Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Jesus, teach us to live the contemplative life under the mantle of our Blessed Mother
Today, the Church invites us to the holy mountain of Carmel, a place rich with the memory of faith. It was on this mountain, as we read in the First Book of Kings, that the prophet Elijah stood firm, calling Israel back to the one true and living God in a contest of faith that ended in fire from heaven (cf. 1 Kings 18:20-40). Elijah’s courageous "yes" to God in a time of confusion planted a spiritual seed in that soil.
Centuries later, long after Our Lord's Ascension, a group of hermits were drawn to that same mountain. They saw in Elijah and in the Blessed Virgin Mary a model for their own lives. They desired to live a life of prayer and quiet attention to God, wrapped in the protective mantle of the Mother of God, who in her own life perfectly embodied that listening silence and complete trust. Thus, the Carmelite Order was born, dedicated to a life of contemplation in the presence of God.
The heart of the Carmelite life is a relationship with Our Lady, seeing in her the one who "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). She teaches us how to consent to God's presence and His will in the quiet moments of our day. This feast invites us to ask a simple question: In the midst of my own life, my own challenges and joys, how is God calling me to a purer faith? How can I, under Mary’s gentle care, find a quiet place in my heart to listen for His voice?
To help us enter into the spirit of this beautiful feast, today’s post is from Deacon Tracy Jamison, who himself lives this spirituality as a Secular Discalced Carmelite (OCDS).
The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Christian Life of Faith and Prayer
There are three basic expressions of the Christian life of prayer: (1) vocal prayer, (2) meditation, and (3) contemplative prayer. These three expressions of prayer are related to each other intrinsically, not extrinsically. Common to all three is the recollection of the mind, memory, and heart toward God in faith, hope, and love, which is the essence of prayer. If you are not recollected toward God, then you are not really praying. This recollection is either an act of the will, a cultivated mental habit, or a supernatural gift received from God. See The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 568-570.
Meditation (also called “mental prayer”) is a spiritual reflection that begins with the content of divine revelation (Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition). A common form of it is lectio divina. In whatever form, meditation accompanies vocal prayer to engage our thoughts, imaginations, emotions, and desires in order to deepen our faith, convert our heart, and fortify our will to follow Christ. This is the path of self-discipline that leads to contemplative prayer. The practice of vocal prayer and meditation is the initial step toward the full union of knowledge and love with our Lord. According to St Teresa of Avila, the foundress of the discalced branch of the Carmelites, each meditation should culminate in an informal loving conversation with our Lord, aloud or silently, as with our closest friend, in response to his love for us.
There are seven degrees of divine virtue (union with God through faith, hope, and love) possible in the interior faculties or “Mansions” of the human soul, as described by St Teresa. See The Interior Castle.
Ascetical Mansions (Acquired Recollection: Active, Habitual Union with God)
1. Vocal Prayer (State of Grace with a Need for Self-Knowledge and Humility)
2. Mental Prayer (Hearing and Heeding the Call to Cognitive and Affective Meditation)
3. Prayer of Simplicity (Habitual Union of Will, Intellect, and Memory with God)
Mystical Mansions (Infused Recollection: Passive, Continual Union with God)
4. Prayer of Quiet, Prayer of Faith (The Dark Night of the Senses)
5. Prayer of Union, Spiritual Meeting, Illumination (Passive Union of the Will with God)
6. Spiritual Betrothal, Death and Burial, Apostolic Mission (The Dark Night of the Spirit)
7. Spiritual Marriage, Resurrection (Passive Union of Memory and Intellect with God)
These are the degrees of divine virtue on the Christian way of perfection. The Purgative Way (the Way of Beginners) corresponds to Mansions 1-3. The Illuminative Way (the Way of Proficients) corresponds to Mansions 4-5. The Unitive Way (the Way of Perfection) corresponds to Mansions 6-7. Each stage requires a new conversion and transformation. The 2nd (Mental Prayer), 4th (the Dark Night of the Senses), and 6th (the Dark Night of the Spirit) Mansions are transitional. The 1st (the State of Grace), 3rd (the State of Simplicity), 5th (the State of Union of the Will), and 7th (the State of Transforming Union) Mansions are stational. (See Bl Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, OCD, I Want to See God, on this.) We typically spend many years at each stage before advancing to the next. Those who advance to maturity typically receive a particular apostolic mission in the dark night of the spirit (the 6th Mansions).
The contemplative life of prayer is inseparable from the apostolic life, and it is the subjective means to perfect union with God and the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The objective means to perfect union with God and the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit is constituted by the sacraments of Christ. Both the objective and the subjective means must be employed consistently and zealously in order to grow in holiness. The transition to infused recollection in the dark night of the senses requires God’s positive intervention. Contemplation is a gift, but it is offered to all people who truly seek it, knowing by faith that God exists and rewards virtue (Hebrews 11:6).
“God can certainly grant this grace to a person without any effort on the person’s part, but ordinarily the Lord waits for the soul to reach this point by being faithful to the paths of vocal and mental prayer, because it is by this way that the soul is purified and lets go to the things of earth in order to entrust itself to God alone.”
Sister Lucia, OCD, Calls from the Message of Fatima
The degrees of divine faith, hope, and love are cumulative and build on one another. Strictly speaking, we do not leave one stage behind as we pass to another. We do not ever abandon the active practice of vocal prayer and meditation, even though in the higher degrees of faith and prayer God may occasionally suspend the natural operations of our faculties through extraordinary trials or raptures and thereby temporarily prevent us from engaging in it.
Desolations and consolations typically move us to practice mental prayer more frequently and fervently as we undergo them, and they contribute to our perfection. The various forms and stages of contemplative prayer are a single gradual process in the soul. At some point, when we have prepared ourselves and drawn close to God by meditation and self-discipline, God draws close to us and infuses his knowledge and love in our souls in a new way, and then our prayer becomes fully contemplative. When God offers us this grace, typically we begin to experience a great deal of darkness and desolation, even physical or mental illness, as Job and other ancient Hebrew saints and prophets did.
Gradually God’s love conquers our will, if we remain in the state of grace, cooperate sacrificially, and do not resist his action in us. Our life of prayer and our minds and hearts must undergo a gradual but radical transformation. The captivation of the will by God is intermittent at first but gradually becomes constant. The development from “active recollection” to “the infused prayer of quiet” to “the prayer of union” can be understood as the process by which God supernaturally conquers our imperfections and conforms our will to his own with his own divine power. The experiential dimensions of this process are described by the Doctors of the Church and in the lives of the Saints.
The infusion of divine love in the will is delightful, but it also places the soul in darkness and confusion. Divine love brings with it a divine light which initially blinds the soul and leaves it in the dark, so to speak. The soul must adjust to the supernatural activity and light of God within it and grow toward a more perfect union and permanent spiritual marriage with God. Gradually God will captivate and elevate not only the will but also the memory and the intellect. We must understand this process clearly, accept it sacrificially, and cooperate with it effectively. St Teresa of Avila recruited St John of the Cross to help her explain it theologically. We should endeavor to understand the process both abstractly and concretely. Concretely we come to understand the process by undergoing it. Analogies can more or less help us to understand the process in the abstract.
Carmelite anthropology is an integration of the human self and the human soul. See Richard E Dumont, OCDS, Commentary on the Writings of St John of the Cross. The self is the subjective dimension of the human person, and the soul is the objective dimension of the human person. Prayer is a covenant relationship between Christ and the soul. Marriage is the basic analogy for divine union in the Sacred Scriptures; it is not merely a metaphor. Edith Stein (St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD) in The Science of the Cross says that spiritual marriage is the archetype of natural marriage.
In the spiritual meeting and betrothal, we learn to respond to God as God takes the lead. Our minds and hearts learn to move at the impulse of divine knowledge and love. Contemplative prayer is also analogous to the journey of faith and repentance toward the sacrament of Baptism (an objective marriage of Christ and the soul), and it terminates in the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost and an apostolic mission). The self (the mind and the heart) must gradually come under the direction of Christ in the soul (the intellect and the will).
The lives of the Saints in general manifest the developmental process concretely. The lives of the Saints therefore help us to understand the process of spiritual growth concretely and inspire us to advance in it zealously. God has given us the Science of the Saints. May we learn to imitate their virtues. Nothing else will make us truly happy in this life. Faith is happiness of the mind, hope is happiness of the memory, and love is happiness of the heart.
Happiness in general is exercising the physical, intellectual (knowledge, understanding, wisdom, art, prudence), moral (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance), and theological virtues (faith, hope, charity). Aristotle is basically right about natural happiness and human nature, but human nature is perfected by grace. The force of habit, for good or for evil, is the most powerful force on earth. In order to grow and be perfected in us, the virtues must be practiced and put to the test. Our spiritual life is thus analogous to our physical life, our intellectual life, and our moral life. The unifying concept is virtue.
The spiritual life is a matter of growing in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The ascetical aspect of our lives is what we can do naturally to grow and perfect the virtues in us. The mystical aspect of our lives is what God does supernaturally to grow and perfect the virtues in us. Both naturally and supernaturally, growth in virtue entails hard work, difficulties, trials, and tribulations. The saints of every time and place have passed through these in their lives: Job, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, David, John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary, the Apostles, Benedict, Scholastica, Francis, Clare, Dominic, Catherine, Teresa, John, Edith Stein, etc. The only way to grow in virtue is to incline yourself to what is difficult rather than to what is easy. “No pain, no gain” is the universal law of growing in any kind of virtue. Wisdom is understanding the Cross; holiness is embracing the Cross. God will send us on a particular personal mission, but not until we have undergone a suitable formation.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is the model of perfect faith and holiness. Next to her Son Jesus, no one embraced the Cross as much as Mary did. Mary and the Apostles received their formation directly from Christ. They passed through the dark night of the senses (the Passion of Christ) and the dark night of the spirit (the Ascension of Christ) before being sent on apostolic mission (on the Day of Pentecost). See Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life. The Blessed Virgin Mary carries out the apostolic mission of the Church, but in a manner different from that of the Apostles. Mary had the greatest intimacy with God and continually practiced apostolic prayer. Mary experienced the greatest sorrows, trials, and temptations, but also the greatest joys and consolations. She would have been tempted to despair, just as Therese of Lisieux and most other Saints were tempted to despair. Mary accepted and inclined herself to that which is difficult: the way of perfection.
Of all the Saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary has the highest degree of virtue (faith, hope, and charity) and holiness. Because Mary was chosen to be the virgin mother of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, she is the most holy creature of God who ever lived. From the first moment of her conception, she was full of grace and was preserved immune from all stain of original sin. This is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. She was redeemed from sin by the merits of Christ even before the Incarnation. Furthermore, she never committed any personal sins her whole life long. That is the reason why we call her the “All Holy One.” She freely consented to this unique human participation in the divine mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and through the redemption thus became the New Eve, the Mother of the New Creation, and the Mother of the Church.
Mary is the All-Holy Ever-Virgin Mother of God. She perfectly possessed union with God through faith and spiritual marriage. She had perfect conformity with the will of God and possessed an abiding knowledge (i.e. an intuitive, indirect, connatural, infused, contemplative, loving, intellectual vision) of the Holy Trinity in her soul. She was perfectly divinized by sanctifying grace and participated perfectly in the life of God by faith, knowing and loving him as he knows and loves himself. She possessed a perfect identification with her Son Jesus through the Holy Spirit. She possessed the mind and heart of Christ perfectly and was perfectly conformed to his likeness. God wants everyone to imitate the faith and works of Mary and to become like her to some degree by grace through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But the only way to grow in holiness is by way of the Cross: personal sacrifice for others, beginning with our family members, and the acceptance of suffering and death in imitation of Christ and Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mary especially intervenes to help her children through the dark night of faith. After the Cross comes the Resurrection. After the dark night comes the light of day. Always!
About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD
Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.
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