What is a Carmelite?

​Far from Mount Carmel, Coorparoo in time and place: The year 1200, just south of the crusader fortress at Acre, a dry river valley leads down from a green mountain to the sun-washed shores of the eastern Mediterranean. The head of a lean, bearded man pokes out of a natural cave. He looks at the sun. He is wearing a rough woollen cloak of alternating light and dark stripes. He says nothing, but raises his eyes to heaven in a silent prayer to God and tries to estimate from the angle of the sun how long it will be before he joins his fellow hermits in their Eucharistic worship at the makeshift chapel dedicated to the Lady of Mount Carmel, by the wadi.(1)

Above: Carmelite hermits on Mount Carmel. Pietro Lorenzetti

These first Carmelites were seekers who stepped back and took the wide view of our shared life journey. They were on an intentional quest for meaning, purpose and ultimately for the God who is Love. On Mount Carmel – a holy place recorded in the Hebrew scriptures – they gathered as a praying community, pondering the Word of God in the Bible and seeking their simple way by following in the footsteps of Jesus.
Carmelites today in 2021, like those first Carmelites, continue living a way of life that seeks to follow the way of Jesus through practices of prayer, community and service. Here at Mount Carmel, Coorparoo, a community of Carmelite brothers, has lived in the community since 1937 accompanying the community (school and parish) in travelling the life journey of meaning and Love.

Br Matthew Tonini, O.Carm.
Next time: Carmelite Spirituality and Charism
(1) Adapted from Desert Spring in the City, 2012. Leopold Glueckert, O.Carm.