July 16
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
On 16 July the Church celebrates Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Virgen del Carmen. Mount Carmel is a green mountain beside the sea in the Holy Land, in today’s Israel, where the prophet Elijah once prayed. In the 1100s a group of hermits who wanted to live in prayer settled on its slopes and built a small chapel in honor of Mary. They became the Carmelites, and they look to Elijah, the man of prayer, as their spiritual father.
The Bible tells that, after a long drought, Elijah went up to the top of Carmel and prayed. His servant looked toward the sea seven times, and the seventh time he saw a little cloud, small as a man’s foot, rising out of the water. Soon heavy rain fell on the dry land. Carmelites have long seen in that little cloud a sign of Mary, through whom Jesus came into the world. The Virgen del Carmen is loved across the Hispanic world. She is the patroness of Chile, and in many seaside towns of Spain and Latin America, fishermen and sailors carry her image in boats on the water on 16 July.
Carmelites wear a scapular, a long piece of brown cloth that hangs over the shoulders of their habit. Other Catholics can wear a small version, two little squares of brown wool joined by cords. A pious tradition says that Our Lady gave the scapular to an English Carmelite, Saint Simon Stock, in 1251. Historians cannot confirm that story, and the Church does not ask us to believe it. What the Church teaches is that the scapular is a sacramental, a sacred sign that helps us love Jesus and follow Mary’s example. It is never a magic charm, and wearing it does not take the place of praying and living as a Christian. Its value is in what it reminds us of: we belong to Jesus, and Mary walks with us.
Centuries later, in Spain, another Carmelite, Saint Teresa of Ávila, set out to bring her Carmel back to a simple life of prayer. In the 1500s she reformed her order and founded many convents. Teresa taught that praying does not need long speeches: it is spending time with God as with a friend. In her book about her life she wrote that inner prayer is nothing else than:
“Talking as friends, often and alone, with the One we know loves us.”
Bring it home
Take a few quiet minutes together and talk to Jesus the way Teresa did, like a friend: each person tells him about their day in their own words. Then pray the Hail Mary to the Virgen del Carmen.
