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I Want to Radiate God. . . .

Becoming a Light in the Night with Père Jacques de Jésus

We Carmelites invite you to prepare yourselves for Christmas with this Advent calender with texts from Carmelite Père Jacques de Jésus. You can use it to make a retreat in your everyday life, during which you take time to reflect on the texts in prayer.

You can expect a short daily inspirational message chosen from the words of Père Jacques and the Gospel for the day. Each Sunday you will also find a meditation on the Gospel for the day to prepare for the coming week.
Our companion for the season of Advent in this “Year of Prayer” is Père Jacques de Jésus, a French Carmelite priest (1900 – 1945). He led a Carmelite-run school in Avon, near Paris, where he hid Jewish children during World War II. In 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo and finally sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen-Gusen.

Père Jacques will be our light guiding us to Bethlehem, with what one of his companions in the concentration camp called his "pure, blazing fire." After the liberation in May 1945, he remained a few days in the hospital of St. Elizabeth in Linz, Austria, where he died in June 1945.

Texts for the Meditations:

Carmelites in Paris – Fr. Jean-Alexandre de Garidel, OCD

Photo Credits:

Archives Carmel Avon, Bild "4. Advent" by Barbara Müller-Walter
English Translation:
Lynn Gaubatz

Programming:
Christoph Ernst Wottawa