Cloistered Carmel

Within the broader family of Carmel, the Discalced Carmelite Nuns stand in a tradition of women called to live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ, following the example of Saint Teresa.They commit their entire lives to God, as a radical response to his call. They believe that prayer is a powerful and effective response to the needs of the human family.The Discalced Carmelite nuns live, work and pray together witnessing to the reality of God and his love for the world. At the heart of each day, is the celebration of the Eucharist and the sisters also recite the Divine Office and spend two one-hour periods in silent prayer.Their deep experience of God is converted into the foundation of their ministry –an apostolate of spiritual commitment to the intentions of the Church and an apostolate of witness. The community plays a special role in the Discalced Carmel, since it is a space for communion between the sisters. The Discalced Carmelite nuns form a tiny college of Christ, where a strong family atmosphere is found in the valuable Teresian recreation. According to Canon Law, the community is completely autonomous and the Law gives the monastery a suiiuris status (cf. can. 613).In daily life, the nuns join fervent prayer with manual work. This work includes not only the usual domestic duties, but also work designed to obtain funds for their maintenance: e.g. baking hosts, embroidering liturgical items or painting icons. Now there more than thousand Cloistered Carmels in the world and around 12000 sisters. In India there are 34 Carmels with around 600 sisters. They live treading the path of St. Teresa, together with the host other heroic saints like St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Edith Stein, St. Teresa de los Andes, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity and so on. Their life is inspired by the desire “to see God” which is realized through regular contemplative prayer that becomes a life style and the ecclesial apostolic zeal as “daughters of the Church” expressed in the prayer as the ministry and mission for the edification of the Church. Through the Cloister they identify themselves with Jesus who through incarnation limited his existence geographically, socially, politically, physically, culturally to the cloister of Palestine in order to save the whole world.