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By virtue of the authority granted me by the Most Rev. Nicholas Mauron, Superior General of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, I hereby sanction the publication of the work entitled "Carmel in America," by Rev. Charles Warren Currier, C. SS. R., |
ELIAS FRED. SCHAUER, C. SS. R.,
Sup. Prov. Baltimorensis.
BALTIMORE, MD.,
January lst, 1890.
ERRATA.
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| Page 4, note, for "44th, Patriarch " read "44th Patriarch." " 12, for "Awdeth " read "Audeth.” " 33, note 1, for "Christi" read "Christo" " 365, for "Alexandar" read "Alexandra." " 423, for "Communanié" read "Communauté" " 424, for "mine" read "indigne." |
PREFACE
to First Edition
My recollections, attached to St. Teresa's name, go back to early childhood, when I dwelt on one of the many little islands that dot the Caribbean Sea . It was while spending the swiftly fleeting days of boyhood on the once wealthy, now nearly forgotten island of St. Eustatius , that the life of the great Reformer of Carmel came into my hands. It brought forth in my heart a love for the saint, that the vicissitudes of after life did not diminish.
In later years, I read and read it again. I also perused the autobiography of her companion, Venerable Ann of St. Bartholomew, translated and edited by Rev. Father Bouix, S. J. This work awakened in me the desire of visiting the city of Antwerp , the scene of the life, labors and death of the venerable servant of God. It was not long before Divine Providence afforded me the opportunity of beholding my desire accomplished. Having to travel from Brussels to Rozendaal, in Holland , Antwerp lay on the route. My decision was taken. I remained a day and two nights in that city. While there I naturally stayed at the house of our Congregation, where I had the pleasure of meeting with Rt. Rev. Macheboeuf of blessed memory, late Bishop of Denver, Col. Little did I think then that I would, a few years later, be called upon to write the history of a community of religious that once had dwelt upon that very spot, for the house of the Redemptorists at Antwerp occupies the site of the English Carmelite monastery.
My first thought, on the day after my arrival, was to visit the Carmelite Convent, founded by Venerable Ann of St. Bartholomew. I was kindly received by the religious, who showed me many relics of St. Teresa's companion, and amongst them the original manuscript of her autobiography. After my arrival in Baltimore I became acquainted with the Carmelites of that city. While once in conversation with them,
they informed. me that the centenary of their arrival in the United States would be celebrated in 1890. I learned at the same time that the late Jas. A. McMaster, editor of the Freemaan's Journal, who had sacrificed two daughters to God in the order of St. Teresa, had intended to write the history of the Carmelites in the United States. Death, however, had prevented him from putting his project into execution. I immediately offered to undertake the same work, and, thank God, I have beheld it crowned with success.
Certainly I had difficulties to encounter, but the encouragement I received on all sides, served to compensate for them. Many thanks are due to those who have assisted me in my labors. Foremost, of course, stand the Carmelites of Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans and their sister communities in England. My sincere thanks are also due to the Reverend Jesuit Fathers of St. Thomas' Manor and of Woodstock in Maryland, and to Mr. William Brent, of Brentland, Charles Co., Maryland, whose assistance in searching the registers of Port Tobacco has been invaluable. Nor must I forget the name of our distinguished historian, John Gilmary Shea, LL. D., whose encouragement and aid I most highly appreciate.
There are many names I would gladly have mentioned in this work, but space would not permit it. The Carmelites gave me the names of very many of their benefactors, but it was impossible to mention them all. The responsibility, however, of having spoken of some and seemingly ignored others, lies entirely with me. Let not, on this account, those generous souls diminish their charities, but let them rather remember that the less men know of their good works, the more precious those good works will be in the sight of God.
I have, in the work I now offer to the public, written the history of the Carmelite monastery in Baltimore. This forms the principal portion of the work, as that monastery is the parent Carmelite community in this country. But the history would not have been complete without a knowledge of those from whom our Baltimore community derived its origin. Hence I found it necessary to go back to the very cradle of the order and follow it down to its Reformation by the great St. Teresa.
The time that elapsed from the days of the Saint until the establishment of the English Carmelite convents in Belgium forms, as
it were, the second period of our history. It was necessary that I should dwell at length on those communities, as they are the progenitors of our American Carmel.
Our Carmel of Baltimore produced in its turn two communities, namely, those of St. Louis and New Orleans, and to those, in consequence, I have devoted several chapters of my work.
I have also consecrated a chapter to the Canadian Carmel, although it is not directly connected with the monasteries of the United States.
In the Appendix I have treated of the sister communities of our American Carmel, namely, those in England that derived their origin from the same source. I have also transiently mentioned a community of Spanish nuns that originally existed in Central America, and were afterwards transferred to Spain.
May this work serve to perpetuate the memories of the past, to honor our departed ones, and to increase zeal for their eternal interests in the hearts of the living! This is the wish of
THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION.
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Any one in the least acquainted with the organization of the Catholic Church knows that besides the laity and the clergy there is a third state to which both laity and clergy may belong, namely: that of the religious. The perfection and beauty of the Church of God require, says St. Thomas Aquinas,1 that there should exist in it a diversity of states and offices. The religious state, says the same Saint,2 is a state of perfection, because in it man consecrates himself entirely to the service of God, as it were a victim, and thus practises the virtue of religion in a perfect manner. The religious state in so far as it is a state of perfection was instituted by Christ Himself who was the author of the evangelical counsels, but in its individual and special form, it is of ecclesiastical institution, though of very ancient origin. Within the hallowed precincts of houses in which religious perfection was practised, in monasteries and convents, the Church has throughout the ages of its existence gathered very many of the most beautiful flowers of sanctity. In those asylums of virtue lived and died many of those noble sons and daughters of the Church, who today are honored on our altars. Some of them spent their lives in the obscurity of the contemplative life, whilst others sanctified themselves upon the stage of the world's events, and in almost constant contact with their fellow-men. But all, whether they were engaged in psalmody with the austere sons of St. Bruno, or of the Great St. Bernard of Clairvaux, or whether they fought under the glorious banner of St. Ignatius de Loyola, belonged to the state of perfection that we call the religious state.
Although in general the spirit of the world is diametrically opposed to that of the religious, still it often reconciles itself to it
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1II. IIae Quaes. CLXXIII, Art. II, concl.
2 L. c., Q. CLXXXVI, Art. I.
in the case of those religious whose works directly tend to the welfare of mankind. But as regards contemplatives or those silent inhabitants of the cloister that have entirely separated themselves from the active life, the world frowns upon them, and considers them as useless members of human society. It is bard to break down this wall of prejudice, for the world, as a rule, appreciates only what it sees, while God considers the heart.
Man, as faith teaches us, is destined for contemplation; his last end is the Beatific Vision, or in other words an endless act of contemplation; why may he not begin in this world that in which his everlasting happiness must consist? It is certain that the most perfect life consists in the exercise of the highest faculties of the soul upon the Highest Object, hence the contemplative life in which the intellect and will continually rest on the Supreme Being, is of the greatest perfection. This was understood by those ancient philosophers of India and Greece, who spent their lives in the acquisition of wisdom and in the meditation on great and important truths. Most of the days of the Precursor of the Lord and of the greatest of all philosophers, the Incarnate Wisdom, were spent in the contemplative life. We know the high sanction it received in the words addressed by Christ to Martha: "Mary hath chosen the better part." Certainly some of the greatest saints have practised more the contemplative than the active life. What was the life of Our Blessed Lady and that of her faithful spouse, St. Joseph, but a life of contemplation, hidden with Christ in God? Most of the great saints who flourished in the third and fourth centuries, except many of the martyrs, were bright ornaments of the contemplative life. Those who peopled the Egyptian deserts, the Pauls, the Anthonys, led lives of seclusion, and even some of the greatest Fathers of the Church whose writings have helped to build up the Church's teaching, were bright flowers of the desert. St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Jerome and many more spent a great portion of their lives in solitude. And if we pass in review the immense multitude of canonized saints we shall be surprised to see how many of them were men and women of strict contemplation.
St. Benedict, the great Patriarch of the Order that bears his name, spent his days in monastic solitude; and are not the names of St. Bruno, St. Clare, St. Hildegard, St. Mary Magdalene de
Pazzi and St. Teresa and of others too numerous to mention inseparably connected with the contemplative life?
But the world asks: what good do they effect in society? This is especially the question that must necessarily arise before the minds of our people in this matter-of-fact country.
We must not forget that man's primary duty is to work out his own destiny, to secure his own salvation; but there are souls for whom the breath of the world is contagious, for whom contact with it means death. Thus there are hearts, well-formed, noble and endowed with excellent qualities that will spread around them the sweet odor of their virtues in the solitude of the cloister, but for which the pestilential atmosphere of a sinful world would be fatal. Not that all those who enter the cloister are of this calibre, but it is certain that this silent habitation affords a place of refuge for many a one who might otherwise perish; and in this respect the cloistered life renders an incalculable service to individuals and to society.
"That which saves society," says the distinguished Jesuit Orator, Père Felix1 is not what is noisily displayed on the surface of things-the power of industry, the power of war, the power of genius, the power of letters, the power of arts. That which saves society is what reaches its heart, it is that which acts on its depths, in that faithful silence which a writer has well called the "Silence of good things."
The great radical disorder in society, according to the same preacher, is selfishness. It is this that creates all the evils of the world. In fact. it is the inordinate love of self that is the root of all evil. The only remedy for this evil is Christian sacrifice in its fullness. But is not that Christian sacrifice pushed to the heroism of complete self-denial by those who, in silence and mortification, faithfully obedient to the promptings of grace, strive to realize in their every day lives the high ideal of monastic perfection ? Thus by its example alone the monastic state is a benefit to society and a continual reproach for its egotism.
Of what good are they to society? Is not history itself an answer to this question? What would Europe have been to-day without the solitary sons of St. Benedict? How much are not
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1Sermon delivered in 1862 at Ste. Clotilde in Paris.
civilization, science, the arts and literature indebted to the silent and solitary inhabitants of the cloister? And is not agriculture even a debtor to the sons of St. Benedict and to the silent members of the Cistercian Order?
This is true when we consider the monastic state from a natural standpoint, but if we place ourselves upon a higher platform and view it under its supernatural aspect its usefulness can never be measured.
First, it serves to counteract the immense evil that is continually perpetrated in the world. The praises of God that ascend as a sweet incense to the throne of the Almighty from convents and monasteries compensate to a certain extent for the blasphemies against the Most High that are day after day heaped up as a mountain of iniquity. The chastity of monks and nuns serves to counterbalance the world's impurity. If ten just men could have saved Sodom and Gomorrha, must we not believe that the thousands of men and women who live in the monastic state must wield an immense influence in favor of our modem sinful world?
Surely those who doubt the usefulness of the contemplative life must doubt the efficacy of pmyer. Thank God, there are still Carthusians, Cistercians, Carmelites, and others who, like Moses on the Mount, raise their hands to heaven for us. Thank God also, in our own beloved country the contemplative life is not unknown, that the Trappists, the Carmelite and Dominican nuns and the Poor Clares still show us that the days of heroism are not past.
If there is a country in which the contemplative life is needed, it is surely our young and active republic where the spirit of action pervades all classes. That action, not to become exclusive and absorbing, must be counterbalanced by reflection and contemplation, and it is from the contemplative orders that we learn this spirit of contemplation.
We echo the sentiments of Holy Church, when we exclaim:"Vivat, crescat, floreat vita contemplativa! May the contemplative life live, increase and flourish amongst us!"