Our Lady of Mount Carmel

 Happy Feast Day, Our Lady of Mount Carmel ! 

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land in the 12th century they built a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

The Carmelites consider the Blessed Virgin Mary to be a perfect model of the interior life of prayer and contemplation to which Carmelites aspire, as well as a model of virtue, in the person who was closest in life to Jesus Christ. She is seen as the one who points Christians most surely to Christ. As she says to the servants at the wedding at Cana, "Do whatever he [Jesus] tells you." Carmelites look to the Virgin Mary as a Spiritual Mother.[9] The Stella Maris Monastery (Star of the Sea) on Mount Carmel, named after a traditional title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is considered the spiritual headquarters of the order.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCD, a revered authority on Carmelite spirituality, wrote that 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 incalculable 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".[1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Mount_Carmel

Saint of the Day: Saint Henry

Today is the feast day of Saint Henry

St. Henry, born in 972 was the son of the Duke of Bavaria and the grandson of the King of Burgundy. He was educated under the tutelage of St. Wolfgang, Bishop of Ratisbon. In 995, St. Henry succeeded his father as Duke of Bavaria, and in 1002, he was elected emperor.

Both he and his wife, St. Cunegundes, lived in perpetual chastity, to which they had bound themselves by vow. He founded numerous monasteries, gave liberally to pious institutions and built the Cathedral of Bamberg. His feast day is July 13th. He is the patron saint of the childless, of Dukes, of the handicapped and those rejected by Religious Order.


Prayer 

Lord, you filled Saint Henry with your love

and raised him from the cares of an earthly kingdom

to eternal happiness in heaven.

In the midst of the changes of this world,

may his prayers keep us free from sin

and help us on our way towards you.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.