On July 16, 2017, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Pope Francis encouraged men and women Carmelites to continue on the way of contemplation.
Greeting the religious of the order at the end of the Angelus, held in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope expressed his hope that “they will be able to continue with determination on the way of contemplation.”
He also published a Tweet later that afternoon: “Let us allow ourselves to be guided by the Virgin Mary on the path that leads to the holy mountain, which is Jesus, where God and man encounter one another.”
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is one of the eight feasts of the Virgin Mary that punctuate the Liturgical Year. Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel spread in the West with the “scapular,” which the Superior of the Carmelite Order, Simon Stock, created inspired in a vision of the Virgin on July 16, 1251.
