“My Kingdom is not of this world.”

(Jn. 18:36 )

Dear Friends of Carmel,

Inexpressible joy belongs to Christians today.  Sublime happiness radiates from the realms of Heaven.  For many ages, the Chosen People looked forward to and typified the coming of the Savior, longing and praying for this day.  Each year, eating the Paschal lamb and taking part in the sacrifices of the temple, they hardly discerned their meaning and what it all signified.  Then the day and the moment finally came; that moment that fulfilled all prophecy:  the Son of God made man, God Incarnate, offered His life to the Father for the Redemption of mankind.  This was the moment that changed and re-directed the course of history.  The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom – and the chains of death and the bonds of sin were broken.  Heaven’s gates opened out to souls once again.  The Lamb of God – the true and only Lamb of God – was sacrificed.  “The new and eternal testament” had begun.  

And on this day, all these ages later, in our own sacred Liturgy – the mysterious and true fulfillment of the temple sacrifice – we reach back in time in order to renew and re-live that very moment.  Through it, we are united to Our Savior’s glorious death and victory, for all members of the Lord’s Body must follow in His path:

“Per tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus, Ad lucem quam inhabitas.”

Through Your ways lead us to where we are going, to the light in which You dwell!”

(Hymn: Panis Angelicus)

In present days, Christ’s Mystical Body endures a passion of its own – yet wholly one with His.  We see in the world Holy Mother Church, mocked, persecuted, distorted … abandoned.  We see the Pontius Pilates of the world, the Judases among us, and we hear the jeering crowd who would see her put to death – put to death in her dogmas, her morals, her ceremonies and her authority.  We see opposition on so many fronts and from so many directions that “Christians are always in the crosshairs” of the events of this world.  And it would seem that on all fronts the enemies are triumphing!  But: “the gates of hell shall not prevail (Mt. 16:18).”  For we have the Paschal flame in our hands.  We have washed our souls in the Blood of the Lamb and have eaten of His Pasch.  We have followed His command – “Do this in memory of Me (Lk.22:19) ….He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood will have life everlasting and I will raise him up on the last day (Jn. 6:55).”  We know that the angel of death will pass over.  And we know, just as we are participating in the glorious Resurrection of our Head, that someday, at another moment in the time to come, we will experience not only our own resurrection, but the resurrection of Holy Mother Church, Christ’s Mystical Body.  Surely, it will be all the more glorious for her dolorous passion.

The “Christus candle,” which reappears at the end of Tenebrae, is another Liturgical image of the Resurrection.

Today’s liturgy not only reaches back, but also, in the agelessness that is God, it reaches out ahead to a foretaste of that ultimate victory as well!  Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and neither is ours.  If it were, these things would not be coming to pass…these trials, these crucifixions, great and small, that we all experience – in our individual, personal lives, as well as in the Mystical Body as a whole.  Our eyes must be on Heaven today, the homeland that was opened to us!  

Alleluia!  What words can express it?  We pray this joy to overflow into your souls today!  May that light of Heaven, the Light of the Risen One Himself, shine in your lives, enlighten the darkness, and give to us all that foretaste of the inevitable victory that will surely come.  

In Christ and His rejoicing Mother,

Your Carmelite Sisters