Vision of a New Mount Carmel
Help us build a place of spiritual renewal for generations to come
The New Mount Carmel Vision
Making the Vision of a New Mount Carmel a Reality
The Carmelite Priory & Retreat Centre is…
- A place to stop.
- A place to breathe.
- A place of belonging.
- A place where the soul can find sanctuary.
“The soul is capable of much more than we can imagine.”
St Teresa of Ávila describes the soul as a magnificent castle with seven dwelling places, each bringing the seeker closer to the centre where God dwells in intimate friendship. The New Mount Carmel Project embodies this progressive journey toward divine union.
The New Mount Carmel Project is a £10m capital campaign which aims to:
Landscape
Conserve our natural environment, creating harmonious spaces in a landscape that promotes beauty and serenity and nurtures divine encounter.
Architecture
Create a modern building with comfortable guest rooms, library, conference facilities, places for silent reflection and spaces to gather and make new friends.
Spiritual Heritage
Make our centuries-old Carmelite Spirituality accessible to wider audiences and preserve the contemplative way for generations to come.
Discourse on Architecture and Landscape Masterplan
What Your Gift Builds
Studio
A new state-of-the-art studio will provide a new space for content creation thereby enhancing our capacity for digital outreach and making available more resources for people’s ongoing spiritual formation. It will also increase our revenue in the coming years thereby ensuring ongoing financial stability for our ministry.
Conference Space
A new conference space will also enable the Centre to deliver on-site formation for our students, pastoral ministers, and Church leaders — clergy and lay. It will also host our annual conferences, summits and Enriching Ministry Days that are simultaneously streamed to audiences all over the world. As it will be let out to external groups it will also provide additional income for the Centre.
Guest accommodation
New en-suite guest accommodation will provide suitable private facilities and a more reflective space for study, rest, and prayer. These will replace the shared facilities in the “Annex” building constructed 60 years ago although originally designed for a short life of only 15 years.
Library
A new library that will enable the Centre to host the only specialist library collection of thousands of books and associated journals for the study of Carmelite, as well as, contemporary and applied spiritualities in the UK. Carefully built over the past 60 years it will accompanying readers — in person and online — into new ways of imaginatively engaging with the defining issues of our day, and responding with creative fidelity inspired by the wisdom Christian spirituality and making their own unique contributions to the world. It will also leverage the Centre’s proximity to the 43 colleges of the University of Oxford as well tens of thousands of annual visitors who come for theological conferences and seminars in the University city.
Landscaping
Enhancing the landscape of the Centre so that it continues being a place of beauty and an oasis of serenity and stillness is part of the vision. Our extensive grounds of open meadows and mature woodland are ideal for quiet prayer and meditation, reflective study and walks. It reflects the meaning of the word Carmel which means “garden” in its original Hebrew. The Centre aims to provide a landscape that promotes beauty; and nurtures prayerful, formative companionship with God.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this visionary project we’d love to hear from you: fundraising@cacs.org.uk