A Vocation to Prayer
In accord with the Rule of St. Albert, the Discalced Carmelite seeks to pray always and everywhere. The community comes together daily for the celebration of the Eucharist and for the chanting of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Prayer of the Church.
In addition, each friar is committed to an hour of personal prayer in the morning and another in the evening, to seek union in friendly, solitary conversation with the God who loves us.
All our prayer, private and communal, has an apostolic dimension since it is always within and for the Church, especially for those who are most in need, those who are abandoned, and those who never pray for themselves. And faithful to the desires of St. Teresa of Jesus, we pray always for the unity of the Church, that the day may soon come when all the baptized will gather around the one table of the Lord to celebrate the loving mercy of God.
A Vocation to Community
Called together by the Spirit of God, the Discalced Carmelite friars live in a community of shared responsibility and support … praying, working and recreating together, sharing their lives, their concerns, their hopes and their needs.
Members in each monastery are connected to the larger community of our Province of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (represented in the Midwestern and Eastern United States as well as Kenya in Africa) of the Discalced Carmelite Order (represented internationally in more than seventy countries) and most especially within the larger community of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
Within community we strive for a creative balance of solitude and fraternal interaction in the spirit of brotherly love that St. Teresa desired for her friars and nuns.
A Vocation to Ministry
St. Teresa of Jesus, along with her collaborator St. John of the Cross, founded the Discalced Carmelite friars to be of manifold service to the Church, combining a deep spiritual life with meeting the needs of God’s people in a variety of ways. Because our holy parents are acclaimed in the Church as masters and models of intimacy with God, the Discalced Carmelite friars strive to serve the Church by a special apostolic involvement in promoting a deeper spiritual life among the faithful. That is how they serve the Church according to their charism, and faithfully carry on the spiritual tradition of the Order.
The friars of the Province of the Immaculate Heart of Mary staff the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians at Holy Hill, Wisconsin. They work as retreat directors, counselors and spiritual directors; as well as serving in parishes, as teachers of Carmelite spirituality in schools and universities, as translators, writers and publishers of spiritual works; as missionaries in Kenya, and even working for the Secretary of State within the Vatican. They have the special apostolate of working with and for the Discalced Carmelite nuns as well as the Secular Order of Carmelites.
Within the community they serve as cooks, as treasurers, as maintenance men and as gardeners. They train new members, act as responsible stewards of what the People of God have shared with them, and always and everywhere lift up their hearts in prayer to the Living God in whose presence they stand.