Happy Feast Day, Our Lady of Mount Carmel!
Patroness of the Carmelites
Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of the Carmelite Order—so this is a very special occasion for all Carmelites.
The Order of Carmelites (and its sister organization, the Order of Discalced Carmelites, “discalced” meaning to go barefoot or in sandals) is one of the few religious orders without a specific founder, though it considers the prophet Elijah its spiritual father.
According to the Old Testament, Mt. Carmel was where Elijah challenged 450 priests of the demon god Baal to a match of fiery sacrifices to see whose god was the one, true capital-G God. (For the full story, check out 1 Kings 18:16-45.)
In the late 12th century, some Western hermits came together on the sacred mountain to live a collective life of prayer and penance. Sometime between 1206 and 1214, they asked St. Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem and Papal Legate to the Holy Land, to write a “rule of life” for them. This little 2,000-word document now known as “Albert’s Rule,” with solitary prayer at its core, proved to be his most durable contribution to the life of the Church.
In 1229, Christians were becoming less and less welcome in the Holy Land which caused the flow of pilgrims to decline and almsgiving to the Carmelite monks to turn into a trickle. During the next 10 years, the situation got so bad that some of them were sent to Europe to establish new roots there, which was the beginning of the Carmelite Orders as we know them today.
During the tumultuous times of Luther’s Protestant Reformation, many religious orders—including the Carmelites—descended into worldliness. The Carmelites became downright socialites. At the outset, St. Teresa of Avila was no different than the rest.