WEDNESDAY OF THE THIRTEENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME
Feast of our Lady of Mt. Carmel, patron of the Order of the Legion of St. Michael

(This is a solemn Holy Day for members of the Order of the Legion of St. Michael)


Dear Father:

This is a great day, a great feast, of a great Lady -- Our Lady of Mt. Carmel; our Lady of the Brown Scapular.

A little history... The first hermits lived on Mt. Carmel in Israel back in the time of St. Elijah the Prophet hundreds of years before Christ. Mt. Carmel is a mountain range which juts out into the Mediterranean Sea near the present city of Haifa, along the southern border of present-day Lebanon.

St. Elijah is our Spiritual Father in the Order of the Legion of St. Michael. We can read about the Prophet Elijah in the First and Second Books of Kings.

During the Crusades when the Crusaders went to the Holy Land to free it from the domination of the Muslims many of them stayed on Mt. Carmel after they achieved their task.

Also on Mt Carmel were Jewish and Moslem Hermits between 1190 and 1206 dedicated to the life of Elijah the Prophet.

The "Carmelites Rule" dates to 1206. The christian Hermits from Mount Carmel went to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Albert, (not of Trappani) and asked for a Rule of Life. That was the official beginning of the Carmelites. In 1245, the Moslems recaptured much of the Holy Land. They massacred most of the Carmelites. Those who escaped returned to their home countries of Italy, France, England and Germany. It is from these 4 countries in Europe that the Order spread throughout the world. Today, there are 5200 Carmelites of all Branches of the Order, male and female, throughout the world.

It was to St. Simon Stock that Our Lady of Mt. Carmel gave the Brown Scapular that was become so famous among devoted Catholics.

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