We are called ‘Carmelites’ because we live a life inspired by a group of hermits who made their home on Mount Carmel, in the Holy Land. The life led by this original twelfth-century settlement was grounded in the practice of contemplative prayer initiated earlier by the prophet Elijah. The Carmelite spirit was formalised approximately 100 years later, in a monastic rule written by St. Albert. In the sixteenth-century, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross were responsible for reshaping the Carmelite charism.

Carmelites are mystics, to the core; with all the superficial paradoxes and underlying revelations that mysticism implies. Our lives are meditative, impelled by the light that, like St. John of the Cross, each of us has felt in her heart’s core.