Javier de la Cruz, OCD
The following article is taken from Teresa de Jesus, No. 88, July-August 1997 (reprinted with permission). Translation from the Spanish to English was done by Br. Leonel Varela, OCD, a student at the House of Studies in Mt. Angel, Oregon.
Devotion to the Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel springs forth from the spiritual experience of the first Carmelites. Historical documents that have survived from the thirteenth century tell us that the [Carmelites] built a church or an oratory that was located at the center of the settlement. There they gathered to venerate the Virgin Mary, Our Lady, and to celebrate the sacred liturgy. As a matter of fact, it is from that mount and from this very church that the hermits took the name Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. It appears it was due to hardships of life that they invoked the name of the Blessed Virgin as their advocate, like so many people of the low Middle Ages who felt protected and sheltered by her.
Therefore, in order to understand devotion to the Virgin of Mount Carmel, we must explore the titles or the special treatment the Carmelites have given her. Nowadays, we have a very stereotypical image of the Virgin of Carmel, like the virgin of the scapular or, better yet, as the one who frees sinners from purgatory. The truth is that this popular image of Our Lady is guilty of reductionism; that is, it limits her true image.
The Lady of the Place
First of all, the Virgin was for those first Carmelites the Queen and Lady of the Place. They were familiar with the feudal system of their time; thus they felt that Carmel, the geographical reality in which they lived, was one of Mary’s properties. With a zeal of feudal sentiment, they felt the need to serve the Virgin and, as a result, the need to imitate her life and her virtues. By the fourteenth century, a Carmelite author, Juan Bacón, addressing the devotion of those first Carmelites, confirmed that they, by their works, truly imitated her as the Lady of the Place. Another author, Juan Veneta, shared this same idea of the Carmelites belonging to Mary when he states that “the first hermits knelt and praised God and the Lady of the Place.”
With time, the devotion the Carmelites had for the Virgin Mary began to spread as a true Marian cult, such as naming their churches after the Virgin, the daily prayer of her office, the celebration of Our Lady’s Mass, singing the Salve on Saturdays, and celebrating all Marian feasts.
The fact that the feudal system always expected something in return for the service rendered explains why the Carmelites, in serving the Virgin Mary, expected to be protected from all harm and to be safe from the wickedness of the devil by the Virgin herself. “Every Carmelite rejoices to be under the protection of Mary whom they take as their special Lady, patroness, and advocate,” Arnoldo Bostio wrote in the fifteenth century. In fact, the Carmelites of the Middle Ages in their profession of vows expressed this feeling of belonging to the Virgin as servants. The friar, by putting his hands into the hands of the prior, was consecrating himself to God and to his Most Holy Mother, vowing his allegiance and service. It was this same sentiment that motivated the Carmelites to call themselves Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary—a common practice in medieval times to be named after the person you served.
Mother and Sister
Little by little, the Carmelites’ Marian devotion changed from an attitude of feudal service to a filial attitude that saw the Virgin as the Mother of Carmel and not simply as a patron. It was in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a very difficult time for the Order, that the Carmelites began to call upon Mary as mother. In fact, it was in the year 1333, when the Province of Lombardy held a chapter, that for the first time Mary was addressed as the Mother of the Order of Carmel and the constitutions of 1369 declared that “the Carmelite Order exists for the Glory of God and of the Virgin Mary his Mother and our Mother.” In the hymn Flos Carmeli, which dates to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, Mary is referred to as an amiable mother.
With the foundations of Mary as Mother of Carmel laid out, Arnold Bostio, in explaining the development of Mary’s maternity within Carmel, states that Mary loves the Carmelites with a tender love, she defends them as her own and only children, and they have all their hopes and refuge in her: “Our Lady, our Mother, we beseech refuge in your womb. It is necessary that the mother be with her children and the teacher with her disciples. No day or night, no pilgrimage, no tribulation, no writing, no conversation, no joy, no work or rest will pass by without her affective remembrance; and may she be first even in the vestibule of our memory.” Finally, he defines the motherhood of Mary ever Carmel in saying that: “Mary is Mother of Carmel because she is mother of all Christians by the influence she had over the followers of Elijah, instructing them in the true faith and giving them the example of a consecrated and voluntary virginity.”
The way these Carmelites experienced the motherhood of Mary is largely attributed, even though incomprehensible for us, to the origin of the Order. Cooperating with the Holy Spirit, she conceived Christ, the Son of God, and she brought forth the Sacred Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel promising her perpetuity. As we can see, they did not only attribute to our Lady the founding of the Order but also its perpetual conservation as the Order suffered challenging trials. We see this in one of the pious stories of the Order, the promise made by the Virgin to St. Peter Thomas. The legend tells us that during the vigil of Pentecost in 1351, as St. Peter Thomas was praying to Our Lady for the conservation of the Order, she appeared to him dressed as a Carmelite. She told him that the Order of Carmel would endure until the end of time and that this grace was obtained from her divine Son by Elijah, the founder.
Together with the qualification of mother given to the Virgin by the Carmelites, we see in the low Middle Ages the development in Carmelite literature of the title of sister. What might seem unusual for us today was for the Carmelites of that time something very natural in considering themselves the brothers of the Virgin. This fraternal sharing with Mary was the basic denominator between their way of life and the life of Mary.
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