Our Lady of Mount Carmel
 Directed to Christ and oriented to Him, Carmel is also directed to Mary and oriented to her. 'Completely Marian', Totus marianus est, Carmelite authors like to repeat throughout the centuries, and of all their titles none is dearer to the sons (and daughters) of Elijah than that of Brother (and Sisters) of our Lady.
It is historically certain that the first hermits who retired to Mount Carmel...made their center a chapel consecrated to our Lady, and from that time of...the first Prior General, the Carmelites were called Brothers of our Lady of Mount Carmel. So devotion to our Lady is seen to be one of their disctinctive signs. 'Despite its historical inexactitudes the Book of the Institution of the First Monks shows that the Order is dominated by the two great figures which represent on different levels, its ideals: Elijah and our Lady.'
At Carmel what is true of our Lord is also true of our Lady. Contemplative life advances by assimilation and union, much more than by images, examples and models. Preserving all due proportion, what we have said of Christ, we repeat about Mary.
Our Lady is for Carmelites not only the Mother of Christ and their own mother. She also represents and expresses the soul's essential attitude before God. Mary not only sums up the whole Old Testament, she represents all humanity. She is its soul athirst for God, longing for God, hoping for God. All her strength and all her faculties are turned toward God so that she may receive and fully live by Him. Our Lady is also the place of the divine response, of the divine coming. In her, humanity becomes conscious of God's desire and fully efficacious will to give Himself to us. Mary is the place of this meeting; better still, she is the temple in which is consummated God's espousals with humanity, the hidden sanctuary in which the Spouse is united with the bride, the desert that flowers at the breath of God.
In Carmel God is the objective, but the soul will become more and more Mary. The reason why the Rule does not mention our Lady is clear. Carmel seeks to gaze upon God and love God with mind and heart. What Mary represents is the soul itself. As the soul is united to Christ, so Carmel is hidden in Mary. For Carmel, Mary is, beyond any doubt, the infinitely admirable and lovable Mother, the all-merciful Mother, but deeper than this, she is the one who was chosen and formed by God to be the Mother of the Savior; she is the purest, highest, and most perfect expression of the soul that is open to the divine action and lives in Mary's light and in Mary's love. She is par excellence, the contemplative soul.
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