Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast Day

July 16

Order

Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (Carmelites, O.Carm. and OCD)

The Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebrates the patronal feast of the Carmelite Order, named for Mount Carmel in northern Israel, the mountain where the prophet Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18) and where, in the small cloud rising from the sea (1 Kings 18:44), Christian tradition has read a figure of the Virgin Mary, fruitful of God-bearing rain in a time of drought.

In the late twelfth century, during the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, a group of Western hermits gathered on Mount Carmel near the Spring of Elijah and built an oratory dedicated to the Mother of God. Saint Albert of Jerusalem, Latin Patriarch, gave them their first Rule between 1206 and 1214; this was approved by Pope Honorius III in 1226 and amended by Pope Innocent IV in 1247, when the order migrated to Europe under the persecution of the Mamluks.

The principal Carmelite tradition associated with this feast is the gift of the Brown Scapular. According to a vision attributed to Saint Simon Stock at Cambridge on July 16, 1251, the Blessed Virgin appeared to the Prior General and gave him the Scapular as a sign of her protection. The Scapular tradition received papal approval through indulgences granted by numerous popes, especially Pope Sixtus IV (1476). Saint John Paul II, himself a Carmelite tertiary, in his message of March 25, 2001, called the Scapular essentially a habit, the habit of the Mother and Queen of Carmel.

The feast was extended to the universal Church in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. The current Optional Memorial is observed on July 16, the date of the traditional Carmelite vision and of the dedication of the original Mount Carmel basilica.