The pro-life movement will have one less person on the front lines when Kathleen Gilbert, LifeSiteNews Bureau Chief, enters the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Buffalo, New York, on October 14th. Kathleen joined LifeSiteNews just before President Obama was elected to office and she hopes “God willing, I’m going out with him too.”
Kathleen is devoted to giving the unborn a voice in the world. She says, “There are many businesses in our world that exploit others. The business of killing has the advantage that the victims always keep quiet. That’s why the holocaust happened, why the unborn in America suffer another 9/11 every single day, and why Planned Parenthood’s business is booming: the dead don’t speak.” She tried to shine a light where others wanted it dark. And she hopes to keep the mission to protect life going, albeit, she will be doing it in a different way.
The monastery she is entering has an amazing history. In 1914, as as Mother Elias and a companion faced a firing squad in Mexico, Mother prayed: “Little Therese, if you are a saint, as some people say you are, then deliver us, and I promise to found a Monastery in your honor.” The shots rang out, the nuns sank to the ground and when they regained consciousness, their clothes were bloodied but they were unhurt. In 1925, on the day of the canonization of St. Therese, the Little Flower, the Carmelite chapel in Buffalo, NY, was dedicated, the first in the world to have the Little Flower as its titular Saint.
As the nuns state, “Our Rule and Constitutions represent the authentic charism of our Holy Mother Saint Teresa of Avila, who desired that her daughters apply themselves zealously to prayer and manual labor for the benefit of the Church and especially for priests. We humbly and gratefully wear the full Habit of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, observe strict Papal enclosure in order to safeguard the sacredness of the cloister, and cherish many traditional monastic customs such as the use of Latin and Gregorian Chant.”
May God bless Kathleen and all the Carmelites of Buffalo.
Congratulations to Kathleen on her upcoming entrance into Carmel!
I know of this monastery, being from Upstate NY. One of the foundations from Buffalo was in Schenectady, NY (Eastern NY, Albany diocese) in 1923. Since 2005, it has merged with another Carmel in Pittsford, NY, which is in the Rochester diocese. I know the nuns there very well, because in my younger days (1970 to 1977) I thought of becoming a Carmelite myself. Didn’t happen, unfortunately.
When I was in the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites (1994-2000) I ordered a book that the Buffalo Carmel put out for its 75th anniversary. I still have it. And in 1998, I paid a visit to the monastery with a young high school Spanish teacher who was a member of the same OCDS group that I was in. Bought a few things in the gift shop, then paid a visit to the chapel.
I also have a set of cassette tapes of a novena to Our Lady of Mount Carmel there which was done by a fiery young priest from Georgia (originally from Upstate NY). He had a sister who was in the community.
And also, in 1997 (the centenary of St. Therese’s death), a group of nuns from Buffalo Carmel traveled to South Dakota to found a Carmel at the invitation of the late Father Robert J. Fox of the Fatima Family Apostolate.