Carmel

Let us begin with the reminder that this is Formation. we come here not just to learn a rule, but also to be formed by it. As we go through the Rule of St. Albert and parts of the journey our forerunners have taken, let us listen with our hearts. Carmel is not just a Spirituality or a place where we enjoy being, a place where we find peace, it is a way of life. Carmel is a vocation, that spark, and that desire to live our lives in a particular way is a call from God, a gift from Him. We must pay particular attention that we do not dilute it into something it is not. Just considering ourselves a part of them for one or two meetings a month does not form our communities. Our community becomes as much a part of our lives as our immediate family. The concerns of the community are our concerns, the burdens of the community are our burdens, the joys of the community are our joys, and the growth of the community is directly related to our own growth. Our vocation calls us to Union with God, which can only be attained through His grace and growth in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. The greatest act of community love was and is mutual correction.

If the main reason we come to community is to be fed, either spiritually or emotionally, to become a mutual admiration society, or to round out our social life, then we have lost the fruits of our vocation. The call to Carmel is a call to be everything we can be, a man or woman fully human, fully alive, and living in the spirit of truth, not for our own reward or satisfaction, but for the greater glory of God and His church, to unite all our thoughts, words, and actions to His very presence. Our Rule is built on the rock of sound doctrine.

Carmel did not begin with the Rule of St. Albert, but hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years before. The Carmelite Order derives its name from the holy mountain of its beginning. In the eastern land where every mountain has its own memories, Mount Carmel has some of the most holy. Carmel is a name that is familiar in every part of the Catholic world; and its natural beauty seems to be exactly in keeping with its gracious association.

The following description is from the book, "Journey to Carith."

Mount Carmel! Tall, massive, brooding at the water's edge. The site of innumerable Biblical scenes. The home of the fiery prophet Elijah, the mountain dwelling of Elisha and his school of prophets; the image used by Solomon in his Song of Songs to describe the bride's alluring beauty; the mountain retreat of early Christian monks who prayed there and lived in its caves, the scene of battle and bloodshed for marauding armies which climbed its steep; Saracens and Turks, Crusaders and the French armies of Napoleon. Rich with history, venerable with age, confidante of a thousand stories of personal human drama, part mountain, part symbol, it stands in the new Israeli state, evocative of the past, but an enduring and tangible testimony that the spirit of the great realities enacted there, Judaic and Christian, will never die or be lost.

Carith was a wadi, a small watering place, where the Lord God sent the prophet Elijah with the message, "depart from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the torrent of Carith, which is east of the Jordan (1Kings).
The medieval Carmelites, who proposed themselves as followers and imitators of Elijah, found in this one episode in the prophet's life a symbol of their entire life and dedication. Playing on the phonetic similarity between Carith and the Latin word "caritas," which means love, they envisioned the trip to Carith as a journey to love.

Carmel is the natural retreat of the contemplative; it stands above the turmoil of life, above the world's stormy sea. Its solitude is beyond the reach of our secular world of feverish activity, it is wrapped in the very peace of God. Such a peace we naturally associate with Carmel, but it has other associations more stirring and more turbulent. The memory of the great spiritual warfare of Elijah still clings to it. It was here he gathered together all Israel and flung reproach at their heads. "How long do you halt between two sides? If the Lord be God, follow Him." Israel heard his challenge in words of flame, as a burning torch. But he was more than the Prophet of the sword, he was also the first of a long line of those who would worship God in spirit and in truth. John the Baptist is introduced as coming in "the spirit and the power of Elijah." In a most impressive moment, the Prophet appeared at the transfiguration of Jesus, together with Moses, giving witness that Christ was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. In his lifetime, disciples gathered around him and learned from him the deep secrets of his prayer and communion with God. His double spirit passed to Elisha, from him to the school of Prophets, and so down through the ages, the life of Elijah has been continued in these hermits who ever sought inspiration in their great examplar.

Those early prophets, or Nabis as they were called in Hebrew, were easily identifiable by their garb, a leather loin-cloth wrapped around, and a hairy mantle draped over the shoulders. When these bearded men came striding into town or village, usually carrying staffs in their hands, they presented a striking image. The nabis' preaching was a mission that resulted from their life of union with God. They were not career preachers or teachers, nor did they even attempt to combine the contemplative and the active vocation. They only appeared occasionally in the urban community when the situation demanded it. They lived in an age when Israel was surrounded by pagan cultures and they came to preach the reality of God. Yahweh lives, they said, we know Him, we love Him, and we experience Him. They would appear surprisingly and suddenly in the Jewish town or village, preach the message of Yahweh to a forgetful people, and then retire swiftly to their solitary places to be alone with their Yahweh. Biblical scholars have called them "the conscience of Israel."

This era of the Order carries much appeal. Perhaps it's love of ancient history, but it is also deep love and call to simplicity and the opportunity to live a life of single-mindedness. Our 1/2 hour of mental prayer is the period of time we share closest with our ancient ancestors, and although a mandatory part of our Rule, I think it should be considered not so much a discipline, as an open door to the past, as well as to the future in uniting us all, both to our God and to each other.

Hundreds of years later, a person, after meeting St. Teresa for the first time, said to a friend, "You told me wrong, you said she was a woman, she is a man and one worthy to wear a beard," I suspect it was to these strong nabis', these dedicated bearded men that she was compared.

When Europe was full of the battle cry of the Crusaders, "God wills it," and the Crusaders set out to recapture the holy places, Carmel was one of the first places to be won back. There they found the ruins of the old sanctuaries. and we are told some of them remained to restore the old life. From the narrative of John Phocas, a Greek monk, 1177, we know that one of the Crusaders of the West, St. Berthold, was instructed by the holy Prophet to collect together on Mount Carmel, those who were living the eremitic life there, and to unite them in community life; that other spirit unspeakably more exalted, the mystical real experience of God. It must be the union of active and passive contemplation, the union of human effort and infusion of the mystical life of God. God will reward our sufferings and sacrifices, our labors and exercises in prayer and virtue, with the beatifying vision of His love and greatness.
This living in the presence of God, this placing ourselves before the face of God, is a characteristic which all the children of Carmel have inherited from the great Prophet. But if Elijah is the great type of contemplative, set deep in the heart of the ancient law, he is also a great ascetic. In this characteristic we find a second foundation of his life of prayer, which is love of solitude, to which he always returns and to which he is sent by God. But before endowing him so abundantly, God required great renunciation. "The great hermit," says St. Jerome, "the lover of solitude, is led into the wilderness by the spirit of God." There he understands the words of the Psalmist, "the lover of solitude sets himself down there and holds his peace and lifts himself above himself."

His life of prayer has a third foundation, his detachment from the world, if he is lifted up to God, it is the price of sacrifice. "The Lord calls him from his birthplace and from his own people." And so Our Lord after him, he tasted the bitterness of the lonely world.

God tried His servant in many and difficult ways. He demanded his cooperation, but above all he asked an unquestioning faith, and absolute trust in God's Providence.

It can truly be said that the life of high contemplation of the prophet was not only founded on the practice of all virtues, but that this practice and exercise of prayer and virtue--heroic virtue, accompany and follow his visions and mystical graces. These mystical graces are a free gift of God, but God did not grant them without asking great and heroic virtue as human disposition and preparation.

St. James teaches us that Elijah was the great example of continual prayer. In his prayer we see the union of vocal and liturgical prayer with the prayer of meditation and contemplation - contemplation in its double sense, active and passive.

The word, "Prophet," in the ancient law has a wider meaning than we attach to it now. It was used to describe not only one who prophesied, one who had been given that special gift of God, but also one who sang the praise of God together with others, usually seven times a day. Elijah was the Prophet in all the meanings of the term. He had a school and disciples not in one place, but in many, and most probably led them in prayer at fixed times.

So it can be said that liturgical prayer comes to us from a very ancient tradition, even though, it is secondary to the deeper prayer of meditation and contemplation. Contemplation is built on the foundation of liturgical prayer.

In the school of Carmel the mystical contemplative life is the fruit of the Eucharistic life. For the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the fountain of our life of prayer, the life of Elijah provides us with a most striking type. The miraculous bread ministered to him is a perfect image of that Eucharistic food, in the strength of which we walk in life's journey here below.

In the Eucharistic tradition of Carmel, we walk with Elijah in the strength of that divine bread, and since we would draw near to the life of God in prayer, we must be mindful of the Saviour's command, "Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you cannot have life in you." Just as the communion of Elijah in the miraculous bread of the desert led him in his journey to the contemplation of God on Mt. Horeb, so too, the Blessed Sacrament must lead us to the contemplation of His Holy Face. In the caves of Horeb God spoke to the Prophet by the voice of the gentle, whispering wind. The Lord was not a storm nor in the earthquake, but the gentle wind. So after Communion we contemplate under the Eucharistic species, and in the depths of our spirit, FOR NOW GOD PASSES.

Fire is also a most expressive symbol of love. "I am come to cast fire on the earth," says the Lord. It is this fire which enveloped Elijah when, according to the witness of Scripture, he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Wrapped in the seraphic flame he is taken from the earth. Carmel must always feel that glow of its founder's zeal, it is the mark of the true follower of Elijah. It burns in all Carmelite Saints.

According to the travel story of the Greek monk, Phocas, St. Berthold, "a monk white with age and invested with priestly dignity, came to Carmel in 1155, built a small chapel and collected ten brothers." He did not, however, give them a Rule, being unwilling to interfere with the customs of the hermits, which among them had the force of an unwritten law. It is difficult to determine in what these customs consisted, however, a broad outline in two documents that incorporate these customs may be seen. The first is the Rule drawn up by St. Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, some fifty years afterwards, and given to St. Brocard, the successor of St. Berthold. It begins by declaring that it is building on foundations already laid, and declares as its object the setting down in writing of traditions of life already established. The second document is the already mentioned, "The Institution of the First Monks," which is a summary of the spirit and principles of life obtained by the hermits. It is not less valuable, even though it was written as late as the 13th century.

These two documents are remarkably alike in spirit and in the points they emphasize. Both would regard prayer as the essential life of the Order, and they agree on the provisions laid down for it preservation. The ideal they place before the early monks is one of solitude and detachment from the world, as a condition and safeguard for the life of prayer. Their dwelling places are to be deserts, apart from the busy life of the world. These places are recommended as most fitting to their seclusion, but aloofness from the world may also be achieved in conditions less remote from the world's busy life. But the Rule demands that the cloister must ever be a cloister, and its provisions guarantee that atmosphere of peace and quiet in which the spirit may commune with God. Each one must have a separate cell, which the Rule regards as the individual's own particular place for personal devotion and intimate prayer. All the constitutions drawn up at different times have laid definite and particular emphasis on the cell as the sanctuary of the individual soul. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi used to kiss the walls of her cell, while she repeated the words ascribed to Bernard: O Blessed solitude, O only salvation." In Carmel there are no common dormitories, and work is not done in common when it is possible to do it alone, When necessary, there is a common workshop, but the Rule insists that the work be done in silence. On the other hand, there are places where community life prevails. There is a common refectory and common for recreation. With these exceptions, life is lived as far as possible in the retirement of the cell. He or she who would attain to holiness and more fervent communion with God, according to the spirit of Carmel, must love solitude and aloofness from the world. It is a peculiarity of the Carmelite Order that although one of the mendicant orders, living amongst people in the world and engaged in active life, it retains the greatest love for solitude and aloofness from the world, and considers solitude and contemplation the better part part of its spiritual life.

But the Order of Carmel is not only contemplative, and the active life of the apostolate is not alien to its spirit. There are times when the priests or friars of Carmel must engage in the active life of the church; when Mary must become like Martha. This was implied when the order was given the status of a Mendicant Order. Even the fiercest advocate of the contemplative life, Fr. General Nicholas Gallus, successor of St. Simon Stock, avows that not only then, but even before that time, the hermits of Carmel, as circumstances demanded, left not only their cells but their cloisters, and descended from the mountain to devote themselves to the work of the active apostolate. However, this was an exception, since the Rule laid down that, "the monks should remain in their cells or near them, day and night meditating on the law of the Lord, unless they are engaged in other legitimate works."

In the mystical life this represents the highest ideal of the spiritual, imparting the fruit of contemplation to others by the active life. Both ways lead to God, and from both the people of God receive the greatest graces. The active life, while acknowledged as important and necessary, must always take second place to the better part, contemplation.

There have been, especially in the first centuries of the establishment of the Order in the West, when urgent needs of the Church were neglected for the sake of the contemplative ideal. At other times the spirit of contemplation has been lost in too great activity. But the principle point to remember is that the school of Carmel, while rating at its highest the cure of souls in the world, cannot forget that it is called to a higher vocation. Elijah was called to a life of prayer in the midst of a life of intense activity, yet he is one of the greatest Prophets of the Old Testament. His life and prayer tell us that his prayer was the strength of his life, so the contemplative prayer of the Carmelite is also the fuel for the Church, so the mystical life is in the highest sense apostolic. Many Carmels are considered the real centers of missionary work, not because of their activity, but because of their contemplative life. Remember, St. Therese became the Patron of Missionaries, not from raveling to far off places, but from her own sick bed through prayer and penances.

The school of Carmel demands preparation and the exercise of the greatest virtue. Our lives must be ordered in the direction of the Order's aim. St. Teresa says, "all of us who wear the holy habit of Mount Carmel are called to prayer and contemplation: there is the place of our first institution; we belong to the race of the holy Fathers of Mount Carmel who in such deep solitude and in such entire contempt of the world, sought for the treasure, the precious pearl of which we are speaking. And nevertheless, I declare to you that very few among us prepare themselves to see the Saviour reveal it to them." (Interior Castle, Fifth Mansions, Chp.1)

The ancient history of the Order shows us that this special election to the mystical life revealed itself from the beginning, and was the constant ideal of the Order long before St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross accomplished the reform which brought contemplation into such prominence. However, St. Teresa in her own masterly way describes how the life of grace is built on natural foundations. The life of grace even in it highest degree is engrafted into the natural, and under its impulse the whole human personality grows to its fullest maturity. Vatican Council II, stated that one of the criteria for renewal of religious life was:

1) A continuous return to the source of all Christian life, and to the original inspiration behind a given institute.
2) An adjustment of the institute to the changed conditions of the times

It goes on to state: It is in the best interests of the Church that each institute should have its own special character and purpose. Therefore, loyal recognition should be given to the spirit of the founders, as also to all the particular goals and wholesome traditions, which constitute the heritage of each institute.

Taken from "A Journey to Carith" -by Peter Thomas Rohrbach
"Carmelite Mysticism Historical Sketches" -by Titus Brandsma, O.Carm.
Vatican II documents