THE Carmelites in the Philippines on Thursday joined the worldwide celebration of the feast of Saint Teresa of Ávila with the culmination of her fifth birth centenary. They also marked the canonical declaration of the Teresian Carmelites in the country as a province with the title Saint Teresa of Jesus.
The celebration was highlighted by a concelebrated Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Quezon City, led by Caceres Archbishop Rolando Tria Tirona, OCD, DD, with Cubao Bishop Honesto Ongtioco, DD, and Fr. Reynaldo Sotelo, OCD, the first provincial of the Province of Saint Teresa of Jesus.
The event was attended by around 900 Carmelite priests, nuns and seculars, and more than 400 laity. Fr. Danilo Lim, OCD, read the May 23 declaration making the Philippine Carmelites to an autonomous province from a commissariat signed by Fr. Saverio Cannistra, OCD, superior general of the Carmelites.
The new Carmelite provincial territory also includes Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam.
An Internet source defined a commissariat as a division of a religious order which is a semi-autonomous body and considered less viable than a province.
Tirona recognized the attendance at the celebration of representatives from Order of Discalced Carmelites (or OCD based on its original Latin name) in Washington, Ireland, Japan and Indonesia. He also cited the presence of the first Filipino OCD superior in the Philippines, Fr. Bernard Ybiernas, who was among the priests who were ordained as Carmelites in Infanta, the first such ordination in the country.
In his homily, Tirona traced the history of Carmel in the Philippines from the foundation of monasteries and convents by Saint Teresa of Ávila and the Carmelite nuns in Spain in the 1500s to the sending of missions from Washington and the Anglo-Irish in the late 1940s and 1950s and the setting up of missions in Infanta, Quezon, and in Iloilo.
The web site of OCD Philippines says at about the same time, the Irish friars began the Carmelite foundation in Quezon City. They constructed a large Church in Broadway, New Manila Quezon City, now popularly known as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. With the Teresian Carmelites both from the Washington and the Anglo-Irish Provinces having taken root in the Philippines, in 1977 the Filipino Teresian Carmelite Commissariat was established.
Tirona said what kept Carmel going in the Philippines for 70 years and not splitting were its values of deep sense of fraternity, service of the poor and its faithfulness to its vocation of intimacy with God through prayer.
He said the efforts and sacrifices of the early missionaries and the presence of God is in the midst of it all.
“As Saint Teresa has said, let us move forward be strong, be courageous and be of service to the church for the glory of God,” Tirona said.
Image credits: Lyn Resurreccion