Nobody lives in this shining house but God,

though shadowy figures tremble to and fro.

Over these cool grey stones that suffering made

only the pierced feet of the Master go.

Afire went through this place and gutted it;

a living flame of love

over the ruins a fog of silence spread.

Nobody comes here but the pale young Christ

Who loves a shelter uninhabited

– Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers Edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau. ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE Washington, DC 20002-1199 Reprint of the most extensive anthology of this noted Carmelite poet, which she approved five weeks before her death. Includes introduction by Bishop Morneau.

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The saints and mystics
Had a name
For that deep
Inwardness of flame,
The height or depth
Or ground or goal
Which is God’s dwelling in the soul.
Heaven
Because God is there
All day and when
You wake at night
Think of that place
Of living light,
Yours and within you
And aglow
Where only God
And you can go.
None can assail you
In that place
Save your own evil,
Routing grace.
Not even angels
See or hear,
Nor the dark spirits
Prowling near.
But there are days
when watching eyes
could guess that you
hold Paradise.
Sometimes the shining
Overflows
And everyone
Around you knows.
Child has no one ever told you
God is in your soul.

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers  Edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau.  ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE  Washington, DC 20002-1199  Reprint of the most extensive anthology of this noted Carmelite poet, which she approved five weeks before her death. Includes introduction by Bishop Morneau.

time – 4:00

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There was nothing in the Virgin’s soul


that belonged to the Virgin–


no word, no thought, no image, no intent.


She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting


God, only God.


She held His burnished day; she held His night


of planet-glow or shade inscrutable.


God was her sky and she who mirrored Him


became His firmament.



When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her


my spirit is enisled in her repose.


And when I gaze into her selfless depths


an anguish in me grows


to hold such blueness and to hold such fire.


I pray to hollow out my earth and be 


filled with these waters of transparency.


I think that one could die of this desire,


seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod.


Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin,


water that lost the semblances of water


and was a sky like God.

– Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers)

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers  Edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau.  ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE  Washington, DC 20002-1199  Reprint of the most extensive anthology of this noted Carmelite poet, which she approved five weeks before her death. Includes introduction by Bishop Morneau.

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St. Teresa of the Andes

Letter # 141 to Amelia Montt Martinez

October, 1919

“May the grace of the Holy Spirit be with your soul.

There are only a few more days left before my taking the habit.  And the days seem so long while I wait to be clothes with it.

I am the happiest person with my vocation and never tire of thanking God for having brought me to this little corner of heaven.  I live for God alone.  My soul concern is to know Him that I may love Him more.  I have begun the life of heaven here on earth, a life invented and thought of by God through all eternity; a life of love alone and of ceaseless praise.  If you could see but for an instant what’s in the soul of this Carmelite postulant, you’d understand the happiness of living always near the tabernacle.  Alone with Him in His aloneness, I am there at the chapel grates or in my humble cell.  There is nothing between Him and His creature now.  I hear His divine voice always.  I gaze on always and contemplate His infinite beauty.  I feel always the beating of my God’s Heart, begging me for love because He knows that love contains everything; sacrifice and souls.

Sister dear, without doubt, as Jesus Himself said to Magdalene, He has chosen for me “the best part.”  A Carmelite is to be concerned with her God alone.  She’s to live no longer on earth, but in God.  She is to move and to work and to breathe far from people, far from earthly things.  We are to remember the world but only in order to pray for it and for people but without letting ourselves be influenced by them, without breathing in their impure atmosphere.  Jesus has imprisoned me here to unite Himself with me, nothing disturbing this gaze, this vision of this adorable Face of His which one day I shall possess in its fullness there in heaven.  I often imagine that I am like a queen; for while others serve the King in the apostolate of action, I, like a queen, am by His side, listening to Him, contemplating Him, praying together with Him, and joining Him in His own suffering.  He exchanged His own feelings with my own by divinizing them.  He surrounds me with His divine light, beautifying my soul with His teachings.”

Letters of St. Teresa of Jesus of the Andes Discalced Carmelite. Translated by Michael D. Grifin, O.C.D Teresian Charism Press Holy Hill 1525 Carmel Road Hubertus, WI 53033. All Rights are Reserved to the Discalced Carmelite Friars of the Washington Province. Copyrighted 1994.

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“This is a beautiful time, this last age,
the age of the Holy Spirit.
This is the long-awaited day of His reign in our souls through grace.
He is crying to every soul that is walled:
Open to Me, My spouse, My sister.
And once inside, He is calling again:
Come to Me here in this secret place.
Oh, hear Him tonight crying all over the world
a last summons of love to a dying race.

Acres we are to be gathered for God: He would pour
out His measureless morning
upon divinized lands, bought by blood, to their
Purchaser given.
Oh, hear Him within you speaking this infinite love,
moving like some divine and audible leaven,
lifting the sky of the soul with expansions of light,
shaping new heights and new depths,
and, at your stir of assent,
spreading the mountains with flame, filling the hollows with Heaven.”

- Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers)

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers Edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau. ICS Publications 2131 Lincoln Road, NE Washington, DC 20002-1199 Reprint of the most extensive anthology of this noted Carmelite poet, which she approved five weeks before her death. Includes introduction by Bishop Morneau.

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