We will find that if we give, there will be gifts for us, a full measure, pressed down, shaken together shall be poured into our laps. We have been called by the Church to take our part in the era of new evangelisation. Western Europe and the USA are just as much mission territory as anywhere else since we are living in a post-Christian age. The new evangelisation is new in its ardour, its methods and its expressions. We need to recommit ourselves to our Carmelite vocation and to find new ways to express the fundamental values of our life, ways which will communicate effectively to people of the third millennium.
Contemplation is an essential part of our charism.
17 of the Constitutions of the friars tells us that contemplation is an attitude of openness to God whose presence we discover everywhere. Our preaching or teaching or whatever work with which we are involved does not bring Christ to people but hopefully helps them to discover His presence in their lives or be more aware of it. Christ is already present in each situation and individual before we arrive. Above all our daily lives, our presence, should reveal something of God. This is the faith of Our Lady in the Magnificat who praises God for throwing down the proud, feeding the hungry and sending the rich away empty when most people would see the opposite as true.