Thursday, July 15, 2021

Commemoration Of Our Lady Of Mount Carmel - 16 July

Quoted in part from America Needs Fatima [1]:

Mount Carmel is the biblical site where the prophet Elias battled the 450 priests of Baal in a public spiritual contest which led to their defeat and ruin as Scriptures aptly recorded. (1 Kings 18:19-40). It was also here where Elias sent his servant seven times to the mountaintop to look for rain after years of drought which ended as he proclaimed, "Behold a little cloud arose out of the sea like a man's foot." (1 Kings 18:44).

We can find Mount Carmel on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, overlooking the modern-day city of Haifa. 

It rises 1742 feet above sea level and towers above the Mediterranean coastline and its limestone rocks form a cliff-like landscape.

...

Any account on the story of Our Lady of Mount Carmel could not fail to mention the role that St. Simon Stock played especially in relation to the brown scapular. We could trace Simon Stock’s origin to the County of Kent in England where he was born around 1165. Being of English descent, he was also known as Simon Anglus.
...
Tradition says that Our Lady responded to their call [due to suffering from "much persecution and oppression from secular clergy and other orders which prompted the monks to have recourse to the Blessed Virgin in the year 1251"] through an apparition to Simon Stock on Sunday July 16th, 1251 as he knelt in prayer. She appeared holding the Child Jesus in one arm and the brown scapular in the other hand while uttering the following words: "Hoc erit tibi et cunctis Carmelitis privilegium, in hoc habitu moriens salvabitur" (This shall be the privilege for you and for all the Carmelites, that anyone dying in this habit shall be saved.) On 13 January 1252 the Order received a letter of protection from Pope Innocent IV, defending them from harassment. [Emphasis  original.]

St. Simon Stock lived a holy life for 100 years and died in the Carmelite monastery at Bordeaux, France on May 16, 1265.


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