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The Carmelites in the Catholic Church with M Mary of St Joseph ocd: "The Order of Carmel in itself goes back to the Middle Ages, began in the 13th century on Mount Carmel from which it takes its name in the Holy Land, begun by a group of hermits who gathered there and eventually formed themselves into a religious order. In Spain in the 16th century, when the Church was undergoing the Reformation, St Teresa of Avila founded a reformed branch, a renewed branch, of the Carmelite Order, based on what she understood of the spirit of those early hermits. The essence of her vision was to construct a way of life that would support and encourage a life of prayer, a life dedicated to prayer, very much at the service of the Church and of the whole of humanity. Her own experience of the Reformation, this attack on the unity of the Church, impacted on her as an attack on Christ himself, and that led to her famous declaration "My one wish was and still is that, as Christ has so many enemies and so few friends, his few friends should be good ones." She saw that life of prayer as being a way of serving the Church in a hidden interior way, strengthening the Church as it were from within. Today we experience the Church under attack in many different ways, suffering in many different ways, attacked from outside, suffering scandal and dissension from within, and we can easily resonate with Teresa's words when she said "The world is on fire. Don't let any more harm come to your Church, Lord." So today the Carmelites still desire to offer their lives in prayer for the Church, for all of humanity. Prayer understood as a relationship with God, we're invited, called by God, to a relationship of deep intimacy with him, to the point of coming to recognise our oneness with Him. We trust that by opening ourselves, opening our hearts fully to the love that God desires to bestow on everyone, to pour out on the whole world, that we can be channels of His love to others by receiving it as fully as we can ourselves." Visit Totus2us.com for more. Totus Tuus (All Yours) was the motto of Blessed John Paul II to Mary; Our Lady is also everything to us - Totus 2us.