St. Elijah

"Although it is certain that 'schools of prophets' were established on Mount Carmel in the footsteps of Elijah and Elisha, it is impossible to discover how and when these schools became permanent institutions. Despite the mystery of these beginnings Carmel has always claimed Elijah as its own and has seen in him one who inaugurated the eremitic and prophetic life that is its characteristic.

...he is the man whom the Spirit of Yahweh led into deep solitude and who, drawing waters from the 'torrent of Carith', drank from the rivers of living water and tasted, in contemplation, pleasures that are divine. Therefore, if it is in documents that we wish to find the spirit of Carmel it is to the chapters in the first book of Kings dealing with this prophet that we must go.

In Elijah, Carmel sees itself as in a mirror. His eremtic and prophetic life expresses its own most intimate ideal. In studying the life of Elijah, Carmel is aware of a growing thirst for contemplation. It perceives its deep kinship with this man who 'stood in the presence of the living God'. If it share his weaknesses and his anguish, it also knows his faith in God and his zeal for the 'Yahweh of armies', the Lord of Hosts, and it has tasted the same delights of a life hidden in God that the prophet also experienced. When it discovers in the light of the inspired word that Elijah, 'in the strength he drew from the divine food, walked forty days and forty night to Horeb, the mountain of God', it is not in the least surprised.

There, in the bleak wastes of Sinai, we read in the book of Exodus that Moses, silent and alone, perceived Yahweh's mysterious presence in the light of fiery flames that burned the bush without soncumin it. There the incommunicable Name, the divine transcendence and benevolence, were revealed to him.

How could the father of contemplative life not have been drawn to this mountain, where God spoke to Moses 'as one speaks to a friend', where a human being dared address this prayer to God: 'show me Thy glory'? How could he have failed to see that all the essential elements to contemplation were already contained in the scene on Horeb? So we may say that having found its model in Elijah, Carmel advances with him toward the very origin of true contemplative life. Or, it might be more exact to say that having found the contemplative experience in its origin, the Carmelites, wishing to renew this experience, feel obliged to recreate in their souls the climate in which this life grew: the desert with its spiritual solitude and silence. And they in their turn, feel constrained to undertake this persevering march toward the mountain of God where the fire burns but does not consume."