Our Lady of Mount Carmel – a reflection

The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is almost upon us and the prioress, Sr Nicola, shared a reflection with the community as we prepare for the celebration of one of the most important Carmelite commemorations.

Invitation, embrace, generosity, faith, thanksgiving.

These are the dynamics that strike me as being foundational to our celebration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

We know that the first community on Mount Carmel instituted the feast in thanksgiving for all the favours they believed God, through the Blessed Saint Mary, had bestowed upon them. Today, I hope we remain true to that original emotion of profound gratitude.

Together with St Joseph, Mary nurtured the gift of Divine Love and upon Jesus’ maturity sent it forth into the world. It was her response to the invitation to bear the Son of God that changed our future for ever and led to us being here in this community today.

Sr Veronica’s beautiful icon (placed on the mantlepiece outside our Community Room and Refectory) portrays Mary with arms wide open, inviting us to likewise embrace the gift of Jesus in our lives. If we accept wholeheartedly and nurture his presence amongst us, we can follow Mary’s example and offer Him as gift to the world.

That is, we can send out mature love, a healing love, an embracing love, from the heart of our enclosed community.

It is God’s work, to draw out of our efforts to nurture a life of love within our enclosed community, the active spirit of consolation and guidance for His suffering people. And to that I would add our suffering planet, the animals, the plants, the earth, the seas, where lack of love has destroyed so much of our shared natural home.

We nurture this divine gift by our fidelity to prayer, by helping one another, comforting and challenging one another, giving generously of our time for the common good, putting others before our own comfort or convenience. There’s nothing outwardly spectacular about this, but it is inspired, it is living in the Spirit, and that should be enough to remind us that it is all worth the effort.

It can all seem too much to expect of oneself sometimes, but this feast reminds us of the unsurpassed generosity of God towards us. That helps me to continue day after day. Each of us is called to give what we can and every contribution is important, to the extent that we each give what we can to our communal life.

Even when sick, by simply being a committed member of our community, we can offer a valuable affirmation of our shared vocation to witness to the primacy of divine love.

By our reaching out in faith to God, believing his promises, accepting his gifts, we can say with Mary ‘Be it done to me as you have said.’ As women of faith, we commit ourselves to an unknown future. But the Church’s understanding of Mary’s role in redemption shows us not to be afraid of our destiny.

It is amazing, but true, I think, that God has invited each one of us to embrace his work of redemption and make it our own. Always remember your dignity as a woman called to be a co-worker with Christ and all the saints. We have so much to be grateful for. Give thanks always.