Catholic Radio Dramas

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

HISTORY OF MOUNT CARMEL

Mount Carmel is a site of historical religious significance located north of Jerusalem along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It rises a thousand feet or so above the sea, where its fertility, remote beauty, and numerous caves were well-suited to lifestyle of the hermits who dwelt there. Of the many beautiful titles the Church addresses to the Blessed Virgin Mary, many include the location of her appearance, such as, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Lourdes and others. Of these, only one location is identified in Sacred Scripture; “Mount Carmel”, mentioned some thirty times in the Old Testament.

The Carmel range is covered with rich fertile soil and still has much of the appearance which gave rise to its name: “the garden” or “the garden land.” Carmel is remarkable for its profusion of aromatic plants and wild flowers. Its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea affords an abundance of dew and projects a singular beauty; hence the poetical comparison found in Chapter 7 verse 5 of the Canticle of Canticles, “Thy head is like Carmel”, and the distinct reference to the “beauty of Carmel” found in Isaiah Chapter 35 verse. 2. King David (1000 b.c.) also visited Carmel. In the Third Book of Kings, chapter 18, Sacred Scripture documents the triumph the prophet Elijah at Mount Carmel over the pagan god Baal. Today a Carmelite monastery stands at the summit of the highest peak. Saint Simon Stock composed a prayer at Mount Carmel to the Blessed Virgin with the title “Flower of Carmel.”

ELIJAH AND MOUNT CARMEL

Around the year 850 b.c., it was at Mount Carmel that Elijah gathered all the children of Israel and their ruler, Ahab, who displeased God by setting up temples to worship the pagan god Baal. Ahab had forsaken the covenant and the commandments given to Moses. In a dramatic showdown orchestrated by Elijah to demonstrate once and for all that the one and only true God, was the God of Israel. He gathered all four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, King Ahab and the people of Israel to Mount Carmel. His challenge called for the each side to erect an altar of sacrifice made of wood, on which a holocaust of bullock, cut into pieces, would be offered, but no fire was to be lit. Both sides would call upon their God to light the fire and consume the holocaust. Elijah set the terms: “The God that shall answer by fire, let him be God.” The prophets of Baal chanted and prayed all the day for a response from Baal. They slashed themselves with swords and danced around their altar. But there was no response. As the day ended, Elijah drenched his altar with four buckets of water three different times so there would be no doubts. Then he called upon the God of Israel who responded with fire consuming the holocaust. When the people saw this they fell on their faces and cried out: “The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God.” Elijah then said: Take the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them escape. Elijah then brought them all down to the torrent Cison and put them to death with the sword.

ELIJAH’S MISSION

King Ahab’s wife, Jezabel, not a Jew but a pagan, was furious at the news and vowed to have Elijah killed in the same manner by the next day. In fear of the wrath of Jezabel, Elijah took flight into the desert where, under a juniper tree, distraught over his people’s lack of faith, he fell asleep requesting from the Lord that he might die. He was awakened and fed three different times by an angel to prepare him for a new mission. He was then sent on a journey of forty days and nights through the desert to Mount Horeb. There, he dwelt in a cave, and was called out to witness the presence of the Lord. A wind with strength enough to break up the mountain and its rocks passed by, and after the wind, an earthquake, and after the earthquake, a fire. But God was not yet found in any of these. Elijah then witnessed the presence of the Lord in the near-silence of a gentle whistling breeze in what might well be a demonstration of the necessity and merits of fasting, silence, contemplation and prayer in discovering the most high God. A lesson, perhaps, in what must be endured before encountering the presence of God. Elijah was then sent back to the people of Israel to continue the Lord’s work among them. With its historical ties to the prophet Elijah, Mount Carmel continued as a center of contemplation and prayer with the hermits and monks of the early Church. That tradition continues today in the monasteries established there and elsewhere throughout the world under the patronage of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.

THE CARMELITES AND SAINT SIMON STOCK

Following the contemplative spirit of Elijah, religious communities sprang-up adopting the spiritual life of contemplation and prayer. The Rule of Life adopted by the Carmelites was drawn-up by Saint Albert Avogadro in the year 1214. The feast day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel was assigned by the Carmelites around the year 1386. July 16th was the date selected because it was on July 16, 1251 that the scapular was given by the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Simon Stock at Cambridge, England.

In answer to his appeal for help for his order, The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Simon with a scapular in her hand and said: “Take, beloved son this scapular of thy order as a badge of my confraternity and for thee and all Carmelites a special sign of grace; whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire. It is the sign of salvation, a safeguard in dangers, a pledge of peace and of the covenant”. Saint Simon Stock was assured in a supernatural manner of the special protection of the Blessed Virgin for his whole order and for all who should wear the Carmelite habit. The Blessed Virgin also promised to grant special aid, especially in the hour of death, to those who in holy fidelity wore this habit in her honor throughout life, so that they should be preserved from hell. And, the promise is extended to all who from devotion to the Mother of God should wear her habit or badge, like true Christians, until death, and be thus, as it were, affiliated to the Carmelite Order.

From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, Pope (d.461)

Mary conceived in her soul before she conceived in her body

A royal virgin of the house of David is chosen. She is to bear a holy child, one who is both God and man. She is to conceive him in her soul before she conceives him in her body. In the face of so unheard of an event she is to know no fear through ignorance of the divine plan; the angel tells her what is to be accomplished in her by the Holy Spirit. She believes that there will be no loss of virginity, she who is soon to be the mother of God. Why should she lose heart at this new form of conceiving when she has been promised that it will be effected through the power of the Most High? She believes, and her faith is confirmed by the witness of a previous wonder: against all expectation Elizabeth is made fruitful. God has enabled a barren woman to be with child; he must be believed when he makes the same promise to a virgin.

The Son of God who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made, without whom nothing was made, became man to free him from eternal death. He stooped down to take up our lowliness without loss to his own glory. He remained what he was; he took up what he was not. He wanted to join the very nature of a servant to that nature in which he is equal to God the Father. He wanted to unite both natures in an alliance so wonderful that the glory of the greater would not annihilate the lesser, nor the taking up of the lower diminish the greatness of the higher.

What belongs to each nature is preserved intact and meets the other in one person: lowliness is taken up by greatness, weakness by power, mortality by eternity. To pay the debt of our human condition, a nature incapable of suffering is united to a nature capable of suffering, and true God and true man are forged into the unity that is the Lord. This was done to make possible the kind of remedy that fitted our human need: one and the same mediator between God and men able to die because of one nature, able to rise again because of the other. It was fitting, therefore, that the birth which brings salvation brought no corruption to virginal integrity; the bringing forth of Truth was at the same time the safeguarding of virginity.

Dearly beloved, this kind of birth was fitting for Christ, the power and the wisdom of God: a birth in which he was one with us in our human nature but far above us in his divinity. If he were not true God, he would not be able to bring us healing; if he were not true man, he would not be able to give us an example.

And so at the birth of our Lord, the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to his people on earth as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. If the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?.

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings