Carmelite Family celebrates Foundress Day

KOTA KINABALU – The Carmelite Family – nuns, seculars and friar – celebrated the feast of St Teresa of Avila at the Carmelite Chapel here on 15 Oct 2017.

Friar Gregory Hon presided at the Mass.  It was also his 9th priestly anniversary.  He also facilitated the triduum for the feastday Oct 10-12.

After the Mass, he cut his anniversary cake at the breakfast prepared by the lay members.  Currently the lay order has three aspirants, four novices (one first year, three second year), one temporary professed and 15 definitive professed.

Born on 30 Sept 1963 in Kuala Lumpur, Hon entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD) in Singapore in 2002.  He made his first profession in 2003 and took his solemn vows on 14 Dec 2007 in Rome.  He was ordained priest on 15 Oct 2008.

In his homily, Hon gave a summary of the saint’s life and works as well as on prayer.  Limited copies of Conversation with Christ (on personal prayer by St Teresa) were immediately sold out after Mass.

Born on 28 March 1515 in Avila Spain, Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada lived in an age of exploration as well as political, social, and religious upheaval.  She was born before the Protestant Reformation and died in 1582, almost 20 years after the closing of the Council of Trent.

The gift of God to Teresa in and through which she became holy and left her mark on the Church and the world is threefold: She was a woman; she was a contemplative; she was an active reformer.

As a woman, Teresa stood on her own two feet, even in the man’s world of her time. She was “her own woman,” entering the Carmelites despite strong opposition from her father. She was a person wrapped not so much in silence as in mystery. Beautiful, talented, outgoing, adaptable, affectionate, courageous, enthusiastic, she was totally human. Like Jesus, she was a mystery of paradoxes: wise, yet practical; intelligent, yet much in tune with her experience; a mystic, yet an energetic reformer; a holy woman, a womanly woman.

Teresa was a woman “for God,” a woman of prayer, discipline, and compassion. Her heart belonged to God. Her ongoing conversion was an arduous lifelong struggle, involving ongoing purification and suffering. She was misunderstood, misjudged, and opposed in her efforts at reform. Yet she struggled on, courageous and faithful; she struggled with her own mediocrity, her illness, her opposition. And in the midst of all this she clung to God in life and in prayer. Her writings on prayer and contemplation are drawn from her experience: powerful, practical, and graceful. She was a woman of prayer; a woman for God.

Teresa was a woman “for others.” Though a contemplative, she spent much of her time and energy seeking to reform herself and the Carmelites, to lead them back to the full observance of the primitive Rule. She founded over a half-dozen new monasteries. She travelled, wrote, fought—always to renew, to reform. In her self, in her prayer, in her life, in her efforts to reform, in all the people she touched, she was a woman for others, a woman who inspired and gave life.

Her writings, especially the Way of Perfection, The Interior Castle, and Conversation with Christ have helped generations of believers.

In 1970, the Church gave her the title she had long held in the popular mind: Doctor of the Church. She and St Catherine of Siena were the first women so honoured.