Some history on our holy Order by Fr Benedict Zimmerman OCD

Origin

The date of the foundation of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been under discussion from the fourteenth century to the present day, the order claiming for its founders the prophets Elias and Eliseus, whereas modern historians, beginning with Baronius, deny its existence previous to the second half of the twelfth century. As early as the times of the Prophet Samuel there existed in the Holy Land a body of men called Sons of the Prophets, who in many respects resembled religious institutes of later times. They led a kind of community life, and, though not belonging to the Tribe of Levi, dedicated themselves to the service of God; above all they owed obedience to certain superiors, the most famous of whom were Elias and his successor Eliseus, both connected with Carmel, the former by his encounter with the prophets of Baal, the latter by prolonged residence on the holy mountain. With the downfall of the Kingdom of Israel the Sons of the Prophets disappear from history. In the third or fourth century of the Christian Era Carmel was a place of pilgrimage, as is proved by numerous Greek inscriptions on the walls of the School of the Prophets: "Remember Julianus, remember Germanicus", etc. Several of the Fathers, notably John Chrystostom, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Jerome, represent Elias and Eliseus as the models of religious perfection and the patrons of hermits and monks. These undeniable facts have opened the way to certain conjectures. As St. John the Baptist spent nearly the whole of his life in the desert, where he gathered around him a number of disciples, and as Christ said he was endowed with the spirit and virtue of Elias, some authors think that he revived the institute of the Sons of the Prophets.

The glowing descriptions given by Pliny, Flavius Josephus, and Philo, of the manner of life of the Essenes and Therapeutes convinced others that these sects belonged to the same corporation; unfortunately their orthodoxy is open to serious doubts. Tacitus mentions a sanctuary on Carmel, consisting "neither of a temple, nor an idol, but merely an altar for Divine worship"; whatever its origin may have been, it certainly was at the time of Vespasian in the hands of a pagan priest, Basilides. Pythagoras (500 B.C.) is represented by Jamblichus (A.D. 300) as having spent some time in silent prayer in a similar sanctuary on Carmel, a testimony of greater force for the time of Jamblichus himself than for that of Pythagoras. Nicephorus Callistus (A.D. 1300) relates that the Empress Helena built a church in honour of St. Elias on the slopes of a certain mountain. This evidence is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as Eusebius is witness to the fact that she built only two churches in the Holy Land, at Bethlehem and at Jerusalem, not twenty, as Nicephorus says; moreover the words of this author show clearly that he had in view the Greek monastery of Mar Elias, overhanging the Jordan valley, and not Carmel as some authors think; Mar Elias, however, belongs to the sixth century. These and other misunderstood quotations have enfeebled rather than strengthened the tradition of the order, which holds that from the days of the great Prophets there has been, if not an uninterrupted, at least a moral succession of hermits on Carmel, first under the Old Dispensation, afterwards in the full light of Christianity, until at the time of the Crusades these hermits became organized after the fashion of the Western orders. This tradition is officially laid down in the constitutions of the order, is mentioned in many papal Bulls, as well as in the Liturgy of the Church, and is still held by many members of the order.

The silence of Palestine pilgrims previous to A.D. 1150, of chroniclers, of early documents, in one word the negative evidence of history has induced modern historians to disregard the claims of the order, and to place its foundation in or about the year 1155 when it is first spoken of in documents of undoubted authenticity. Even the evidence of the order itself was not always very explicit. A notice written between 1247 and 1274 (Mon. Hist. Carmelit., 1, 20, 267) states in general terms that "from the days of Elias and Eliseus the holy fathers of the Old and the New Dispensation dwelt on Mount Carmel, and that their successors after the Incarnation built there a chapel in honour of Our Lady, for which reason they were called in papal Bulls "Friars of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel". The General Chapter of 1287 (unedited) speaks of the order as of a plantation of recent growth (plantatio novella). More definite are some writings of about the same time. A letter "On the progress of his Order" ascribed to St. Cyril of Constantinople, but written by a Latin (probably French) author about the year 1230, and the book "On the Institution of the First Monks" connect the order with the Prophets of the Old Law. This latter work, mentioned for the first time in 1342, was published in 1370 and became known in England half a century later. It purports to be written by John, the forty-fourth (more accurately the forty-second) Bishop of Jerusalem (A.D. 400). However, as Gennadius and other ancient bibliographers do not mention it among the writings of John, and as the author was clearly a Latin, since his entire argument is based upon certain texts of the Vulgate differing widely from the corresponding passages of the Septuagint, and as he in many ways proves his entire ignorance of the Greek language, and, moreover, quotes or alludes to writers of the twelfth century, he cannot have lived earlier than the middle of the thirteenth. A third author is sometimes mentioned, Joseph, a Deacon of Antioch, whom Possevin assigns to about A.D. 130. His work is lost but its very title, "Speculum perfectæ militæ primitivæ ecclesiæ", proves that he cannot have belonged to the Apostolic Fathers, as indeed he is entirely unknown to patristic literature. His name is not mentioned before the fourteenth century and in all probability he did not live much earlier.

The tradition of the order, while admitted by many of the medieval Schoolmen, was contested by not a few authors. Hence the Carmelite historians neglected almost completely the history of their own times, spending all their energy on controversial writings, as is evident in the works of John Baconthorpe, John of Chimeneto, John of Hildesheim, Bernard Olerius, and many others. In 1374 a disputation was held before the University of Cambridge between the Dominican John Stokes and the Carmelite John of Horneby; the latter, whose arguments were chiefly taken from canon law, not from history, was declared victorious and the members of the university were forbidden to question the antiquity of the Carmelite Order. Towards the end of the fifteenth century this was again ably defended by Trithemius (or whoever wrote under his name), Bostius, Palæonydorus, and many others who with a great display of learning strove to strengthen their thesis, filling in the gaps in the history of the order by claiming for it numerous ancient saints. Sts. Eliseus and Cyril of Alexandria (1399), Basil (1411), Hilarion (1490), and Elias (in some places c. 1480, in the whole order from 1551) had already been placed on the Carmelite calendar; the chapter of 1564 added many more, some of whom were dropped out twenty years later on the occasion of a revision of the Liturgy, but were reintroduced in 1609 when Cardinal Bellarmine acted as reviser of Carmelite legends. He, too, approved with certain reservations the legend of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 16 July, which had been instituted between 1376 and 1386 in commemoration of the approbation of the rule by Honorius III; it now (1609) became the "Scapular feast", was declared the principal feast of the order, and was extended to the whole Church in 1726. The tendency of claiming for the order saints and other renowned persons of Christian and even classical antiquity came to a climax in the "Paradisus Carmelitici decoris" by M.A. Alegre de Casanate, published in 1639, condemned by the Sorbonne in 1642, and placed on the Roman Index in 1649. Much that is uncritical may also be found in the annals of the order by J.-B. de Lezana (1645-56) and in "Decor Carmeli" by Philip of the Blessed Trinity (1665). On the publication, in 1668, of the third volume of March of the Bollandists, in which Daniel Papebroch asserted that the Carmelite Order was founded in 1155 by St. Berthold, there arose a literary war of thirty years' duration and almost unequaled violence. The Holy See, appealed to by both sides, declined to place the Bollandists on the Roman Index, although they had been put on the Spanish Index, but imposed silence on both parties (1698). On the other hand it permitted the erection of a statue of St. Elias in the Vatican Basilica among the founders of orders (1725), towards the cost of which (4064 scudi or $3942) each section of the order contributed one fourth part. At the present time the question of the antiquity of the Carmelite Order has hardly more than academical interest.

Carmelite Spirituality - Part 5 by Fr Paul Marie of the Cross OCD

Dependence on Jesus Christ.

From Christ, the Carmelite, henceforth, is not to look away; in dependence on Him the Carmelite intends to live. Carmel was searching for God and union with God. Then came the Son of God, God Himself. Turning towards Him, the Carmelite did no more than continue along the path that had always been his. In virtue of an essential and profound continuity Carmel, which is biblical and remains biblical, becomes evangelical.

In fact, born under the Old Testament, formed by the divine Word, Carmel awaits its fulfillment. With Elias and the prophets it watches for "Him who is to come"; it can look at nothing else. It finds that, like the prophets, its natural study is to desire the coming of the Savior, to hasten His arrival.

Filled with the preparation which abounds in the Sacred Books, Carmel turns toward Christ with the certitude of finding in Him all it seeks.

It seeks God as an object of knowledge and love; where then could it better find and embrace Him than in His Son who was made flesh and given to us? Carmel awaits the fulfillment of the divine Word. Now Saint John of the Cross tells us that "God has spoken but one Word and that is His Son".

Carmel has received as a legacy the awareness of the greatness of God, of the nothingness of the creature, and of its divine vocation. How then could it not place all its hope in a Mediator and Savior, all its hope in Christ suffering and dying for us through love?

Nevertheless, considered relatively, Christ's role in the Rule is lightly stressed. Here we are in the presence of one of Carmel's mysteries. It is not easy to grasp: a hidden, half-formulated spiritual reality which is at the same time truly central and profoundly operative.

Beyond any doubt there are other schools of spirituality in which Christ's role is more prominent. He is the model, the exemplar, and His life must be imitated. The spirituality of a contemplative order could never be like that. If it is a question of always looking at Christ, it is also and even more a question of uniting one's self to Him and living by Him. Christ who is the way toward the Father, the author and finisher of our faith, becomes by this fact, the milieu in which contemplation develops, the path it uses. So it would seem the Carmel's Rule is on Christ and that
Carmelite prayer develops in the depths of the life Christ communicates to the soul.

No doubt Carmel is not unmindful of the need of some kind of a method but it seems that those who had asked for the Rule had already made some progress in spiritual life. This is because they had been leading for a long time a solitary, interior and mortified life, and they possessed "a pure heart and a good conscience". Therefore the Rule is more interested in highlighting what must be characteristic of contemplative life: perpetual prayer to which the hermits must dedicate themselves, "these interminable vigils of prayer must make (religious) the Lord's intimate
friends, and love becomes a state of soul".

The Rule does not define the nature of the contemplation toward which it is oriented but it is easy to discover it in "L'institution des premiers moines." This document was long held in the same reverence as the primitive Rule and allows us to understand that this perpetual prayer must make it possible for the Carmelite "in some way to taste in his heart and to experience in his soul the strength of the divine presence and the sweetness of heavenly glory: in other words to drink from the torrent of divine pleasure".

Clearly this is a reference to a mystical experience of God. This is, in fact, the end toward which the Order is oriented. Of course not all reach the goal. But Christ is for all, at least, the path that leads to the goal. And all ought to live "in dependence on Jesus Christ", all ought "to remain in their cells... meditating day and night the Law of the Lord and watching in prayer".