Message for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel 2021

Letter to the Carmelite Family for the Celebration of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel – 2021

Fr. Míċeál O’Neill, O. Carm., Prior General of the Carmelites

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Carmelite Family

It is my particular desire this year to draw your attention to the bond that Carmelites have with the land of Jesus’ birth and earthly life and the land in which the Carmelite Order and Tradition was founded. It is the land that we continue to honour in our devotion to Mary, whom we recall and honour as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Lady of the Place. It is that land that pilgrims and crusaders longed to visit and to protect. It is a land that today cries out for an end to hostilities and the fulfilment of a dream of peace for the many nations and peoples who are represented among its populations.

The Place Where We Were Founded

Our Marian tradition has in roots in the dedication to Mary of the first oratory built by the hermits in the midst of their cells, close to Elijah’s spring, in one of the peaceful valleys on Mt Carmel. This meant that they were acknowledging her, the Mother of their Lord, as the Lady of the Place. Both oratory and spring, on that mountain in the Holy Land, continue to remind us that our forebears chose to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ, under the loving gaze of Mary and in imitation of her and of the prophet Elijah, whose solemnity we also celebrate in July.

Our forebears were among the many medieval pilgrims who flocked to the Holy Land. Like other pilgrims, they chose to remain there, and eventually sought to form an eremitic community on the slopes of Mt Carmel. Together they lead a life of penance, that is, of ongoing conversion, that they might «live in allegiance to Jesus Christ and serve him from a pure heart and a good conscience» (Rule, 2). The notion of allegiance as conceived and lived out in the Middle Ages, meant that these hermit-brothers of Carmel would have developed a living bond with the Holy Land that was then considered to constitute the actual patrimony and kingdom of their Lord. They committed themselves to remain in this land, in their hermitage, engaged in a spiritual battle (Rule, 18-19) in the service of their Lord. [article continues...]

Photo of Míċeál O’Neill, O.Carm by Order of Carmelites