“Your joy no one shall take from you.”

(Jn. 16, 22)

Dear Friends of Carmel,

The Solemnity of solemnities, the glorious feast of Easter, is upon us. It is a Feast so important, so central in God’s Holy Church, that all of the rest of the Liturgical year either leads to it, or flows from it. These are the moments that God promised at the beginning of creation upon man’s fall in the garden of Eden. They are the moments He prefigured through all of the Old Testament laws, ceremonies and feasts. For thousands of years, each Passover, the Jews sacrificed a lamb in a ceremony that typified, looked forward to, and indeed faithfully prophesied, the events of these very days, when THE Lamb of God would enter “once and for all through the greater and more perfect tabernacle…by virtue of His own blood, into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9).

Every Mass renews these events. They climax at the moment just before Holy Communion, when the priest holds up the Eucharist with the words of St. John the Baptist when he proclaimed the Savior for his disciples and for all men of all time: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29). Typified by the Jews who ate the flesh of the lamb together with unleavened bread, our unleavened bread IS the flesh of the True Lamb, and His blood is the seal upon our souls. We are united to Christ’s Sacrifice, Death, and Resurrection at every Holy Communion, and it is through this union with Him that we will experience our own resurrection: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life in him, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6).

A very Blessed Easter to all! As always, you remain in our earnest and grateful prayers.

Your Carmelite Sisters