Of Cristina Siccardi
Il 16 July a very important Marian feast occurs in the Tradition of the Church: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of the oldest and most loved devotions in Christianity, linked to the history and spiritual values of the Order of Friars of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (Carmelites). The liturgical feast was established to commemorate the apparition of 16 July 1251 a san Simone Stock, at the time prior general of the Carmelite order, during which Our Lady gave him a scapular (from Latin scapula, shoulder) in fabric, revealing to him notable privileges connected to his cult.
In the First Book of Kings of the Old Testament it is said that the prophet Elijah, who gathered a community of men right on Mount Carmel (in Aramaic «garden»), he worked in defense of the purity of faith in God, winning a challenge against the priests of the god Baal. Who, afterwards, Christian monastic communities were established. The Crusaders, in the 11th century, they found some religious people in this place, probably of Maronite rite, who called themselves heirs of the disciples of the prophet Elijah and followed the rule of Saint Basil. In the 1154 the French nobleman Bertoldo retreated to the mountain around this time, arrived in Palestine with his cousin Aimerio from Limoges, patriarch of Antioch, and it was decided to reunite the hermits for cenobitic life. The religious built a small church in the middle of their cells, dedicating it to the Virgin and took the name of Brothers of Santa Maria del Monte Carmelo. Carmel acquired, in this way, its two characterizing elements: the reference to Elijah and the link to the Holy Mary.
Mount Carmel, where Tradition states that the Holy Family stopped on their way back from Egypt, it is a mountain range, which is located in the Upper Galilee, a region of the State of Israel and which develops in a northwest-southeast direction from Haifa to Jenin. Between the 1207 and the 1209, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (which was then based in San Giovanni d'Acri), Alberto of Vercelli, he drew up the first statutes for the hermits of Mount Carmel (the so-called primitive rule or formula vitae). The Carmelites have never recognized the title of founder to anyone, remaining faithful to the model that saw the prophet Elijah as one of the fathers of monastic life.
The rule, who prescribed night vigils, fast, rigorous abstinence, the practice of poverty and silence, was approved on 30 January 1226 by Pope Honorius III with the bull As a standard of living. Due to the incursions of the Saracens, around the 1235, the friars had to abandon the East to settle in Europe and their first convent found its home in Messina, in the Ritiro area. News on the life of Saint Simon Stock (Aylesford, 1165 circa – Bordeaux, 16 maggio 1265) they are scarce. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the decision to join the Carmelites matured and, completed his studies in Rome, he was ordained a priest. Around the 1247, when he already had 82 years, he was chosen as the sixth prior general of the Order. He worked to reform the rule of the Carmelites, making it a mendicant order: Pope Innocent IV, In the 1251, approved the new rule and also guaranteed the Order particular protection from the Holy See.
Right in San Simone Stock, who propagated the devotion of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and composed a beautiful hymn for her, the Flos Carmeli, Our Lady assured that those who died while wearing the scapular would be freed from the pains of Purgatory, stating: «This is the privilege for you and yours: anyone will die wearing it, he will be safe". The consecration to the Madonna, through the scapular, it translates first and foremost into the effort to imitate it, at least in intent, to do everything as she would have done it.
Source: www.iltimone.org, 7/07/2014
