The Mountain of Decision and the Mantle of Mercy
MASS Gaudeamus omnes
LESSON Sir 24:23-31
GOSPEL St Luke 11. 27-28
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a festival in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” So the Church summons us in the Introit of this Mass, Gaudeámus omnes. Yet the joy of Carmel is not a soft or sentimental joy. It is the joy of victory after combat, of rain after drought, of fidelity after trial. Mount Carmel is not merely a beautiful place associated with Our Lady; it is the mountain upon which the true God was confessed against apostasy, the altar of the Lord was restored, and a people wavering between truth and falsehood was compelled to choose.
In the ninth century before Christ, Israel had fallen into grave religious corruption. King Achab had taken Jezabel for his wife, and through her influence the cult of Baal had spread through the kingdom. The prophets of the Lord were persecuted, His altars were cast down, and the people attempted to combine the worship of the true God with the religion of the surrounding world.
Then Elias stood upon Mount Carmel and uttered the question which cuts through every age of confusion: “How long do you halt between two sides? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.”
There is the whole crisis of the human soul. Not always open denial, but halting between two sides. Not always formal apostasy, but divided allegiance. The desire to retain God without renouncing the idols; to preserve the forms of religion while surrendering its substance; to confess the Lord on Sunday while living according to the maxims of the world for the remainder of the week.
Elias would allow no such compromise. He repaired the broken altar of the Lord. He placed the sacrifice upon it. He prayed. Fire descended from heaven, and the people fell upon their faces, crying: “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God.”
Carmel is therefore the mountain of decision. Before it became associated with the mantle of Mary, it was consecrated by the uncompromising confession of the living God. Yet this is precisely why Carmel belongs so fittingly to Our Lady, for no creature has ever chosen God with a heart so undivided as hers. She never halted between two sides. She never reserved any province of her life from His dominion. Her entire existence was one perfect and unbroken Fiat: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.”
After the triumph over the prophets of Baal, Elias climbed again to the summit of Carmel. The land had been stricken by drought for three years. He bowed himself to the earth in prayer and sent his servant seven times to look towards the sea. At last the servant returned and said: “Behold a little cloud arose out of the sea like a man’s foot.” That little cloud expanded, the heavens darkened, and abundant rain descended upon the parched land.
Christian tradition has long beheld in that small and stainless cloud a figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From the troubled sea of fallen humanity arose one immaculate creature, humble in her own eyes yet filled with grace. She appeared small before the world, hidden at Nazareth, unknown to the powerful, uncelebrated by the learned; yet within her was borne Him Whom the heavens cannot contain.
The Gradual of this Mass declares: “O Virgin Mother of God, He Whom the whole world cannot contain shut Himself in thy womb, becoming man.” The cloud of Carmel bore the rain; Mary bore the Redeemer. The cloud brought an end to the drought of Israel; Mary gave to the world Him Who is the fountain of grace. Through her came not merely refreshment for the earth, but the living water of salvation.
This is why the Church does not fear to honour her so magnificently. She does not stand between us and Christ as an obstacle. She stands before us as the creature through whom Christ chose to come. She does not obscure the Sun of justice; she bears Him. She does not retain grace for herself; she is full of grace that Christ may be given to the world.
In the early thirteenth century, hermits living upon Mount Carmel gathered around a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gave them their rule between 1206 and 1214. Pope Honorius III approved that rule in 1226, and Pope Innocent IV adapted it in 1247 to the circumstances of the Order as it spread throughout Europe. These religious called themselves the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.
Driven from the Holy Land, they carried Carmel westward, not as a geographical possession but as a spiritual vocation: silence, prayer, penance, purity of heart, fidelity to divine truth, and filial consecration to the Mother of God.
Among their early leaders was the English Carmelite Saint Simon Stock. The Order then suffered opposition and uncertainty. According to the venerable tradition of Carmel, on 16 July 1251 the Blessed Virgin appeared to Saint Simon and entrusted to him the brown scapular as a sign of her protection and of the Order’s belonging to her.
The scapular is one of the smallest sacramentals of the Church, yet its meaning is immense. It is a garment of allegiance. It declares that we desire to be clothed in Mary’s virtues, to live under her discipline, and to belong more perfectly to Jesus Christ.
In former times, a man’s garment often revealed the household to which he belonged, the office he exercised, or the master whom he served. The scapular says: this soul belongs to the household of Mary; and because it belongs to Mary, it must belong entirely to Christ.
That is why the scapular must never be reduced to a charm or talisman. It is not a substitute for conversion. It is not permission to live carelessly while presuming upon a promise. It is not a magical guarantee detached from faith, repentance and perseverance.
To wear the garment of Mary while rejecting the commandments of her Son would be a contradiction. To ask her protection while refusing to leave mortal sin would be presumption. To place the scapular upon the body while withholding the heart from God would be to possess the sign while denying the reality.
The Gospel corrects precisely this false idea of devotion. A woman in the crowd cries out to Our Lord: “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck.” Christ replies: “Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”
Our Lord does not diminish His Mother’s blessedness. He reveals its deepest cause. Mary is blessed not merely because she bore Christ in her womb, but because she first received the Word in faith. Before she conceived Him physically, she conceived Him spiritually by obedience. Her maternity began in her assent to God.
This, therefore, is the test of true Marian devotion: do we hear the word of God and keep it?
Do we keep it when it commands purity in a culture built upon impurity? Do we keep it when it commands forgiveness in an age of vengeance? Do we keep it when it commands worship in an age of distraction? Do we keep it when it commands submission to truth in an age that claims each person may manufacture his own reality?
The scapular rests over the heart because the battle is fought there. The idols of every age seek first the heart. Baal may no longer possess temples under that name, but his worship continues wherever creatures are given the place of the Creator.
The modern Baals are many: self-worship, sexual licence, money, public approval, political ideology, technology without moral restraint, and a sentimental humanitarianism that wishes to retain compassion while rejecting divine law. They promise liberty but produce bondage. They demand sacrifice, though never of themselves. They require men to surrender conscience, chastity, family, faith and sometimes even reason itself.
Nor is the temptation confined to the world outside the Church. The people of Israel did not wholly deny the Lord; they attempted to serve Him and Baal together. That is the more subtle danger. Catholic words may remain while Catholic meanings are emptied out. The language of mercy may be retained while repentance is omitted. The language of inclusion may be exalted while conversion is silenced. The language of pastoral care may be invoked while the commandments of God are treated as burdens from which modern man must be liberated.
But Carmel permits no reconciliation between the altar of God and the altar of Baal. Elias does not ask the people to admire the Lord, nor to preserve Him as one spiritual option among many. He says: “If the Lord be God, follow Him.”
Follow Him when it costs. Follow Him when others leave. Follow Him when fidelity is misunderstood as harshness. Follow Him when the age mocks what the saints revered. Follow Him when even men within the household of faith appear embarrassed by the inheritance they were ordained to guard.
Yet Carmel does not teach self-reliance. Elias stood alone before the prophets of Baal, but he did not stand without God. Saint Simon Stock saw his Order endangered, but heaven had not forgotten it. The scapular reminds us that Christian fidelity is not sustained by human courage alone. We have been given a Mother.
The Collect asks that we, “defended by her care, may be found worthy to attain everlasting happiness.” The Offertory pleads: “Remember, O Virgin Mother, to speak good things before God’s face in our behalf, so that He may turn away His wrath from us.” The Communion addresses her as “the most worthy Queen of the whole world” and begs her to intercede “for our peace and for our safety.”
The Church does not speak idly. She teaches us that Mary’s protection is real, her intercession powerful, and her maternal care active. She speaks for sinners before the face of God because she is the Mother of the Redeemer. She asks mercy for us because she stood beneath the Cross upon which mercy was purchased. She pleads for peace because she gave flesh to the Prince of peace.
But her protection does not mean that the Cross will be removed. Mary did not protect her Son by preventing Calvary. She protected the infant Jesus from Herod because His hour had not yet come; but when His hour came, she stood beneath the Cross and united her sorrow to His sacrifice.
Her mantle is not a hiding place from obedience. It is the school of obedience. It does not remove suffering; it teaches us how to suffer without abandoning God. It does not excuse us from combat; it clothes us for combat.
To be clothed in Mary is to ask for her purity in an impure age, her silence amid incessant noise, her recollection amid distraction, her humility amid self-display, her courage amid cowardice, and her fidelity when compromise appears easier.
The Epistle places upon the lips of divine Wisdom the words: “I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope.” In Mary these words shine with a particular splendour. She teaches fair love: love cleansed of selfishness and sentimentality. She teaches holy fear: reverence before God and hatred of sin. She teaches knowledge: the wisdom that sees time in the light of eternity. She teaches holy hope: confidence not in our strength, but in the grace of her Son.
“They that eat me shall yet hunger: and they that drink me shall yet thirst.” True devotion to Mary always increases hunger for Christ. The more deeply a soul belongs to her, the more it desires the Mass, confession, prayer, penance, virtue and heaven. Any Marian devotion that leaves a man content in sin has not yet reached the heart. Any devotion that makes him love Christ more, hate sin more, pray more faithfully, and bear the Cross more generously bears the mark of the Mother of God.
Let us therefore wear the scapular not carelessly, but consciously. Let us touch it in temptation and remember whose garment we bear. Let us kiss it in sorrow and remember beneath whose mantle we have placed ourselves. Let us never be ashamed of it before a world ashamed of Christ.
Above all, let us live what it signifies. Let us repair within ourselves the broken altar of God. Let us cast down the hidden idols of the heart. Let us cease halting between two sides. Let us hear the word of God and keep it.
The brown scapular lies over the heart, between the soul and the idols that would possess it. There it silently repeats the question of Elias: “If the Lord be God, follow Him.”
And there it also whispers the promise of Carmel: that the Mother who clothed us for the battle will not abandon us in the hour of death; that she who brought the Saviour into the world will bring the faithful soul to the Saviour; and that beneath her mantle, purified by grace and persevering in faith, we may pass from the mountain of decision to the mountain of eternal joy.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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