This short video-clip was filmed in Alhambra and San Jose/San Francisco, California during the visit of the walking staff of St. Teresa. This video was filmed by the people traveling with the walking staff that is making its way around the world. The presentation in this video of Carmelite spirituality is very good. The whole Carmelite Order is celebrating the 500th Centenary of St. Teresa’s birth this year.
In order to bring peace to others we need to be first grounded in it our own hearts. Peace comes from order, from a well-ordered life, one lived where everything is directed toward God. When all disorder is removed from the heart and all our desires, thoughts, words and deeds are fully ordered toward God following His commands, doing His will, then we possess peace and radiate peace to others.
Once we posses this peace, continue to take care to remain in this peace, and spread peace to those around us – we can be called a peacemaker.
Nothing disturbs a peacemaker because a peacemaker knows that all things are permitted by God and work out for our good.
To cultivate peace and become a peacemaker we need to persevere in prayer, that intimate dialogue with God, and surrender completely with trust to His Holy will.
The fruit of this relationship with God is a calm interior peace, seeing God in all things, even hardships and suffering without being disturbed or upset, and with the ability to see God in all. Another fruit of this peace is seen in relationship with others. All are seen as children of God, all are loved and the peaceful soul wishes good to all and wants to live in peace with them.
“Our God is the God of peace; therefore, it is perfectly right that the peaceful man, he who possess and diffuses peace, should feel in a very special way that he is God’s child. If men generally do not feel themselves to be children of God, it is because they are so little disposed to peace, so ready for disputes, quarrels and war. They talk about peace but do not make peace, for they do not accept the guidance of the Spirit of Wisdom. In their ignorance they prefer to be guided by themselves, and as a result they are dominated by pride, self-interest, and cupidity; they live in disorder and they sow disorder around them.
The more our soul becomes firmly established in peace, and the more we become messengers of peace, to that degree will the Holy Spirit infuse into us this delightful sense of our divine sonship and this will become for us a source of immense happiness, a true prelude to eternal beatitude.” (Divine Intimacy, #314, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD)
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt 5:9)
In his hidden life, Our Lord’s humility is evident by his poverty and obedience.He was submissive to the will of the Father and left his exalted position to become a little baby. His self-effacement remained during his entire life as a man. He lived in a poor estate,often the object of ingratitude and suffered uncomplainingly. As a child he submitted to his earthly parents and was obedient to them.
When he began his public life proclaiming by word and deed that he was the Son of God, he did so in a discreet, clear manner and spoke in a way to reach the minds of all people of good will. He was totally forgetful of himself, always thinking of others. He surrounded himself with ignorant and unrefined people. Because of this he was little esteemed. This fact is so counter to the actions of the proud. Jesus showed preference to those the world despises: the poor, the afflicted, little children, and those the world disowns. When he taught, he made sure his teaching was plain and simple. Therefore, he was in no way seeking the admiration of others.
Jesus did not engage in calculated acts of austerity. He simply ate what everyone else was eating, he attends a wedding, and was a frequent guest at banquets. He shunned popularity, often having to slip away to avoid the praise and exaltation of the crowds. This was most evident when the people wanted to make him king.
He was totally dependent on God the Father. He did nothing of himself, but only out of submissiveness to his Father. When he spoke it was only to give expression to some doctrine. He never sought his own glory but only that of his Father.
In his passion, he is a man of sorrow. Wearied and betrayed by his friends, he bears the outrages that are mounded upon him. Even though deserted by his friends, he still loves them. He suffers all sorts of insults and offenses and does so in silence. Verbally abused and defamed, he doesn’t justify himself. Even when treated like a fool, he utters not a word. Unjustly condemned, and still he says nothing. Those to whom he had done so much good choose a murder instead. He allows himself to be physically mistreated: whipped, crowned with thorns, mocked and crucified – all without complaint.
Sneered at and insulted by those who hated him, he prays for them and makes excuses for them before his Father. Abandoned by his followers, deprived of his dignity as a man, stripped of his reputation and honor, he surrenders to it all for love of sinful man.
And the kings have a special meaning for us, too. Even though we already belong to the external church, an interior impulse nevertheless drove us out of the circle of inherited viewpoints and conventions. We knew God, but we felt that he desired to be sought and found by us in a new way. Therefore we wanted to open ourselves and sought for a star to show us the right way. And it arose for us in the grace of vocation. We followed it and found the divine infant. He stretched out his hand for our gifts. He wanted the pure gold of a heart detached from all earthly goods; the myrrh of a renunciation of all the happiness of this world in exchange for participation in the life and suffering of Jesus; the frankincense of a will that surrenders itself and strains upward to lose itself in the divine will. In return for these gifts, the divine child gave us himself.
a solitary bird 