July 16, 2012 Monday: Our Lady of Mount Carmel

(Picture: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Stella Maris Carmelite Monastery, Israel)

The devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel means:
a special call to the interior life, which is preeminently 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 incalcuable 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 Splendor of Carmel'." -Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCD

(Picture: A view from Stella Maris Monastery, Haifa, Israel)

(Picture: Stella Maris Monastery, exterior)