Carmel
An order of prayer, and a house with a long history.
Carmel has no founder in the way the Franciscans or the Benedictines do. The order arose on Mount Carmel itself — a mountain range on the Mediterranean coast. Our branch, the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, is younger, and follows its own path.
The story of Casa Carmeli
From children’s home to Casa Carmeli
The history of Casa Carmeli is closely bound up with that of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus in the Netherlands.
The congregation came to the Netherlands in 1898 and opened a children’s home in Sittard. In 1919 a new children’s home was founded in Haarlem. When more space was needed there, the children’s home eventually moved to Vogelenzang.
The beginning
After the Second World War the search began for a suitable place for the children’s home. In Vogelenzang an empty villa was found, but the building was in poor condition, and much had to be done before it could become a home. On 16 July 1945 the villa was bought, and within a few weeks the first children arrived from Haarlem.
The house was originally called ‘Villa Nuova’, but soon took the name Casa Carmeli.
For many years Casa Carmeli was a home for children. As the children’s home grew, buildings were added on the grounds to make more room.
A new chapter
In 1980 the children’s home closed, because society and its view of childcare had changed.
The sisters looked for a new purpose for the buildings. True to the charism of their foundress, Blessed Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, they opened Casa Carmeli as a place where people could step back from daily life for a while, and find rest and silence. In the years that followed, Casa Carmeli was used for retreats, group stays and other forms of hospitality.
Casa Carmeli today
Casa Carmeli has continued to develop, while remaining connected to the mission and history of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus. Today the estate has several purposes, including the convent, the guest rooms and the senior apartments.
Although its purpose has changed over the years, Casa Carmeli remains a place shaped by the history, the spirituality and the hospitality of the congregation. Each chapter has left its mark — on the estate, and on the people who have lived, worked and stayed here, and found a home here.
Our mission
We try to give shape to the charism of Carmel in a Marian way of life: carrying Jesus in our hearts, reflecting on Him, and speaking with Him.
The women’s branch of Carmel traditionally lives an enclosed life, but not with us — that is the work of our foundress. You may meet us anywhere, inside and outside our house. Carmel is not called ‘the flowering garden’ for nothing: the symbol of spiritual beauty and of close friendship with God through prayer.
The banner in our coat of arms reads: Zelo zelatus sum pro Domino Deo exercituum — With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts.
Blessed Maria Teresa of St. Joseph
Anna Maria Tauscher (19 June 1855 – 20 September 1938), who took the religious name Maria Teresa of St. Joseph, was a German foundress of a religious congregation. She did much for the care of homeless children, the poor and the sick. She was beatified in Roermond on 13 May 2006. Her feast day is 30 October.
She was born in Sandow, east of Frankfurt an der Oder — then Germany, now Poland. Anna Maria was the eldest daughter of the Lutheran pastor Hermann Traugott Tauscher and of Pauline van den Bosch, who came from Haarlem. When her mother died in 1874, it fell to Anna Maria, barely twenty, to run the household.
After her father remarried, she was able to devote herself more to prayer and reading the Bible, and to visiting the poor and the sick. At thirty she left her parental home to become head of an institution in the Rhineland — the beginning of the path that would lead to this congregation.
Novena to Blessed Maria Teresa
Would you like to pray for a special concern through the intercession of Blessed Maria Teresa? Then pray the same prayer every day for nine days. Where the dots are, name your intention.
We thank You, Triune God, for giving Your Church Blessed Mother Maria Teresa of St. Joseph. Her great faith, her unwavering trust in God and her selfless love make her, by Your grace, an instrument in Your hand.
Strengthened by her example and trusting in Your help, we pray, through her intercession…
(insert intention)
Yet Your will be done, Lord. Make our hearts ready to accept what You give us. Then we know that we pray in the spirit of Mother Maria Teresa. Therefore we pray to You, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Answered prayers can be reported to the General Motherhouse, Karmel van het Goddelijk Hart van Jezus, Kollenberg 2, 6132 AL Sittard, the Netherlands.