By Leon Bent –
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century.
The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, celebrated on July 16, was first instituted in the late 14th century in commemoration of the approval of the rule of the Carmelite Order a hundred years earlier.
Saint Bernadette tells us that when Our Lady appeared to her on July 16, 1858, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, she appeared as a young woman without the Child Jesus. She had never looked so beautiful. It calls to mind some of the early Carmelite Icons of Mary portrayed as youthful and beautiful, icons bearing the title “You are all beautiful, O Mary”.
We love Mary as the beautiful one. To us she is the beauty of our lives. We live in a world where beauty is image, style, youthfulness and a product marketed and for marketing…… in some ways we are in an age of the cult of beauty.
Some writers refer Mary’s charming looks as the “sinlessness” of her beauty. Sin is the real distorter of authentic and profound beauty.
I think today’s feast tells us that God knew what He was doing, preparing a place of beauty for his Son. It is the beauty of relationship, fidelity and love. “She is truly the beauty of our race – the beautiful flower of Carmel. So like all who are close to us we can take them for granted.” A feast like today invites us to remember that Mary is there with us, as mother and sister. This is something beautiful. One modern Carmelite, Carlos Mesters, wrote not so long ago, “it is like the earth under our feet – we don’t see it but it is that which hold us up”. The image of Mary in Carmel is often portrayed as a small group enfolded in the mantel, in the loving embrace of Mary.
As with all those we love, we give them a place – space in our lives. We may even wear something to remind us of them – a gift, a piece of jewellery, a bracelet. We keep their picture in our homes or even carry it with us. Everywhere I travel I find images of Mary in our convents and churches. Those associated with Mary carry her gift in the form of a piece of cloth – the Scapular – just to remind us of this Lady of Carmel. So we give her not just a physical place, but one in our deepest intimate moments, which we call prayer; in what we wear that indicates our personal relationship with her, in our churches and homes, even in the beautiful names we give our children – Mary or Carmel. Today, Mary has a place in our celebrations in Carmel, a place in this summer month of July.
It has long been my conviction that the main crisis facing the Church is not a crisis of faith, but a crisis of religious experience. It is not that people do not believe, but they do not see the point of faith. And they drift away. Despite the enormous commitment of the Catholic Church to the renewal of liturgy, there has not been a renewed Church. How? Read further!
Carmelite mysticism is not primarily about peak experiences, or extraordinary graces such as visions, ecstasy or levitation. It is the Christianity lived to the full, pursued to its ultimate and all-satisfying fulfilment. Mysticism is a way of living, and not a set of transient or isolated experiences. Mysticism is the result of an unconditional response to unconditional love. The mystic wants and finds God alone, and in God finds and values everything else. What most characterizes mysticism therefore is love.
And, this gold nugget! The charism of each religious family is the particular way in which its members are called to follow Christ. This Rule of St. Albert and the experience of the Carmelites as they sought to be faithful to it in various circumstances gave definitive shape to the charism. We can say that there are several elements which make up the Carmelite charism. Firstly, and most importantly, it is a way of following Christ with total dedication. Carmelites do this by seeking to form contemplative communities at the service of God’s people in whose midst they live. Fraternity, service and contemplation are therefore essential values for all Carmelites.
Now, this final flourish! The medieval imagination did not dichotomize the apostolic and contemplative lives; the overflow of prayer was seen to be apostolic preaching. The hermits’ zeal to imitate the poverty of Christ led them to a profoundly incarnational spirituality by which they approached the Divine Mystery through the humanity of Christ, a feature that has always remained central in the Carmelite tradition.
The punch line! May the Mother of Carmel be “near” to us, may she have a place in the hearts of all the multifaceted Congregations of Carmelites, and the lay faithful, too!
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.
Leon Bent regularly writes for 9 Catholic Magazines, Journals and Web Portals, worldwide – occasionally, the reach is over 5 million readers.