We are called by God to live a life of prayer for the Church and for the world.
Our Rule tells us to ‘meditate day and night on the law of the Lord’. In other words to ponder the scriptures as we go about our daily tasks.
The heart of our day is the celebration of the Eucharist and we say the full Divine Office (Prayer of the Church). We also spend two hours in personal prayer each day, one in the morning and one in the evening.
Time is given to work and we earn our living in a variety of ways, including, altar bread baking, printing, vestment making, craft work, bee keeping.
Our mid-day and evening meals are followed by a time of recreation when we relax with our sisters, sharing news and ideas, usually doing hand work as we talk. Saint Teresa wanted a healthy balance for her nuns between solitude and silence on the one hand and warm, loving community on the other.
It is only by living the life day after day that a woman can come to experience for herself its potential for opening her heart to God and to the world. Its tasks are ordinary ones and we are ordinary people. Yet the Carmelite vocation that we share teaches us how God can make use of even the most ordinary things to bring greater love into the world.