Category: Brother Bob Chiulli

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From the Pen of Brother Robert Chiulli, O.Carm.

On May 9th, 2024, Pope Francis declared that 2025 would be a Jubilee Year, a year dedicated to the theological virtue of hope, and a year in which visits to holy places are encouraged. Jubilee years have existed in the Church since the 14th century, and are opportunities for Catholics to rededicate themselves to their faith, to seek forgiveness for their sins, and to embrace God’s grace and mercy as they continue on their journey to the heavenly homeland.

Jubilee years are also special times of pilgrimage, particularly to Rome. There, the faithful can visit the four major basilicas, and pass through the specially designated Holy Doors, with the opportunity to receive a plenary indulgence (when the additional conditions are met: sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father). Mother Angeline herself, visited Rome during a Jubilee Year (1950) and went to all four of the major basilicas. In her letter to her sisters in which she describes her visits to these churches in great detail, she is overwhelmed by the variety and quality of the religious art she sees, but more so, she is humbled by how these holy places have served to inspire Catholics for centuries. She writes, “One cannot describe the feeling of pride in being a Catholic when the immense crowds of people from all over the world assemble here, the center and heart of Christendom, to proclaim their faith and pay their respects to the Vicar of Christ.”

In a world beset by wars, violence, inequality in wealth, and natural disasters, one can see why the Holy Father chose Hope as the theme for this year’s Jubilee. As there is so much negativity around us these days, it is easy to fall into cynicism and despair and wonder if there is any chance for things to get better. But as people of faith, we look to the cross as the ultimate sign of hope, for in the crucifixion, our sins – and our very death – was conquered. The hope found in the cross inspired the Carmelite martyr, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) to adopt as her motto, Ave crux, spes unica (Hail to the Cross, our only hope). Hope belongs to the Christian because he is confident that Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection have secured for us eternal life, and hope, as the Catechism states, is a weapon that protects us in the struggle for salvation.

The Holy Father challenges us in this jubilee year “to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind.” One group in particular that the Holy Father identifies in need of hope are the elderly, for “(t)he elderly, who frequently feel lonely and abandoned, also deserve signs of hope. Esteem for the treasure that they are, their life experiences, their accumulated wisdom and the contribution that they can still make, is incumbent on the Christian community and civil society, which are called to cooperate in strengthening the covenant between generations.” As an elderly person himself, the Holy Father is well acquainted with the limitations that the aged endure. He understands the ongoing burden of illness and chronic health issues and recognizes the often-overlooked value of the elderly in the community.

Hope was the reason Mother Angeline founded her community for the aged. She wanted to bring hope and compassionate care to those elderly men and women who would otherwise have had to suffer the burdens of aging alone. And she believed that the aged deserved attentive and loving care in the autumn of their lives. But providing the elderly with hope is more than just tending to their physical needs, it also means bringing “Christ to every old person under our care. Bringing Christ means giving them His compassion, His loving care, His warmth-morning, noon, and night.”

May your Jubilee year be one filled with hope and many graces, and may we be inspired by Mother Angeline’s words and the Holy Father’s invitation to be messengers of hope to the elderly among us.

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From the Pen of Brother Bob, O.Carm.

As you can see in the pages of this latest issue of the Mother Angeline Society bulletin, a magnificent new statue of Mother Angeline was created, and then installed and dedicated at her home parish in Scotland. However, this is not the first statue of Mother Angeline that has been commissioned. The first one resides at the Carmelite Sisters’ Heritage Center in Germantown, New York. This statue, inspired by the Sisters’ recollections about Mother, depicts Mother at prayer in her pew in front of the Blessed Sacrament. It is interesting how these two statues of Mother, one of her at prayer, and the other with her in service to her beloved “old people,” encompass the totality of Mother’s life.  

As a Carmelite, Mother Angeline was an intensely prayerful and reflective woman who continually strove to deepen her relationship with the Lord. For her, nothing was more important than her time in prayer, whether it be praying the Divine Office, attending Holy Mass, or spending time in quiet contemplation. Even with the many demands upon her time as the foundress of a religious community with a busy apostolate, she made sure to never neglect her spiritual life. Her continual orientation towards God reminded her that any success or achievement in her life and ministry was only possible because He allowed it. No doubt she kept Psalm 127, “if the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labor” always in her heart.  

Mother’s profound prayer life allowed her to trust the Lord when she felt the divine inspiration to leave her original religious community to start a new congregation dedicated to the compassionate care of the elderly. Mother Angeline was deeply committed to providing homelike care for the elderly in need, and to treat them as Christ would treat them. In this new statue of Mother Angeline in Scotland, one can see Mother Angeline holding the hands of both an elderly gentleman and a woman in a wheelchair. This personifies the kind of care Mother wanted for the men and women living in the homes she founded: a care that was personal and genuine; a care that recognized the individuality of each resident and respected their independence.  

Also in the statue, Mother is placed in the center, between the woman and the man, representing how we need to stand in the midst of people when we minister to them. We need to walk the journey with them, share the same path, just as Jesus did when he brought his words of hope and salvation to the people of Israel. And lastly, on the faces of Mother Angeline and the two elderly people, one can see a sense of hope and confidence. Part of Mother Angeline’s vision was to prepare the residents in her homes for their Eternal Home, a place of endless peace and comfort. She wanted to tend to their souls as much as to their bodies, and to make sure that their spiritual needs were being met. Old age can be a lonely time, often filled with fear. So, Mother established a place where the elderly can enjoy the autumn of their lives free from many of the burdens that can make aging a continuous struggle.  

I pray that you may have the opportunity to visit these statues in person someday and grow in deeper appreciation of the life and ministry of this remarkable woman. 

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From the Pen of Brother Bob

If you’ve been keeping up with what’s going on in the Catholic Church these days, you’d be aware that there are currently two major initiatives being coordinated by our hierarchy. The first is a national Eucharistic Revival which started in 2022 and will end in 2025 with a Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis (the first one in 83 years!).  The other is the Synod on Synodality, which is a world-wide process of listening and dialogue that Pope Francis hopes will guide the Church into living more deeply its call to be a church of mission and communion.   Why are both going on at the same time?

For the Eucharistic Revival, the U.S. bishops discovered that many Catholics today are ill-informed about how Jesus is truly present – body and blood, soul, and divinity – in the Eucharist.  Unfortunately, when many Catholics receive Holy Communion, they see the wafer in their hand as only a symbol, and not as the Real Presence of Jesus in our midst. So, to address this crisis, the Bishops began this Eucharistic Revival as a way of stirring up a deeper faith in the Eucharist, and to remind us of how important and necessary the Eucharist is in our lives.

As for the Synod, Pope Francis is asking Catholics to discern how the Church can be more relevant, more meaningful, in a world that seems to have no place for God and faith.  He is challenging Catholics to live their baptismal call more fully, and to share in the mission of proclaiming Jesus to the world. So, to have both the Eucharistic Revival and the Synod going on at the same time seems to be the Church holding onto and reverencing her tradition, while simultaneously looking forward and deciding how the Church can be an agent of positive transformative change in the future. And this is what the Church has always done: cling closely to tradition as the foundation of her identity, while adapting herself to the present age to meet people where they are. This has always been a delicate tension, to not be too stuck in the past while at the same time to not be seduced by every modern idea or philosophy.

Mother Angeline, as the foundress of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, knew very well about this tension between tradition and innovation.  While she advocated for modern and up to date care for the elderly residents in the Sisters’ homes, Mother maintained that the sisters be grounded in the ideal that they should treat the residents like Christ in their midst, and that kindness be their guiding principle.  The Carmelite Sisters are known for their innovation in geriatrics and have helped advance how palliative and dementia care is administered in nursing homes. But no matter how sophisticated the care the residents receive is, the residents always know their human dignity, as beloved creatures of God, is of paramount importance.  In the same way, Mother Angeline insisted that as Carmelites, the Sisters should be rooted in a life of prayer. Without prayer, the work they would do would be impossible, and stripped of its supernatural meaning. She once wrote to her Sisters, “If we do not try hard each day to improve our prayer life and love of God, then we are failures and the successful administration of our houses or employments means nothing.”  Mother reminds us that we must be wary of seeing success only in worldly ways, and instead we must find our “success” and our joy in doing God’s will. Let us pray that the Eucharistic Revival and Synod will help us all more faithfully live out God’s Will in our lives.

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From the Pen of Brother Bob

No one would doubt that Pope Francis is a man who has many responsibilities. He is the spiritual head of over 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide and oversees the administration of a vast and complex Vatican bureaucracy. But one of the more important tasks the Pope has, and something that is often overlooked in all his meetings with foreign dignitaries and global travels, is to teach. As the Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis regularly takes time to instruct the faithful on various aspects of the Catholic faith. One way he carries this out is by offering a series of catecheses on particular topics during his weekly general audiences. He has previously addressed themes related to hope, faith, discernment, and St. Joseph. Just last year, he gave a series of 18 short talks about the meaning and value of old age.

As an admittedly not young man himself, the topic was particularly personal to him, and he noted that we are living in an age when there has never been as many elderly as there are now. He went on to state that even though there are so many elderly people among us, they are not as valued and appreciated as they should be since they are not considered “productive” by societal standards. He asks “But is it true that youth contain the full meaning of life, while old age simply represents its emptying and loss? Is that true? Only youth has the full meaning of life, and old age is the emptying of life, the loss of life?” The wisdom and experience of the elderly is often overlooked and unacknowledged; their opinions are resented by those who feel that they “have had their time already and now need to step out of the way.” This fragmentation between the young and old, Pope Francis says, is contrary to God’s plan for humanity, and does both old and young a grave disservice. Both groups have something important to offer the other: the elderly have wisdom and experience, and the young have enthusiasm and hope.

Pope Francis expresses this imaginatively as he says “the elderly are like the roots of a tree; they have the history there, and the young are like the flowers and the fruit.“ Both are necessary for the tree not to just survive, but to thrive. And for the tree of humanity to thrive, there must be a conversation between the young and old, an ongoing and deep relationship where both are given the time and space to share. If the old stay mired in their ruminations about their idealized past, then the young will simply spend more time looking down at their phones. But when the old and young are brought together, and allow the other to speak from their experience, the separation between the generations can be overcome. The young can reverence the experience of the old, and the old can support the young in their dreams for the future.

Mother Angeline points to her own relationship with her grandfather as the initial inspiration for her vocation to serve the elderly. As a young girl, she was able to recognize and appreciate the great gift that the elderly are to us. Rather than being “throwaway
material”, Mother Angeline wholeheartedly believed “that old people whether they are 65 or 85 or 100, have a great need for individual care.” It is Mother’s guiding philosophy that
the elderly are entitled to spend their final years in a loving, home-like setting that still provides the foundation for the homes that Carmelite Sisters of the Aged and Infirm, and their lay associates administer. May we, as Pope Francis asks us, be able to see the beauty and importance of being old, and follow Mother Angeline’s example seeing the person of Christ in each and every old person.

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From the Pen of Brother Robert Chiulli, O.Carm.

Bother Bob Chiulli, O.Carm.

On May 15, 2022, Carmelites around the world rejoiced as one of our own, Fr. Titus Brandsma, O.Carm., was canonized by Pope Francis in Rome. For those who may not have ever heard of St. Titus Brandsma, he was a Dutch Carmelite who used his position as a prominent journalist and scholar to denounce Nazi ideology in Catholic publications, and demand that Catholic newspapers refuse to publish their hateful propaganda. Because of his outspokenness, he was eventually arrested in 1942 by the Gestapo and sent to a state prison. While detained, Fr. Titus still held fast to his belief that National Socialism was based on dangerous pagan philosophy and completely contrary to Christian values. His persistence in his convictions kept him from being released, and he was eventually sent to the notorious Nazi work camp, Dachau. Though St. Titus was only in Dachau for five weeks, he quickly gained a reputation among the other prisoners for being a generous, hope-filled man who, despite being in poor health, was more concerned for others than himself. He ultimately met his end when he was given an injection of carbolic acid by a camp nurse as part of the Nazi’s “experiments” on prisoners.  As a testament to God’s grace, the nurse who gave Fr. Titus the lethal injection – and eventually converted to Catholicism- testified as to his holiness at his beatification ceremony.

Fr. Titus’s powerful witness was rooted in his deep prayer life and his embodiment of the Carmelite mystical tradition. He believed that one did not have to escape the world to find God. Rather God was found by looking deeply, from the heart, at life all around us, and he once wrote, “Prayer is not an oasis in the desert of life; it is the whole of life.” Prayer allows us to see as God’s sees, in all the varied circumstances that come our way, and be open to the subtle, but powerful way, that grace operates in our lives. While Fr. Titus did not seek out suffering, he knew that suffering was part of every person’s journey in life, and when joined to the suffering of Christ on the cross, it could be a profound way of experiencing God’s love for us. So even in the horrors of the Dachau death camp, St. Titus radiated peace since he knew that God was with him amid the beatings, daily deprivations and humiliations.

Mother Angeline, almost a contemporary of Fr. Titus as she was born 12 years after him, also knew the transformative power of suffering.  She once wrote to her sisters, “Let us cheerfully, generously, and wholeheartedly take up the cross given to us and, with it, let us purchase Heaven and an eternity of bliss. Is any price to high to pay for the eternal possession of Him for whom we have given up so much?” She wanted her sisters to know that in their work with the elderly and in the daily struggles that they will face, they should pattern their lives on their Master, who was not afraid to embrace his Passion and death. And like Jesus, they should avoid the temptation to bitterness, resentment, and despair and always remain hopeful and faithful.

 Fr. Titus paid the ultimate price with the willing surrender of his own life, and thankfully most of us will be spared this kind of martyrdom. But none of us can escape the trials and difficulties that are a part of any life. But what our Christian faith tells us is that suffering is not the end of the story, and that it is Easter Sunday, not Good Friday, where our destiny lies. While there is no crown of glory without the cross, we can trust, as Fr. Titus did, when he said while in prison, “We are in God’s hands. We are in good hands.”