– A Testimony by Heidi Ng
“If I ever become Catholic, I’ll become a Carmelite.”
I remember having this thought while I gazed at the statue depicting the scene of St Therese telling her father of her desire to enter Carmel. I was an atheist standing at the doorway of the Carmelite Monastery in Singapore.
Visiting the Carmelites was part of the RCIA journey, led by Father Richards of Holy Cross Church then, he probably did not expect that day to be the scene of another battleground where an unbeliever (unconsciously) challenged the Hebrew God to prove His existence.
For someone who did not believe in God, the joy of the Sisters, the serenity of Carmel’s garden and the peace they exude felt compelling, as if there was an answer to a yearning I never even knew I had. Later on I understand that yearning as so beautifully expressed in our Catechism:
“The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself.” CCC 27
Thus God called me to Catholicism, via the mountain of Carmel.
“I will call foreigners to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.” (Isaiah 56)
I am now in my penultimate year of formation to be a professed member of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites (O.C.D.s). What it means is that I have discerned a vocation to the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, in a secular setting, and have to go through a period of formation for at least six years, before I make my profession of the Final Promises, very briefly summarised as promises to strive for evangelical perfection in chastity, poverty and obedience according to the Rule of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites.
Some would think of it as “Nun-lite” or “Priest-lite” – where you belong to an Order without being as committed as a priest or a nun. However, what I have come to realise more and more as I try to live out the Carmelite Spirituality, is that the secular life has its own particular charism and way to live out, and is not a mere imitation of the Religious Life in a lay setting. As distinct as the Carmelite friars are from the Carmelite nuns, but still as much part of the Carmelite family as the friars and the nuns.
Secular Carmelites, and those in formation to become one, order their life around prayer, with daily Liturgy of the Hours, daily meditation, and if possible, daily mass. Our goal is union with God and to strive to seek His face always. From our prayer life, flows out service to the church, whether by apostolic activity, ministry, or missionary work.
What upholds this life of prayer and service, is the third Carmelite element — community. Carmelites are a family, gathering to pray as a community, build each other up, and grow in holiness together. In Singapore, pre-Covid, the OCDs family meets monthly for community prayer and learning. Even as I discern the vocation to Carmelite spirituality, so also the Community discerns along with me. For some, their journeys at Carmel may not lead them all the way to the Final Profession, for others, the Secular Order led them into their Religious Vows.
In my journey with the OCDs, I also learnt to journey within myself. As part of the formation, we study the works of St Teresa de Avila and St John of the Cross, who were co-founders of the Order. Both saints view life as a never-ending pilgrimage to seek God, and both saints teach that the God that we seek, is in actual fact nearer to us than we are to ourselves.
For St Teresa, the soul is like a castle made of a single diamond, containing many mansions. God resides in the innermost mansion, and beckons us to enter the mansions of our souls. For St John, the soul is like a lover seeking her beloved who is hidden in the innermost being of the soul.
Before I converted, and even those few first years after my conversion, I thought having a faith was just attending church every sunday, learning about the bible and volunteering or doing good things. I did not know that was just the beginning.
Finding myself in the Catholic Faith, learning about the saints, that everyone has a vocation and is called to sanctity, and the historicity, the sheer breadth and depth of the different religious orders and their charisms, it is like visiting St Peter’s Basilica for the first time and getting your breath taken away by its splendour and size when you thought all churches look like auditoriums. As GK Chesterton had written, “The Catholic Church is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.”
I did not know having a faith and living it, especially through the Carmelite spirituality, would allow me to discover facets of myself that I never knew I had, entering the rooms of my soul that would have otherwise been locked and unexplored. Imagine the Louvre, with treasures from ages past to present, each room a marvel to be explored. Yet even the Louvre with its unimaginable wealth of artefacts is but dirt in comparison to the brilliant diamond that St Teresa de Avila compared our souls to.
For secular carmelites, though we may not live in a cloister, but we live with a cloister, and the cloister is our hearts – the dwelling place of God. We follow the footsteps of the Ancient Carmelites who heard the call and sought God in the mountains, in the desert, in wilderness, in silence and solitude.
In our lives, in our daily experiences, in our prayers and meditations, there we find our mountains, our desert, our wilderness and in the silence of our hearts, find our God. Just as the heart channels the flow of blood around the body for it to be able to function, so too does the encounter with the Indwelling Trinity in the meeting tent of our hearts nourish our souls for us to function in service to the Body of Christ – the Church, and His people.
Where do you hear God calling you to?
in Singapore.
