Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Blessed Virgin Mary
Feast / Memorial: July 16

+ SHORT HISTORICAL NOTE:

According to tradition, Simon Stock, the aged general of the Carmelite Order, had appealed to Our Lady for her protection over his oppressed congregation. In response, on this day in 1251, she appeared to him at Cambridge, England and presented to him the brown scapular, which became the prototype of all the others. Mary assured him that all who were duly invested with it and wore it faithfully with filial love and confidence in her power and goodness, would experience the effects of her powerful intercession, and obtain the grace of final perseverance and her motherly protection at death.

The Carmelite Order claims at least a moral descent from Elias and the ancient hermits on Mount Carmel in Palestine. In the 13th century, its members had to flee to Europe to avoid being massacred by the Saracens and under the generalship of Simon, the monks changed from a solitary to community life, and some of the ancient, stringent rules of fasting and silence were relaxed. Since the great reform instituted by St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross in the 16th century there exists one branch of Calced Carmelites who follow the mitigated rule of Pope Eugene IV, and one of the Discalced Carmelites who still adhere to the strict, primitive rule promulgated by St Albert of Jerusalem in 1206.