Mount Carmel is a biblical place where the prophet Elijah dwelt. It rises 1,742 feet above sea level, towering above Israel's Mediterranean coastline.
Here, Elijah prayed to God for the salvation of Israel which was suffering a terrible drought. He prayed and sent his servant up the mountain several times to look for rain. On the 7th try, Elijah's servant returned with good news.
And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. - 1 Kings 18:42-44
Elijah saw the cloud as a symbol of the Virgin mentioned in the prophecies of Isaiah:
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
According to an old tradition, a group of hermits had lived on Mount Carmel since the time of the prophet. The hermits who lived on Mount Carmel followed Elijah's example and prayed for the advent of the awaited Virgin who would become the mother of the Messiah. Thus, the origins of the Carmelite Order can be traced back to Elijah and these hermited disciples.
In the year 1150, a crusader named Berthold organized the hermits he found there into a religious order after the western model. The first Carmelites were these hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century. They built in the midst of their hermitages a chapel which they dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, whom they conceived of in chivalric terms as the "Lady of the place."
In the 13th century, during the Crusades, St. Simon Stock joined the hermits on Mount Carmel while on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1247, he was elected as the 6th superior-general of the Carmelites.
The order had difficulty gaining acceptance and suffered persecution and oppression which prompted the monks to have recourse to the Blessed Virgin in the year 1251.
On Sunday, July 16th, 1251, as Simon Stock knelt in prayer, Our Lady appeared to him, holding the Child Jesus in one arm and the Brown Scapular in the other. She uttered the following words: "Hoc erit tibi et cunctis Carmelitis privilegium, in hoc habitu moriens salvabitur." This shall be the privilege for you and for all the Carmelites, that anyone dying in this habit shall be saved.
The Brown Scapular became part of the Carmelite habit after 1287. This is a devotional sacramental signifying the wearer's consecration to Mary and affiliation with the Carmelite order. It symbolizes her special protection and calls the wearers to consecrate themselves to her in a special way.
The Carmelites consider Mary to be a perfect model of the interior life of prayer and contemplation to which the Carmleites aspire, as well as a model of virtue as the person who was closest in life to Jesus Christ. She is seen as the one who points Christians most surely to Christ. Like she says to the servants at the Wedding Feast at Cana, "Do whatever He tells you."
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| Carmelites look to Mary as a spiritual mother. |
Carmel in Hebrew signifies a "garden" -- Mary's soul is a garden of virtues; an oasis of silence and peace, completely filled with God. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, of a life wholly concentrated to seeking God and tending wholly toward divine intimacy, and Mary best realizes this very high ideal.
Only the soul that is wholly detached and in complete control of its passions can, like Mary, be a solitary silent garden where God will find His delights. - Fr. Gabriel of Mary Magdalen, OCD
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