Carmelite
Saints

The Order of Carmel has been blessed with a multitude of Saints and Blesseds. Among those are three Doctors of the Church...

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     St.Teresa of Avila            St.John of the Cross         St.Therese

St. Teresa was the first woman to be declared a doctor of the Church, and has left us a rich heritage of warm and personal writing aimed at guiding the soul, or "the interior castle," to its inmost chamber of union with God.

Her contemporary and close collaborator, St. John of the Cross, has also been declared a doctor of the Church. Acclaimed as one of Spain’s most eminent poets, he wrote ardent mystical poetry as well as wise and penetrating explanations of the advanced stages of the spiritual life. Both of these saints are being discovered anew today, and their doctrine is as fresh and vital to the seekers of the 21st century as it was to those of medieval Spain.

Even in these modern times, the way of life set up by Teresa and John has been the seedbed of several much beloved saints, to include St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the newest and youngest doctor of the Church with her re-discovery of the heart of the Gospel which she called her "Little Way."

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          St. Elizabeth         St.Teresa Benedicta    St.Teresa of the Andes

Elizabeth of the Trinity, who left us her luminous writings on the relation of the baptized soul with the indwelling Trinity; St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein),a brilliant Jewish assistant to the famous philosopher Husserl, who found the ‘truth’ she sought so perseveringly in the writings of Teresa. She eventually became a Carmelite nun with the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and died with her fellow Jews in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz. In Chile, the teenage saint of the 'Roaring Twenties', now known as Teresa of the Andes, witnessed to the joy of a deep and loving union with Jesus.