III. THE RULE AND ITS SPIRIT
Many centuries have to pass before we possess documents giving evidence of the presence of hermits on Mount Carmel. The first definite text goes back to 1177; it comes to us from the Greek monk John Phocas. Consequently exact information about the kind of life the solitaries led on the mountain of Elias cannot be obtained before this date.
But in 1209 the "Ermitains dou Carme" had been established near El Chader(which means "the school of the prophets"), beside Wadi-Ain-Es-Siah (which means "the fountain of Elias"). There it seems they had settled about 1150 and had followed a number of prescriptions belonging to the great monastic tradition. Now they asked Albert Avogadro, patriarch of Jerusalem, for a Rule which would permit them "to lead the form of religious life they had chosen so that they might live dependent upon Jesus Christ and serve Him faithfully with a pure heart and a good conscience".
In this way is established a spiritual continuity, between the "Ermitains dou Carme" and the "sons of the Prophets." It also offers proof of the fact that the Rule (which was soon to be that of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel) repudiated nothing of the past. By means of this Rule the monks living on Carmel were able to live the life of Elias, their father, in a Christian climate.
The New Testament fulfills the Old. In its turn the Rule of Carmel fulfills the School of the Prophets. The spirituality of Carmel has no difficulty in developing the basic elements drawn from its biblical origins within an evangelic life of perfection. Henceforth it is in the light of Jesus Christ and in dependence on Him, characteristics of the Rule from its very first lines, that its spirituality must be considered.
In fact it is to Christ that the Carmelite turns, offering Him prayer and love. And it is following Him that the Carmelite intends to walk "with a pure heart and a good conscience". Elias and those who followed him, had been in search of all that would
lead them to God and favor their meeting with Him: silence, solitude, desert, sense of the divine absolute, thirst for a direct and ardent contact with God in the heart of prayer. All these are for the Carmelite a path leading to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
The Spirituality of the Rule.
Codifying a form of life spontaneously adopted by the hermits and informing us at the same time of the spiritual principles which guided them, a knowledge of this Rule is particularly precious. It enables us not only to discover the spirit of Carmel; it also gives new insights about those whom it binds. John of Saint-Samson was later to say: "Our primitive Rule is extremely basic and concise; it is more inwardly in regard to the spirit than outwardly in regard to expression".
It is always important to know the spirit in which the special ends of an order are to be sought, as well as the external works for which it was founded. Now the spirit is usually only one of the constituent elements of the order, one characteristic among many others. But, when an order has only a spiritual work, and no other end than to promote and sustain spiritual life, then the spirit is everything. The Rule of Carmel makes this clear in its preamble:
"It possesses the austere quality of great spiritual texts, the delicacy of things from above. It seems freed from all accidental detail of space as well as time. Rising above contingencies of matter it does not even stop to discuss questions about the organization of life. It is concerned with what is within. It seeks to waken divine powers slumbering in the contemplative soul. It is an invitation to live rather than a formula of life."
Is it possible to discover the spirit of an interior Rule if one does not possess an interior spirit? From the first, Carmel has insisted on this thirst for solitude and silence, this attraction for the desert as the best place for the divine meeting and for contemplation. The Rule takes this setting on the spiritual plane and makes it interior. The cell becomes the desert where the soul meets its God. Prayer becomes its conversation, its occupation "from morning to night", its "interior life". "Let each remain in his cell, or near it, meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord and watching in prayer."
Can the climate of this interior life, of this prayer, be discovered in the Rule? And can the Rule help us to describe the spirituality of Carmel? So sober is the text and so brief that the answer would at first seem to be, no. But considered from within, the text becomes much more revealing.
First of all, this sobriety itself appears eminently characteristic of the spirit which imposed it. It is an immediate introduction to a spirituality freed from the letter and utterly detached. The soul realizes that it must sell all to acquire the hidden treasure; that the kingdom of God alone matters: all else will be given to it over and above.
The sobriety is accompanied by a liberation from every spirit of individualism. Just as "the brother hermits who live on Mount Carmel" had recourse to the Church in the person of the patriarch of Jerusalem to obtain a Rule (and it will be remembered that when the greater reformer was on her death bed she gloried only in the fact that she was "a daughter of the Church"), so we see even now that the Rule requires that the Divine Office be recited according to the freely embraced " regulations laid down by the Sovereign Pontiffs and the customs approved by the Church".
What would men, fiercely devoted to spiritual liberty and accustomed to the breeze that comes from the desert or the sea, have to do with special forms and complicated methods? Instinctively they cling to what is most simple and ordinary because that is what makes it possible for them to give themselves in peace to "the one thing necessary".
Or course the principle of authority is affirmed, obedience is exacted, as well as silence, work, and the renunciation of all property. But this is to be done in the spirit to which the Gospel has accustomed us. All these are simple means to a single and uniquely necessary end: union with God.
Therefore the Rule is extremely simple and supple, not only because everything in it is ordered and directed to a single end but also because it does not hesitate to make use of all means, according to the gentle and flexible way of the spirit. We read in the Rule: "You may... inasmuch as the Prior shall deem it fitting... when that can be done conveniently... unless he be lawfully occupied in some other way... taking into consideration the age and the needs of each one... when that may be done
without trouble... unless obliged by sickness or the weakness of the body or by some other just cause to break the fast, because necessity knows no law...".
Nothing cut and dried, nothing narrowly literal but a simple and truly spiritual means of enabling souls spontaneously to advance in the path of the absolute. This is the spirit of the Gospel: "If thou wilt...".
The Rule is not unaware that a life of union with God rests on the foundation and generous practice of renunciation. But it asks for a renunciation which "without stifling the soul will enable it to be aware of its poverty so that at every instant it will turn toward God" of course, no progress is possible without effort and so there is a virile note in every part of the Rule. With Job it repeats: "Man's life on earth is a temptation" and "Those who live piously on earth will suffer persecution". "Therefore, set about with all zeal to clothe yourself with the armour of God". How could we fail to be reminded, when we see that the Rule lists all the armour recommended by Saint Paul, that it was made for "Crusaders", eager to place themselves at the service of their "Lord" Jesus Christ, Crusaders who were faithful to their ancestors: those great solitaries whose heroic struggles with the flesh and the devil tradition has recorded.
But the ascetic side of the Rule is tempered. Effort, renunciation, work, silence appear above all as means of stripping the soul of self, of freeing it so that unhampered it may advance more surely along the paths of divine union.
All that the Rule offers along this line comes straight from the Gospel, whose fragrance it retains. And all this is perfectly integrated with what it has received from its origins. This completes the Rule and adds depth, laying down a path through the desert where the soul can advance without getting lost. "If anyone wishes to be My disciple, let him renounce himself and follow Me".
At all times Carmel longed for God. The Rule points out the way. The way does not consist in a series of didactic lessons, or formulas, or techniques but the study of the living way which is Christ Jesus.
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