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Carmelite Spirituality The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. Carmelite Spirituality Carmelite Spirituality Carmelite spirituality is basically maintaining the two poles in balance. The contemplative. It originated on Mount Carmel Discalced Reform in sixteenth–century Spain in northern Palestine in the early thirteenth under the leadership of St. Teresa of Avila and century among a group of ex–crusaders turned St. John of the Cross was only the most penitent hermits. The group, whose leader is famous (and the most successful) of these known only by his initial, “B,” requested reforms. Teresa and John brought the original guidance from Albert, the Latin patriarch of Carmelite charism to a new perfection and Jerusalem (1204–1216), who gave them a organization. Unfortunately after the death of “formula of life.” This formula became The the two saints the reform broke away from the Rule of St. Albert. Its centerpiece is chapter trunk, so that the influence of these two giants 10: “Each one of you is to stay in his own cell in the mystical life penetrated the parent order or nearby, pondering the Lord’s law day and only gradually. Another reform, however, the night and keeping watch at his prayers unless Touraine Reform, began in France in the next attending to some other duty.”1 century and spread through the entire old The foundation on Mount Carmel was order. It espoused the same high ideals and threatened and eventually abandoned by the produced the same fruits as the Teresian breakup of the Latin kingdom in the Holy Reform. Today there are two branches of the Land. The hermits had to migrate back to one family of Carmel, the old order, Europe from as early as 1238 A.D. Their sometimes called the Ancient Observance simple lifestyle on the holy mountain had to (O.Carm.), and the Discalced or Teresian be adapted for their new location. Changes Carmelites (O.C.D.). Juridically the two are were introduced with papal approval, and the separate entities, but they follow the same rule definitive approbation of Innocent IV in 1247 and pursue the same spirit. turned the formula into the canonical Rule of Prayer, community, and ministry are St. Albert. Though the changes seemed small, today’s ways of living out the charism of the they transformed the solitaries into a cenobitic Order. The Carmelite promises “a life of community, eventually a mendicant order in allegiance to Jesus Christ”2 to be expressed in the style of Francis and Dominic. The hermits different modes according to particular became friars. Now the three elements of vocations. Cloistered Carmelite nuns of the prayer, community, and ministry constituted Second Order cultivate contemplation and the Carmelite charism. Henceforth the close–knit community more obviously than is challenge of Carmelite spirituality was to apparent with the friars of the First Order or balance the contemplative life of prayer, active congregations of the Third Order, silence, and solitude with the demands of the whether religious or lay, whose apostolic common life, studies, and pastoral ministry. activity may be more manifest. But authentic The contemplative dimension is the Carmelite spirituality is a combination of all centrifugal force that calls Carmelites back to three elements with prayer life at the heart of their deepest identity. The opposite pull, the the charism. centripetal force, is the apostolic life of community and ministry. Solitude and Elijah and Mary ministerial community thus stand in dynamic This interior life is described tension. The numerous reforms over the magisterially in a second important document centuries witness to the difficulty of Page 459 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. Carmelite Spirituality in the Order’s history, The Institution of the Monks. She is the other living symbol of First Monks, written in 1370 by Philip Ribot, Carmelite life. She soon became “the lady of a Catalonian Carmelite who sought to the place,” Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whose crystallize the Carmelite vocation primarily in chapel was built on the original site “near the the person of Elijah and secondly in Mary, the fountain of Elijah.” The very early Carmelites Mother of Jesus. Elijah was regarded from the called themselves “the order of the brothers of beginning as the “father” of the Carmelites. Our Lady of Mount Carmel,” thus making her Ribot tried to justify this identification by their sister as well as their patroness and presenting a symbolic life of Elijah, drawn mother. from the biblical accounts and the traditions of Her role in the order underwent the desert monks and fathers of the Church significant development in the next centuries and suitable for imitation by contemporary and from the fifteenth century on the Brown followers in the new context of life in Europe. Scapular was the livery of all who were He created an Elijan myth that was to inspire attached to the order. and shape Carmelite identity for succeeding centuries. Liturgy In one exceptionally important chapter How does Carmelite spirituality relate Ribot sketches out the purpose of the Order in to the liturgy? Like all authentic Christian language drawn from John Cassian’s first spirituality it finds its source and summit in conference and given a strong mystical turn in the public prayer and worship of the Church. this document. In Ribot’s words the aim of But there are several reasons why the Carmelite Order is twofold: “1) to offer to Carmelite spirituality has a special affinity God a heart holy and pure from all stain of with the liturgy. One reason is that prayer and sin…and 2) to taste in our hearts and community are defining acts of this way of experience in our minds, not only after death living out the Christian life. They feed into but even in this life, something of the power liturgical participation and appropriate and of the divine presence and the bliss of prolong the graces received in liturgical heavenly glory.”3 These two goals are the celebration. Personal prayer is not blueprint of Carmelite prayer, which individualistic; contemplation is less a private organically connects purification and union tête–à–tête with the Lord than the objective with God. The two features are the work of assimilation of the mystery of Christ, who the same one Spirit in each person. Here is comes to us in the liturgy. Prayer life is not the seminal description of the Carmelite way, about experiences, but about transformation in an understanding that has guided writers ever Christ. The word and sacrament of the liturgy since, including Teresa of Avila and John of are the way in Christ to the Father. The the Cross. It is the desert spirituality of personal prayer life continues that encounter. Carmel, the search for emptiness and fullness, Something similar can be said about kenosis and plerorna. the community dimension of Carmelite Elijah pioneered and modeled this life spirituality. for all Carmelites. While Carmelites have Community life is itself a domestic long since abandoned the claim to material church and mirrors the mystical body of Christ succession from Elijah that Ribot affirmed, gathered around the altar or the font or the Elijah remains father and founder of the Order ambo. The Rule of St. Albert presents a in the specialized sense of being inspiration communal lifestyle that goes beyond the and ideal. practice of fraternal charity. The The Blessed Virgin Mary also figures organizational structures of the life are prominently in the Institution of the First democratic. All are called to participate; there Page 460 The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. Carmelite Spirituality are no permanent superiors, only leaders Eucharist was prevalent among the many chosen by the group for a limited term; other hermits in the Latin kingdom. Albert decisions are to be taken by dialogue and chose a new path; he also encouraged the consensus so that weekly meetings and recitation of the psalms privately. In community exercises assume great Innocent’s revision this practice became the importance. The emphasis in the Rule on Divine Office in common. community and its peak expression in daily The liturgy of Carmel followed the rite Eucharist is so strong that some observers of the Holy Sepulchre, which was of French think that these values are the root and origin and adapted to the sacred places of the primary integrating features of the life rather Holy Land.5 The original rite underwent than the call to continual prayer of chapter 10, changes over the centuries but it maintained described above as the centerpiece of the rule. its own identity as the “Carmelite Rite” until Community life is foundational in Carmelite Vatican II, when the Ancient Observance spirituality, a perspective that relates well to opted to follow the Roman revisions of the the larger community at liturgical prayer. Missal and breviary. The Discalced Reform A second feature common to both had given up the rite at the time of the Carmelite life and the liturgy is the biblical separation. The Carmelite rite had an character of the Rule as well as the Order’s abundance of Marian feasts and a special earliest traditions and that same quality in the commemoration of the resurrection at the end liturgy itself. The Bible has shaped the of the Church year, celebrated like a second Carmelite ideal. Albert’s Rule is a pastiche of Easter in honor of the place of the Scripture quotations. The word of God is the resurrection, the Holy Sepulchre. Reform– constant mentor and companion of each minded superiors of the old order promoted Carmelite, supplying the armor for the the chanting of the Divine Office, as did the spiritual warfare of the converted crusaders.4 Touraine Reform, whereas Teresa of Avila The call to continual prayer is the invitation to recommended recitation of the psalms in order lectio divina, which is the actualization of the to give more time for mental prayer.6 word of God.
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