we are! … I consider one day of humbling self-knowledge, whatever the sorrow and distress it has caused us, to be a greater grace of our Lord than many days of prayer. However, a true lover loves all the time and is always remembering the beloved. It would be a sad thing if we could pray only in secret places. I see now that I cannot be alone for many hours. But, O my Lord! how mighty before You is a single sigh rising up from the heart…!
 
Way of Perfection Cpt. 41
A spiritual person, no matter how good, will not attract others and lead them to God if seen as narrow-minded and timorous. These characteristics put people off, they feel oppressed and frightened. And another thing is that we may be critical of others, holier than ourselves, because they do not act in the same way as we do … Try … to be as gracious as you can to people without displeasing God in any way, so that they enjoy talking to you and are drawn to go your way and be like you, and not be frightened by an austere face on virtue … The holier people are, the more friendly they should be with their associates, even though they are not happy with their behaviour and conversation. Do not keep aloof. You won't help them in that way. We must try hard to be pleasant and get people to like us so that they are drawn to love God. God, you know, is not small-minded.
 
Relations 2
I think I have received, as so far as I can judge, a greater spiritual liberty. Hitherto, I though I had need of others, and relied more on worldly helps. Now I clearly perceive that human beings are like bunches of dried rosemary, and that it is not safe to lean on them. If they are pressed down by things going wrong or malicious talk, they snap to pieces. And so I know now by experience that those only way not to fall is to cling to the cross and trust in Him who was nailed to it. He is my real Friend and, cleaving to Him, I find myself so strong that, so long as God never fails me, I think I could withstand the whole world if it were against me.
 
Let nothing disturb you, let nothing make you afraid;
all things pass, God remains.
Be patient, and you will attain your heart's desire.
With God your own, you lack nothing, God alone is enough.
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