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Our Lady of Mount Carmel 
Feast

Using calendar: Latin America - Brazil. You can change this.

Christ is the son of Mary: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: White.

The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Mount Carmel is commemorated in Scripture for its beauty, and it was there that the prophet Elijah defended the purity of Israel’s faith in the living God. Towards the end of the twelfth century AD, near a spring called after Elijah, a group of hermits established themselves on Mount Carmel and built an oratory in honour of Our Lady, whom they chose as their titular and patroness. They became known as ‘the Brothers of Saint Mary of Mount Carmel’. They regarded the Blessed Virgin as their Mother, and their model first of all in leading the contemplative life, and later in sharing the fruits of their contemplation with others. The Solemn Commemoration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was first celebrated in England in the fourteenth century, but was gradually adopted throughout the Carmelite Order as an occasion of thanksgiving for the countless blessings which Our Lady had bestowed on the Carmelite family.

Other saints: St Helier (-555)

Jersey
St Helier was a 6th-century ascetic and hermit. He was born to pagan parents in Tongeren in what is now Belgium. His wanderings led him across Normandy to the monastic community of St Marculf at Nantus (now Nanteuil, St-Marcouf-de-l’Isle). However, the contemplative life did not bring him the peace that he sought, and he was sent with St Romard to Jersey where he settled on a tidal island, today known as the Hermitage Rock, next to L’Islet. He was killed on the beach there by robbers or infidel barbarians, traditionally in AD 555.
  While he is known in Jersey as the saint who brought Christianity to the Island, in Normandy and Brittany he is better known as a healing saint. Today he is invoked for diseases of the skin and eyes.
Portsmouth Ordo

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: Pope St Leo the Great (- 461)

Leo was born in Etruria and became Pope in 440. He was a true shepherd and father of souls. He constantly strove to keep the faith whole and strenuously defended the unity of the Church. He repelled the invasions of the barbarians or alleviated their effects, famously persuading Attila the Hun not to march on Rome in 452, and preventing the invading Vandals from massacring the population in 455.
  Leo left many doctrinal and spiritual writings behind and a number of them are included in the Office of Readings to this day. He died in 461.

Liturgical colour: white

White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Zephaniah 3:14,15 ©
Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Israel, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear.

Noon reading (Sext)Zechariah 9:9 ©
Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion! Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem! See now, your king comes to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant.

Afternoon reading (None)Judith 13:18-19 ©
May you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most High,
beyond all women on earth;
and may the Lord God be blessed,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
by whose guidance you cut off the head
of the leader of our enemies.
The trust you have shown
shall not pass from the memories of men,
but shall ever remind them
of the power of God.

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Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
 
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