Sr Mary McCormack OCD – Notting Hill Carmel
A Carmelite nun in the community of Notting Hill, London, and the author of the highly popular Upon This Mountain (Teresian Press), Mary McCormack has many years' experience of forming young people in religious life and of helping them discern their calling. In this helpful, penetrating article, she discusses the main signs of a Carmelite vocation – while keeping always in mind that in our search for God, it is God who has chosen us.
(This article first appeared in Mount Carmel Magazine – Quarterly review of Spiritual Life – AngloIrishProvince of Discalced Carmelites – http://www.carmelite.org.uk/acatalog/SUBSCRIPTIONS.html)
MARY MCCORMACK
A secret message
During the summer, I attended the study day that is organised annually for those who are supporters of Compass, the vocations discernment programme held at Worth Abbey. I listened to the testimonies of the four young women who had just completed the programme there. As each one spoke of her vocational journey and the part that Compass had played in the discernment process, I was struck by one thing common to all of them. Before they had ever heard of Compass, or spoken to anyone on the subject of vocation, they had at some point in their lives, perhaps very early, perhaps intermittently, felt that they wanted to give themselves to God.
Whether this embryonic attraction, as it developed, was to be confirmed as a vocation to religious life, and if so under what form, would be the work of discernment, but it was first of all conceived in the heart of the person by God"s direct action. It is God who first desires to take a fuller place in a person"s life, making it known at the level he or she can relate to at the time. In our noisy, fast-paced, materialistic world, there is little to nourish a person"s response to that secret message. Very often it flickers and is smothered. Hence the need for the many forms of vocation ministry that are taking shape today. By developing a whole culture of vocation, they create the conditions in which a person"s own sense of vocation can be more readily recognised and owned.
Attraction
God draws us by what attracts us, and one of the first indications of a vocation to Carmel will be an attraction to prayer and some desire for a deeper relationship with God. This relationship may be specifically understood as friendship with Christ or as a spousal choice of God as the one Beloved, or it may be more generally felt as a need to have God at the centre of one"s life. The desire is often awakened when a person gets to know one or other of the Carmelite saints and discovers the path of prayer through their teaching.
The essence of every religious vocation is a closer following of Christ, and the purpose of every religious Order is to manifest some aspect of the life of Christ in the Church: "Christ in contemplation on the mountain, or proclaiming the kingdom of God to the multitudes, or healing the sick and maimed and converting sinners to a good life, or blessing children and doing good to all…" The Carmelite is called to follow Christ onto "the mountain" in prayer, so as to be drawn into Christ"s intimate relationship with the Father. This is at the heart of the ministry of the friars, as it is of the cloistered life of the nuns. A drawing towards prayer, therefore, whether elementary and uncertain, or already developed through regular habit, will always be a primary element in a dawning Carmelite vocation. There may or may not be already an understanding of the value to others of one"s prayer. For St Teresa herself, this was a later development, though it was to become the identifying feature of her Reform.
Motivation
After attraction, we look for the motivation and this is always a complex area. It is not too difficult to spot, and gently discourage, the person who thinks that a life of prayer means living on some kind of spiritual cloud that floats easily above the challenge, the effort and the general messiness of everyday existence. But a person"s reasons for considering a call to Carmelite life can often be vague and inarticulate, and perhaps that is to be expected. It can take many years of living the Carmelite charism to grasp fully its unusual marriage of contemplative quiet and apostolic fire, its difficult balance of eremitic spirit within community life. Carmel is so rich in its many aspects that it is probably enough to hear an applicant say, "I feel this is where I can give myself totally to God", or "I just want a closer relationship with God". Often the person cannot identify more than that within herself or himself, still less give satisfactory answers to puzzled families or challenging peers, to say nothing of searching interviewers.
We need only read St Teresa"s own account of her vocational journey to see how her motivation matured and deepened throughout her life. Imagine the twenty-year-old Teresa de Ahumada presenting herself in any of our parlours today, expressing a fear, both of marriage and of hell, explaining that she was forcing herself to be a religious with this reasoning: "that the trials and hardships of being a nun could not be greater than those of purgatory and that I had really merited hell; that it would not be so great a thing while alive to live as though in purgatory; and that afterwards I would go directly to heaven, for that was my desire" (L 3:6). One would need to be very astute to detect the germ of future high holiness there! She would be thirty years a Carmelite before she could write: "What would it matter were I to remain in purgatory until judgment day if through my prayer I could save even one soul?" (WP 3:6). By the time she founded St Joseph"s, the first house of her Reform, her prayer had a wholly apostolic motive; and this flame became an unquenchable fire when she learned of the multitudes in the Americas who were without knowledge of Christ (cf. F 1:7).
The candidate today
In this age of superficial gratification and multiple choice, how does prayer become important in someone"s life? A person of a reflective nature may simply weary of the emptiness of so much that is on offer and begin to search for something deeper. It is often the case, though, that the space for something deeper has already been hollowed out in the person through difficult experience. If there is a background of serious pain and loss, it may be necessary to make sure that religious life is not being viewed as a way of avoiding further pain. Community living is not an answer to loneliness, and the spiritual path does not allow one to escape the demands of relationship. Commitment to a religious Order is not a security blanket in an uncertain economic climate, nor does it confer a whole new identity or status enabling one to disown the past.
In the process of careful discernment, a person may come to recognise an erroneous or inadequate motivation, and this can be a valuable stepping-stone towards addressing unresolved issues in a healthier way. In other instances it may be enough to recognise that motivation is mixed or not yet clear, and that the further work of formation will be necessary to test the genuineness of vocation. Those of us who have been many years on the Carmelite path can testify that the reality of the life of prayer under the action of God continues to be needed, so as to purify our motivation of every shade of self-seeking until we are here for God alone.
Suitability
Many people are drawn to a life of prayer and nourished by Carmelite spirituality, yet are not called to live in a Carmelite community; and so, in the time of discernment and, even more, during formation itself we look for a certain "fit". This does not mean the perfect postulant who is instantly compliant and for whom nothing is a problem. He or she should never have got as far as entering! Inevitably, in the process of real adjustment to a new way of life, there will be periods of struggle and times of uncertainty, raising the question of suitability. There will be concern if the battle becomes unremitting, causing strain, sapping energy and undermining health. One looks for storms to give way to calm and doubts to yield to a growing certainty on the part of the candidate.
The established traditions of Carmelite life can seem foreign to the modern candidate; the values presented are very different from those of today"s market-driven, target-orientated world; the demands of regular life can seem relentless. I remember one postulant suddenly waking up to what she felt was wrong: "There"s no weekend!" One can expect challenge and a healthy questioning of what we may have come to take for granted; but constant, unhappy criticism, or frustration that what is found difficult is not simply changed, may be an indication that the candidate is in the wrong place. Much patience and the readiness to engage with different views are prerequisites in guiding new entrants, but the relationship should not be a continual battleground. The readiness to listen must be mutual. A genuine aspirant will be open to learn and will, over time, show signs of growing more comfortably into the life as it is presented.
If the novitiate is doing its work, emotional issues will arise over time, as the candidate settles and begins to feel more secure. This is a most delicate aspect of formation, requiring sensitive accompaniment, and there are three acceptable outcomes. One is that the surfacing of past trauma may become so overwhelming that it is clear that the intensity of religious life is aggravating a situation that may be better dealt with back in society, where it can be taken more slowly amid helpful diversion. The second is that the person may be enabled to recognise that neglected or repressed aspects of life have still to be dealt with, and that negotiating these is a necessary step towards maturity before a religious vocation can be authentically considered. And the third outcome is when, happily, the candidate may, with suitable support, be able to come to terms with painful realities of the past, and integrate them into a growing self-knowledge and understanding of vocation. Evidence of this will be a capacity to sustain a normal degree of personal solitude, and at the same time to establish healthy community relationships.
(This article first appeared in Mount Carmel Magazine – Quarterly review of Spiritual Life – AngloIrishProvince of Discalced Carmelites – http://www.carmelite.org.uk/acatalog/SUBSCRIPTIONS.html)
MARY MCCORMACK
A secret message
During the summer, I attended the study day that is organised annually for those who are supporters of Compass, the vocations discernment programme held at Worth Abbey. I listened to the testimonies of the four young women who had just completed the programme there. As each one spoke of her vocational journey and the part that Compass had played in the discernment process, I was struck by one thing common to all of them. Before they had ever heard of Compass, or spoken to anyone on the subject of vocation, they had at some point in their lives, perhaps very early, perhaps intermittently, felt that they wanted to give themselves to God.
Whether this embryonic attraction, as it developed, was to be confirmed as a vocation to religious life, and if so under what form, would be the work of discernment, but it was first of all conceived in the heart of the person by God"s direct action. It is God who first desires to take a fuller place in a person"s life, making it known at the level he or she can relate to at the time. In our noisy, fast-paced, materialistic world, there is little to nourish a person"s response to that secret message. Very often it flickers and is smothered. Hence the need for the many forms of vocation ministry that are taking shape today. By developing a whole culture of vocation, they create the conditions in which a person"s own sense of vocation can be more readily recognised and owned.
Attraction
God draws us by what attracts us, and one of the first indications of a vocation to Carmel will be an attraction to prayer and some desire for a deeper relationship with God. This relationship may be specifically understood as friendship with Christ or as a spousal choice of God as the one Beloved, or it may be more generally felt as a need to have God at the centre of one"s life. The desire is often awakened when a person gets to know one or other of the Carmelite saints and discovers the path of prayer through their teaching.
The essence of every religious vocation is a closer following of Christ, and the purpose of every religious Order is to manifest some aspect of the life of Christ in the Church: "Christ in contemplation on the mountain, or proclaiming the kingdom of God to the multitudes, or healing the sick and maimed and converting sinners to a good life, or blessing children and doing good to all…" The Carmelite is called to follow Christ onto "the mountain" in prayer, so as to be drawn into Christ"s intimate relationship with the Father. This is at the heart of the ministry of the friars, as it is of the cloistered life of the nuns. A drawing towards prayer, therefore, whether elementary and uncertain, or already developed through regular habit, will always be a primary element in a dawning Carmelite vocation. There may or may not be already an understanding of the value to others of one"s prayer. For St Teresa herself, this was a later development, though it was to become the identifying feature of her Reform.
Motivation
After attraction, we look for the motivation and this is always a complex area. It is not too difficult to spot, and gently discourage, the person who thinks that a life of prayer means living on some kind of spiritual cloud that floats easily above the challenge, the effort and the general messiness of everyday existence. But a person"s reasons for considering a call to Carmelite life can often be vague and inarticulate, and perhaps that is to be expected. It can take many years of living the Carmelite charism to grasp fully its unusual marriage of contemplative quiet and apostolic fire, its difficult balance of eremitic spirit within community life. Carmel is so rich in its many aspects that it is probably enough to hear an applicant say, "I feel this is where I can give myself totally to God", or "I just want a closer relationship with God". Often the person cannot identify more than that within herself or himself, still less give satisfactory answers to puzzled families or challenging peers, to say nothing of searching interviewers.
We need only read St Teresa"s own account of her vocational journey to see how her motivation matured and deepened throughout her life. Imagine the twenty-year-old Teresa de Ahumada presenting herself in any of our parlours today, expressing a fear, both of marriage and of hell, explaining that she was forcing herself to be a religious with this reasoning: "that the trials and hardships of being a nun could not be greater than those of purgatory and that I had really merited hell; that it would not be so great a thing while alive to live as though in purgatory; and that afterwards I would go directly to heaven, for that was my desire" (L 3:6). One would need to be very astute to detect the germ of future high holiness there! She would be thirty years a Carmelite before she could write: "What would it matter were I to remain in purgatory until judgment day if through my prayer I could save even one soul?" (WP 3:6). By the time she founded St Joseph"s, the first house of her Reform, her prayer had a wholly apostolic motive; and this flame became an unquenchable fire when she learned of the multitudes in the Americas who were without knowledge of Christ (cf. F 1:7).
The candidate today
In this age of superficial gratification and multiple choice, how does prayer become important in someone"s life? A person of a reflective nature may simply weary of the emptiness of so much that is on offer and begin to search for something deeper. It is often the case, though, that the space for something deeper has already been hollowed out in the person through difficult experience. If there is a background of serious pain and loss, it may be necessary to make sure that religious life is not being viewed as a way of avoiding further pain. Community living is not an answer to loneliness, and the spiritual path does not allow one to escape the demands of relationship. Commitment to a religious Order is not a security blanket in an uncertain economic climate, nor does it confer a whole new identity or status enabling one to disown the past.
In the process of careful discernment, a person may come to recognise an erroneous or inadequate motivation, and this can be a valuable stepping-stone towards addressing unresolved issues in a healthier way. In other instances it may be enough to recognise that motivation is mixed or not yet clear, and that the further work of formation will be necessary to test the genuineness of vocation. Those of us who have been many years on the Carmelite path can testify that the reality of the life of prayer under the action of God continues to be needed, so as to purify our motivation of every shade of self-seeking until we are here for God alone.
Suitability
Many people are drawn to a life of prayer and nourished by Carmelite spirituality, yet are not called to live in a Carmelite community; and so, in the time of discernment and, even more, during formation itself we look for a certain "fit". This does not mean the perfect postulant who is instantly compliant and for whom nothing is a problem. He or she should never have got as far as entering! Inevitably, in the process of real adjustment to a new way of life, there will be periods of struggle and times of uncertainty, raising the question of suitability. There will be concern if the battle becomes unremitting, causing strain, sapping energy and undermining health. One looks for storms to give way to calm and doubts to yield to a growing certainty on the part of the candidate.
The established traditions of Carmelite life can seem foreign to the modern candidate; the values presented are very different from those of today"s market-driven, target-orientated world; the demands of regular life can seem relentless. I remember one postulant suddenly waking up to what she felt was wrong: "There"s no weekend!" One can expect challenge and a healthy questioning of what we may have come to take for granted; but constant, unhappy criticism, or frustration that what is found difficult is not simply changed, may be an indication that the candidate is in the wrong place. Much patience and the readiness to engage with different views are prerequisites in guiding new entrants, but the relationship should not be a continual battleground. The readiness to listen must be mutual. A genuine aspirant will be open to learn and will, over time, show signs of growing more comfortably into the life as it is presented.
If the novitiate is doing its work, emotional issues will arise over time, as the candidate settles and begins to feel more secure. This is a most delicate aspect of formation, requiring sensitive accompaniment, and there are three acceptable outcomes. One is that the surfacing of past trauma may become so overwhelming that it is clear that the intensity of religious life is aggravating a situation that may be better dealt with back in society, where it can be taken more slowly amid helpful diversion. The second is that the person may be enabled to recognise that neglected or repressed aspects of life have still to be dealt with, and that negotiating these is a necessary step towards maturity before a religious vocation can be authentically considered. And the third outcome is when, happily, the candidate may, with suitable support, be able to come to terms with painful realities of the past, and integrate them into a growing self-knowledge and understanding of vocation. Evidence of this will be a capacity to sustain a normal degree of personal solitude, and at the same time to establish healthy community relationships.
The experience of the community itself, at every stage of discernment, is crucially important. Negative indications would be a persistent unease or tension in dealing with a candidate, a sense that the person always remains unknown, or a feeling that he or she has to be approached with caution. Those who can be absorbed, over time, into the rough and tumble of community life, and are felt to make their own unique contribution, are most likely to become permanent members, warts and all.*
The end takes us again to the starting point. At every stage of the way, a genuine vocation will be found to be grounded in that first gaze of God resting upon us – who knows why? A contemporary poet, Lucy Beckett, expresses it beautifully in the poem "Monks Renew their Vows": "he…has seen you as you sat under a fig tree and not let you be".***********************
