← [[session-03-f1b|Session 3: Reform of St. Teresa of Ávila]] | [[formation-I-b-handbook|Table of Contents]] | [[session-05-f1b|Session 5: Foundation of the First Monastery for Discalced Carmelite Friars]] → # Session 4: The New Monastery of the Glorious St. Joseph — Blessed Anne of St Bartholomew Required Reading: The Book of Her Life, chapter 36. Additional Reading: Excerpt from The Collected Works of Edith Stein: The Hidden Life, Saint Joseph’s of Avila, the First Monastery of the Reform, pgs. 53-58. (Appendix E) Essential Points to Discuss: • Friar Peter of Alcántara (a Franciscan friar/hermit) and Don Juan Balazquez (a layman), succeeded in getting Don Alvaro de Mendoza, the bishop of Avila, to accept the new foundation under his jurisdiction (see 36:1-2). • “Everything was done in deep secrecy…” (36:3). “When everything was ready the Lord was pleased that on St Bartholomew’s Day the habit was received by some and the Blessed Sacrament was reserved, and with all due authority and power our monastery of our most glorious father St Joseph was founded, in 1562” (36:5). • “…it was a great delight for me to see that His Majesty had used me …as an instrument for such a marvelous work. Thus, I was so intensely happy that I was as though outside myself, in deep prayer” (36:6). • “We observe the rule of our Lady of Mt. Carmel (St Albert Rule) and keep it without mitigation as ordained by the Friar Cardinal Hugo of Saint Sabina and given in 1248, in the fifth year of the pontificate of Pope Innocent IV” (36:26). Explanatory note: St Teresa is referring to their giving up the text mitigated by Eugene IV, which was observed in the Monastery of the Incarnation. They substituted for this text the rule as approved by Innocent IV. This was the juridical and spiritual point of departure for her reform (see footnote to 36:27). Assigned Meditative Reading: (choose one per week) • Psalm 127 – unless the Lord builds the house • Matthew 7:13-14 – enter by the narrow gate • Matthew 7:24-27 – the house built on rock • Matthew 13:18-23 – parable of the sower • Luke 6:43-45 – a good tree bears good fruit • John 15 – Christ is the vine, we are the branches • John of the Cross – first three stanzas of the Dark Night (Appendix F) --- **Source:** Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, *Formation I Year B: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life* (US National Formation Program, 2024).