Carmel in the House of Bread

A quick trip to Bethlehem last Tuesday afternoon brought two of us to the Carmelite Convent where we were picking up stoles.

Bethlehem. You can see the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church on the skyline.

The Carmel in Bethlehem was built in the late 1800's by Sister Marie of Jesus Crucified. A contemporary of St. Therese of Lisieux, Mariam Baouardy was Arabic. Her throat was slit as a young teenager when she wouldn't convert to Islam from the Catholicism of her parents; she later recounted being cared for by a 'blue nun' whom she recognized to be the Virgin Mary, who nursed her back to life and brought her to a church. For the rest of her life, Mariam had an intimate sense of the supernatural world.

"The Little Arab", a blessed whose cause is up for canonization, had already been sent to found a convent in Mangalore, India, before returning to work tirelessly to build a new community on David's hill. A worksite injury brought her death at the age of 33.



The Carmelite sisters living there today seek to preserve Mariam's vision of Bethlehem as 'a house of peace and joy'. Immersing themselves in prayer, they manifest Mariam's words:

"Everyone is sleeping. And God, so full of goodness, so great, so worthy of praises, is forgotten!… no one thinks of Him!… See, nature praises Him; the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass, everything praises Him; and man, who knows his kindness, who should be praising Him, is sleeping!… Let us go and wake the universe up!"