Thursday, July 16th, 2020

The Carmelites have been celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel since 1376.  The original reason was to honour her in finally getting permission, despite the work of their opponents in the Church and elsewhere, to live their vocation as a distinct and different religious order.  As Guilelmus de Sanvico later relates, “the monks prayed to their patroness the Blessed Virgin. ‘And the Virgin Mary revealed to their prior that they were to apply fearlessly to Pope Innocent, for they would receive from him an effective remedy for these difficulties’”.  Let us turn to her today, in our difficulties, and ask her for her very effective help also.