Carmelite Family – Bulletin of Lay Carmel

Number 16, Winter 2003.

Contents

·         Carmelite Family: Bringing Christ into our lives

·         In the Spirit and Strength of Elijah: Elijah – a life steeped in prayer (below)

·         Interpreting St Teresa of Avila – Second Degree of Prayer (XII)

·         Carmelite Spirituality – How the Community group lives its life

·         The Night Prayer Psalm – Compline Wednesday

·         Carmelite News Items

In The Spirit and Strength Of Elijah

Elijah – A Life Steeped In Prayer

Extract from the lecture of Blessed Titus Brandsma, O.Carm., given on the U.S. Tour, 1935

We may truly say that the life of high contemplation of the Prophet was not only founded on the practice of all virtues, but that this practice and exercise of prayer and virtue accompany his visions and mystical graces. These mystical graces are a free gift of God, but God did not grant them without asking great and heroic virtue as a human disposition and preparation.

But after all, prayer is the chief characteristic of the great Prophet. His life is steeped in it. And we see in the prayer of Elijah a providential union of oral and liturgical prayer with the prayer of meditation and contemplation – contemplation in its double sense, active and passive.

We may see in him an example of liturgical prayer, for the singing of God’s praises was an important item in the school of Prophets. The word, “Prophet,” in the ancient law had a wider meaning than we attach to it now. It was used to describe not only the one who prophesied, but also one who sang the praise of God together with others, usually seven times a day. Elijah was the Prophet in all the meanings of the term. He had a school and disciples; not in one place but in many; and most probably led them in prayer at fixed times. So we may say that liturgical prayer comes to us from a very ancient tradition, even though it is secondary to the deeper prayer of meditation and contemplation.

Our Order is not an Order of liturgical prayer, like the old Eastern Order of the Basilians or the Western Order of the Benedictines, but liturgical prayer has a special confirmation for us, and must always hold a high place in our living with God. The Rule calls us together to say the Office in community, liturgically.

St Teresa in her love for liturgical prayer would so impregnate it with holy thoughts, that it, too, in a sense, would become contemplative prayer, prayer of active contemplation. The influence and attraction of simple and devout Carmelite liturgical life has always been great More than one Carmel on the continent has been founded because of it.

Eucharist – Our Spiritual Food

Very characteristic of Carmelite spirituality is its concept of spiritual life as a growing thing; and here the life of the Prophet gives another remarkable lesson. Like the natural, our spiritual life demands food. Holy Scripture tells us how Elijah, on the strength of the mystical food administered to him by the Angel, walked forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb. Here he was allowed to see God. Our spiritual life, and our mystical life desire the holy Food given to us by God in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

In the school of Carmel the mystical contemplative life is the fruit of Eucharistic life. For the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the fountain of our life of prayer, the life of Elijah provides us with a most striking type. The miraculous bread ministered to him is a perfect image of that Eucharistic food, in the strength of which we walk in life’s journey here below.

The special cult of the Holy Sacrament has not been confined to Carmel, but we can say that it has always been a constant and important part of our Carmelite tradition. Our Carmelite Convents have in many instances been centres of Eucharistic worship. St Mary Magdalene de Pazzi was attracted to the Carmel of Florence by the fact that the Sisters received Holy Communion every day, a custom not usual in those days. To St Teresa there was no greater joy than the opening of a new church or chapel as a dwelling for the Lord. It is prescribed by the Rule that all members of a Carmelite Community attend the Holy Sacrifice daily and that the chapel be in the centre of the cloister, easy of access at all times, and that the Canonical Hours be recited in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Being a mendicant Order, its churches and cloisters are plain and simple in their architecture, but in the adornment of their churches and altars poverty is not prescribed. This is a notable departure from the custom of other mendicant Orders – from that of the Capuchins, for instance, whose rule of poverty extends even to the sanctuary.

Such in brief outline is the Eucharistic tradition of Carmel; with Elijah we walk in the strength of that divine bread and since we would draw near to the life of God in prayer, we must be ever mindful of the saviour’s command, “unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you cannot have life in you.” Just as the communion of Elijah in the miraculous bread of the desert led him in his journey to the contemplation of God on Horeb, so too, the Holy Eucharist must lead us to the contemplation of His Holy Face. In the caves of Horeb, God spoke to the Prophet by the voice of the gentle, whispering wind. The Lord was not in the storm nor in the earthquake, but in the gentle wind. So after Communion we must contemplate under the Eucharistic species and in the depths of our spirit, for now God passes.