- Teresian Ideal
The Reform of our holy Mother Teresa de Jesus gave back to the Primitive Rule of Carmel what had been taken from it. "La Madre" gave the Order its definitive form and truly its soul - orienting it back towards its end by accentuating the contemplative tendency, and San Juan dela Cruz did the same. The Teresian Carmelite Reform stated precisely the mission of Carmel. It was for this that St. Teresa suffered so much, that our holy Father John of the Cross was almost put to death. It is this Rule which makes us truly children of our holy Mother Teresa of Jesus and of our holy Father John of the Cross, which really makes us Carmelites. This Rule then ought to dominate, to command the Constitutions, the customs; this is the law, the norm, the judiciary criterion which enables us to judge whether or not the novelties since Vatican II 'updating' are according to the Order; "if they are not conformable to the Rule, it is not good, it must be suppressed!" (Fr. Jerome of the Mother of God, C.D.)
"I cannot think why we should be astonished at all the evils which exist in the Church, when those who ought to be models on which all may pattern their virtues are nullifying the work wrought in the religious Orders by the spirit of the Saints of old....
This [is]... a great pity... when a monastery follows standards and allows recreations which belong to the world... Many... are to be pitied: they wish to escape from the world, and, thinking that they are going to serve the Lord and flee from the world and its perils, they find themselves in ten worlds at once... Youth, sensuality and the devil invite and incline them to do things which are completely worldly; and they see that these things are... [naturally] 'all right'. To me, in some ways, they resemble those unhappy ['Bible-only'] heretics, who wilfully blind themselves and proclaim that what they do is good; and believe it to be so, yet without real confidence, for there is something within them that tells them they are doing wrong" (Vida, Ch. VII).
Secundum Verbum
Be it done to me according to your word.
(Lk. 1.38)
In keeping then with the Rule which bids us "Let all you do have the Lord’s word for accompaniment," we follow the traditional pre-Vatican II religious discipline and ceremonial of the "Order of the Virgin" (Our Lord to St. Teresa), drawing only from its same sane traditional source of holy noursihment - the Tridentine Rite of the Liturgy (the Missal - una cum... Pontifice Benedicto XVI - and the Divine Office according to the norms of Divino Afflatu of Pope St. Pius X) - as is the desire of God's Heart:
