In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. The Discalced Carmelite Nuns are a praying community who imitate Our Lord contemplating on the mountain. We share in Christ's self-emptying through our Solemn Vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, lived in the desert solitude and silence created by Papal Enclosure in the midst of the city.
Prayer is our apostolate.
It is our first and greatest contribution to the Church and the world. A Carmelite should be for Him as it were, another humanity in which He can perpetuate His life of reparation and sacrifice, of love and praise and adoration. St. Teresa blended this hermit way of life with the element of community in a unique balance which was her special gift to contemplative life, totally given to prayer, silence, sacrifice, and manual labor. We are like hermits but we live in the context of community, praying together, taking our meals in common, and recreating together each day in a true spirit of sisterly joy. We work in silence, striving to make everything an act of love and service, so as to live faithfully the Gospel, for Him and in union with Him.