Chanting the Flos Carmeli, the Discalced Carmelite Fathers of the Province of St. Thérèse closed their XXXI Provincial Chapter meeting encouraged by the newly-elected Provincial, Fr. Luis Castañeda, OCD, “to take the best from the past and to build and live our present and future with creativity.”

Lent is a season to engage in a spiritual purgation to nurture a more peaceful soul that is pleasing to God. It is a time to grow in humility. St. Teresa of Avila names humility as one of three qualities “to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended highly to us” (W 4, 4).

During Lent, we are asked to devote ourselves to seeking the Lord in prayer and reading Scripture, to service by giving alms, and to sacrifice self-control through fasting.

God is inviting us, through Joseph, to cut down on our talking and, like him, be better listeners and doers of His Word. As St. John of the Cross wisely says, “what is wanting, if anything is wanting, is not writing or speaking - rather these usually superabound - but silence and work.”

First-class relics are contained within a ring on the left hand of the statue of Thérèse in the tomb chapel of the Basilica of the Little Flower.

Declared venerable by Pope St. John Paul II in 1994 and beatified in 2008, the Martins are believed to be the first parents of a saint to be canonized.