Congratulations Brother Richard | Our Lady of Mount Carmel

We are all grateful for the continued blessing of God, support of the Archdiocese, and the hard work of Brother Richard who was ordained to the transitional diaconate on May 11, 2024, and ask for continued prayers as he makes his way toward the priesthood.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

From its earliest beginnings, the solitary longing of the Carmelite soul has been for eternal union with the Living God, to enter into the innermost heart, laboring in the presence of God, the Bridegroom of the soul, ever present doing us good.

Established in the footsteps of Elijah, Carmel is a wilderness, and the thirsty soul is driven into arid desert by the Holy Spirit, not to wither, but to draw from the fount of Carith, to drink from the streams of Living Water found in the silence of solitude, to taste, intensely and intimately, the pleasure of the divine, of contemplation, and the experience of God.

Father Paul-Marie of the Cross O.C.D. wrote that, in Elijah, Carmel sees itself as in a mirror. His eremitic and prophetic life expresses its own most intimate ideal. […] It perceives its deep kinship with this man who “stood in the presence of the Living God.” If it shares his weaknesses and his anguish, it also knows his faith in God and his zeal for the God of Hosts, and it has tasted the same delights of a life hidden in God which the prophet also experienced. [...]So we may say that having found its model in Elias, the Carmelite advances with him toward the very origin of true contemplative life. Or, it might be more exact to say that having found the contemplative experience in its origin, carried by Elias to the highest degree of purity, detachment and fulfillment, the Carmelite, wishing to renew this experience, feels obliged to recreate in his soul the climate in which this life grew: the desert with its spiritual solitude and silence; and he, in his turn feels constrained to undertake this persevering march toward the mountain of God where fire burns but does not consume.

Indeed the vocation of the Carmelite is a prophetic one handed down through Elijah and Elisha. It should be noted that is not the ability to foretell the future, that defines the prophet, but rather contemplation, intimacy, and the uniqueness of a direct relationship with God which created the phenomenon of the Israeli prophet. The prophet, like the contemplative Carmelite, rather than by the spectacular witness of Elijah, or by visions and miracles, which are an accidental outcome of this direct intimacy with God, are more importantly defined by three basic elements of the prophetic personality: Faith, humility, and trust.

The Carmelite lectionary for the solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel takes its first reading from the book of Kings:

Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, crouched down to the earth, and put his head between his knees. He said to his servant, “Go up and look out to sea.” He went up and looked, but reported, “There is nothing.” Seven times he said, “Go look again!” And the seventh time the youth reported, “There is a cloud as small as a man’s hand rising from the sea.” Elijah said, “Go and say to Ahab, ‘Harness up and go down the mountain before the rain stops you.'" All at once the sky grew dark with clouds and wind, and a heavy rain fell. 

1 Kings 18:42-45

This little cloud, so small and delicate in its virginal beauty, almost too easy to overlook, is traditionally seen as a foreshadowing of of Mary, a pure servant of God who, though so hidden, so seemingly small in the grand scheme of things, would, through her cooperation with the Holy Spirit, bring down upon the parched earth a deluge of grace through her divine Son.

If we find such inspiration in the life of our founder, Elijah, even more so may we look to this fairest flower of God's garden for comfort and guidance and have recourse to our Patron, the Mother of God, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is the silent, hidden, and contemplative example of Mary that we desire to emulate as Carmelites through her fiat, her first yes and her continual yes, and her trust in the providence of God that brought Christ into the world. Mary is an example of patient endurance, her life a picture of the power of the love of God which extinguishes all fear and supplies the steadfast soul in the midst of both unfathomable joy and inexpressible sorrow.