Carmelite Holy Souls Society

‘It does not matter where you bury my body. All I ask of you, is that wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.’: St Monica to St Augustine

Fr Antony Lester, O.Carm writes: "The Carmelite Holy Souls Society reminds us that the Church is not confined to this world, but extends into the next as well. By praying for the dead, as we prayed for them when they were alive, we can establish a special link with the communion of saints. In a way this is a two-way street. We remember them in prayer and we ask them to pray for us. It is a helpful reminder that our brothers and sisters who die do not lose their identity, or their relationship with us. They remain the people that they are and the core of their identity is carefully reserved by God as they are transformed by God’s love and set free to love.

If you are anything like me, I imagine that you may be increasingly aware of just how much unfinished business we have in life. Things we may have said or done which we shouldn’t have, and which we now cannot put right. Often, once a word leaves our mouth, we lose all control over it!

Prayer, true prayer, is always an act of love. Our Catholic Christian tradition assures us that our prayer for the Holy Souls is one of the ways in which God loves our departed brothers and sisters into life in all its fullness. It is a gift of the tenderness of God to allow us to share in this loving process."

For many years, the National Shrine of Saint Jude has promoted the Carmelite devotion to the souls of the departed by establishing a Dead List that is renewed each year. People simply send in their lists of dead relatives and friends to be included in our prayers for the Holy Souls.

All those on your list will become members of the Carmelite Holy Souls Society for the year. 

Membership includes:

1. A daily Mass for deceased relatives and friends through the year (except the three days of Holy Week); 

2. A Mass each month for deceased members and benefactors;

3. A share in the Masses, prayers and good works of the whole Carmelite Order.

There is no fixed membership fee, or annual subscription. Please simply donate what you would like to become a member. You can either donate and send in your names via our on-line service, or by printing a form and sending it to the Shrine office.

Sponsored Walk

For many centuries, pilgrims have walked from Canterbury to Rochester. Our Development Manager, Matt would like to challenge himself to do the same in November this year. 

Matt will be walking from Canterbury via Faversham to Rochester, so that he can raise money for the Shrine of Saint Jude – in celebration of sixty years.

If you can sponsor Matt, please donate using via our on-line site, here. Or you can send your cheque or postal order made payable to: “The Carmelites” to: Sponsored Walk, Carmelite Friars, P.O. Box 140, Kent, ME20 7SJ

THANK YOU

Photo of the Month - September 2015

We are continuing our celebration of sixty years of ministry at the National Shrine of Saint Jude with our photo of the month. This month, we are pleased to show the future! Here are the Shrine toilets, which have not been upgraded for some time! In celebration, we have decided to completely refurbish areas of the Shrine for future generations. 

Can you donate towards our refurbishment work? All you have to do is donate via here to support us. 

Thoughts from the Chaplain - Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Our Gospel for this feast is the genealogy of Jesus according to John and we can see that God had been working throughout salvation history through the Hebrew people, all the way through the genealogy of our Blessed Lord. But in a very specific and particular way it was with Our Lady’s birth that the work of salvation had begun in a very practical way. Our Lady, then, could be seen as the dawn; that is, the way that the sky becomes bright even before the sun rises. Jesus being the Sun, Our Lady the dawn that announces the fact that the Sun is coming. We hear in the first reading the prophecy from the prophet Micah about Bethlehem Ephrathah being too small to be among the clans of Judah and yet it is from that particular little town that One is going to be raised up who is going to be the Saviour of the world. Mary, married to Joseph the smallest, the most humble, a young woman from a small town who has been chosen to be the bearer of the Son of God; theotokos  It is through her that  the saviour came into this world; the one whom God had chosen specifically for this task.

By looking to Mary we can learn what we have to do: to strive for humility; to serve the will of God; to bear, each in our own way, the Son of God. If we, as Christian people, are to strive for the bringing about of God’s Kingdom on earth.  If we are to live according to his wisdom then we also need to take on board those values of service, humility and poverty which Mary’s life present before us. We cannot have one without the other because they are so intertwined, tied together as to present one image of what God wants of us. We are to follow the teachings of the Son; to always have the poor, the marginalised, the sick, elderly and widows in our hearts and in our actions.  Similarly we need to be willing to see in Mary the first and perfect disciple. As Saint Athanasius writes: “The Holy Scriptures, which instruct us, and the life of Mary, Mother of God, suffice as an ideal of perfection and the form of the heavenly life”.   Mary is our model which we seek to imitate in order that we may be welcomed as good and faithful servants. established. And we will be prepared, as one day the world will be, for the blessed and glorious coming of Our Lord prefigured and preceded by the glorious coming of His mother.

Feast of Saint Jude celebrations 2015

The Feast celebrations are taking place on: 24, 25 & 28 October 2015.

The feast weekend is the highpoint of the calendar in Faversham, and hundreds of pilgrims come here in devotion to the Apostle. Although most come from London and the southeast, many others come from across Britain and even from abroad to celebrate this special time with God and with one another, in the company of the Carmelites.

The programme of activities during the feast includes regular celebrations of the Eucharist, blessings with the oil of St. Jude, and other devotions. During the celebrations there is a piety stall, a display of Carmelite books, and light refreshments available.

If you are bringing a group of more than 10 people to Faversham for any of the feast celebrations, it is very important that you please contact the Shrine Office in advance so that we have an idea of numbers and can let you know details for coach parking etc. You can contact us on shrineoffice@stjudeshrine.org.uk

The programme is as follows:

Saturday 24 October

12.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

14.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Sunday 25 October

12.30 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

14.30 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Wednesday 28 October

12.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

16.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Plus.. meet some friars, purchase items from the shop, light a candle, and pray and leave intentions at the Shrine.

If you cannot attend, you can purchase a candle via our online shop. Your candle will be lit during the Feast weekend and day.

Please note that the Shrine is based at: 34 Tanners Street, Faversham, ME13 7JW

Photo of the Month - August 2015

We are continuing our celebration of sixty years of ministry at the National Shrine of Saint Jude with our photo of the month. This month, we are pleased to show the icon of Saint Albert.

In 2004 a fire broke out in the Shrine Chapel destroying the murals which once hung there and damaging much of the other artwork. Happily, the windows and ceramics could be repaired, but the murals had to be replaced.

The decision was made to install icons depicting saints inspired by the Carmelite Rule of Saint Albert, in commemoration of the 8th centenary of the Carmelite Rule in 2007. The icons were written by Sister Petra Clare, a Benedictine hermit living in Scotland.

Below is the icon of Saint Albert giving the Carmelite 'way of life' (Rule document) to Saint Brocard on Mount Carmel. Other icons in the Shrine, include: Blessed John Soreth and Blessed Frances d'Amboise; Saint Elias Kuriakos Chavara and Blessed Isidore Bakanja; Blessed Titus Brandma and Saint Edith Stein.

Thoughts from the Chaplain - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

On Sunday, 9 August, it is the Feast Day of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or as she was before becoming a Carmelite: Edith Stein.  Edith Stein was born in Breslau in the then Prussian province of Silesia, the daughter of strict Jewish parents who ran a business buying and selling wood.  The day she was born was the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.  Although brought up as a practising Jew Edith Stein had lost her faith by her teens and described herself as an atheist.

Edith was a very gifted pupil and always had an enquiring mind and this led to her being accepted as a student at the University of Breslau.

Though her father died while she was young, her widowed mother was determined to give her children a thorough education and consequently sent Edith to study at the University of Breslau and then the University of Göttingen where, with the aid of her mentor Edmund Husserl she received a doctorate in 1916.  During her university years Edith had the occasional contact with Catholics but had never had any serious interest in their faith.  This was to change while she was on holiday with friends in the Rhineland, near the town of Landau on the German/French border.  He she started to read the autobiography of Teresa of Jesus or Teresa of Avila as she is better known. 

Edith was so impressed by the life of the Spanish mystic she started to take instruction in Catholicism and this started a process which was to lead to her baptism and entry into full communion with the Catholic Church on 1st January 1922.  Despite an initial wish to enter religious life her spiritual advisers told her to wait.  She went to the Cathedral town of Speyer and began to teach at the Dominican School there from 1923 - 1931.    But her academic work didn’t stop and she translated Thomas Aquinas’ book on Truth, something which Edith searched for all her life.  In 1933 the Nazi party came to power in Germany and their anti-Semitic laws forced her to give up her career.   It was at this stage that Edith Stein felt it was time for her to follow her vocation and she applied for entry into the discalced Carmelite convent in Cologne taking the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce.  In the convent Teresa continued to write and published her book “Finite and Eternal Being”.  However, with every work she published the risk of her coming to the attention of the Nazis increased and so her Prioress moved both her and her sister Rosa to the convent of Echt in Holland.  Although she continued with her work as an academic it is in Echt that she began to enter more and more into the Carmelite way of life becoming more and more devout and taking joy in the silence and prayerful following of Christ as her namesake Teresa of Avila would have wanted.  This increased as the restriction of writing and publishing by any Jew became more and stricter until in the end it was totally banned.  But Teresa of the Cross didn’t stop teaching but instead turned to instructing the sisters in Latin and Philosophy.  In 1940 the Nazis occupied Holland but even before this Teresa realised that she would never be safe and would not survive the war.   She asked her Prioress for permission to “offer herself to the heart of Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement for true peace”.  After the Nazi occupation he sisters wrote that Teresa had started to prepare herself for life in a German concentration camp by “enduring cold and hunger”.   

On 2nd August 1942 the long feared knock came on the convent door and Teresa Benedicta a Cruce was arrested by the Gestapo along with her sister Rosa Stein who was an extern sister in Echt; they were sent to Amersfoort and Westerbork two Dutch camps prior to their deportation on 7th August 1942 to Auschwitz.  As they left the convent in Echt she said to her sister “come Rosa, let us go for our people”.   The transport went through the town of Speyer and during a halt there Edith managed to scribble a note and throw it out of the wagon.  It was found by the station master who read “We are going east” and signed Edith Stein.  All of the 987 Jewish deportees died with Edith and her sister Rosa in mass gas chambers on 9th August 1942.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross pray for us

Icon of Bl. Titus Brandsma (left) and St. Edith Stein (right) in the National Shrine of Saint Jude