Cleveland Photos

CARMEL OF THE HOLY FAMILY

Cleveland, Ohio

We respond to the call of Jesus Christ by living out Gospel values within the unfolding mystery of the Teresian charism in our age and culture. In fidelity to our ancient Carmelite heritage, we live as solitaries who cherish and build loving community.

                 -from the Cleveland Carmel Mission Statement

As St. Teresa was a woman of deep prayer in her time, so we seek to be twenty-first century Carmelites, women whose lives are centered on Jesus, the Christ. In Him and through Him, our Carmel has been a prayerful presence in Cleveland for eighty-two years. Much has changed in that time, but the essentials of our contemplative life remain the same. Since the opening of Vatican Council II over forty years ago, we have embraced an ongoing integration of our individual and communal life experiences with the call to a deep life of prayer.

St. Teresa desired to form small communities of women who followed the way of the hermits on Mount Carmel. At the same time, she intended that “. . . all must be friends with each other, love each other, and help each other.” So we have adopted structures and policies which enhance our lives as “solitaries who cherish and build loving community.” In addition to daily solitary prayer, times of deeper solitude and silence include our yearly community retreat, each sister's two-week private retreat, monthly hermit days, and the availability of a furnished hermitage within our enclosure. Some of the ways we have developed to strengthen bonds of love and friendship in community are our daily time of informal sharing and recreation at the evening meal, ways of decision making that involve all members of the community, loving interest and concern for one another's families, periodic sessions of faith-sharing around a chosen theme, and a spirit of openness and flexibility in response to the needs of individual sisters.

The spirit of prayer and sisterly love also extends beyond ourselves to those who join us for liturgies, who visit or call the monastery to ask for our prayers, or who come seeking spiritual direction for their lives. It reaches even further to our neighborhood, city, and the larger world as we are mindful of protecting and caring for our natural environment.

Some Recent Photos....click on individual photos to enlarge

***

The photo used on our Homepage was taken at Cleveland Carmel by Sister Barbara Losh, O.C.D..