Today in Carmel we celebrate our great Patronal Solemnity, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I will be keeping you all in prayer today, please remember all of us members of the Orders - the Discalced, and our brothers and sisters in the O Carms.
With regard to devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of our friars, Fr Gabriel, once wrote:
[it is] a special call to the interior life, which is pre-eminently a Marian life. Our Lady wants us to resemble her not only in our outward vesture but, far more, in heart and spirit. If we gaze into Mary's soul, we shall see that grace in her has flowered into a spiritual life of incalculable wealth: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted oblation to God, continual contact, and intimate union with him. Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone, where no human creature has ever left its trace, where love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind reign supreme. [...] Those who want to live their devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to the full must follow Mary into the depths of her interior life. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, the life wholly dedicated to the quest for God, wholly orientated towards intimacy with God; and the one who has best realized this highest of ideals is Our Lady herself, 'Queen and Splendour of Carmel'.
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