Recently, I had a parishioner at St Jude tell me how much she enjoys learning about the saints in an email she receives from the Catholic Company every day, how much she learns about our Church and our faith from the lives of the saints and the liturgical feasts we celebrate in honor of the saints. Today, we commemorate the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is so wonderful to be able to celebrate with our beloved Carmelite nuns today. Their presence in our Diocese and in the city of Jackson is such a blessing to us. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Mount Carmel was a place of refuge. Historically, it is thought have been the site of Elijah’s cave. In the first book of Kings, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of the pagan god Baal to a contest at the altar on Mount Carmel to determine whose deity was genuinely in control of the Kingdom of Israel. In the Christian era, Hermits lived on Mount Carmel in northern Israel beginning in the 12th century, dedicating a chapel there to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They soon celebrated a special mass and office of readings dedicated to Mary. The feast day was officially recognized by the Church in 1726 under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This group of hermits evolved into the religious order of the Carmelites, the religious group that has given our Church the great saints & mystics Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, and John of the Cross, all three doctors of the Church, as well as the Carmelite sister Teresa of the Andes and Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).
There are a lot of details we do not know about Mary’s life. However, from the Scripture passages we do have of her, we learn a lot about Mary, about her role in our lives of faith, and about her role in the Church and in the history of salvation. John’s Gospel presents us today of a portrait of Mary as she stands by her son as he is dying on her cross. Elsewhere in the Gospel of John, Mary is presented at the wedding of Cana, where she encourages her son to begin his earthly ministry. Mary is the paradigm of discipleship in the Gospel of John. She responds to the Word of God made flesh, manifest and glorified. Our Church also sees Mary as a member of the community of saints, in which all of us believers, both those on earth and those in eternal life, are joined together as a sacred community by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary is the mediator of blessings. She is the most powerful intercessor of those who most desperately need her help.
We come to Mary today as we honor her as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. We stand in solidarity and love today with our sisters, the Carmelites nun of the Jackson Carmel. We honor Mary today as we acknowledge our need for her motherly love and help in our lives of faith.
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