“While the schools of St. Bernard and St. Francis are schools of love, seraphic love, and the Dominican, intellectual, the school of Carmel achieves a happy mean, a harmony of both. Surely those who dwell in Carmel would have caught from the flame a spark of the love and zeal which burned in the great Prophet. Fire is the most expressive symbol of love. ‘I am come to cast fire on the earth.’ It is this fire which enveloped Elias when, according to the witness of Scripture, he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot. Wrapped in that seraphic flame he is taken from earth. Carmel must ever feel that glow of its founder’s zeal. It is the mark of the true follower of Elias. It burns in all the Carmelite saints. Especially do we see it in the soul of seraphic St. Teresa of Avila. The smouldering fires that burned in the soul of ‘this undaunted daughters of desires’ is Carmel’s greatest witness to the spirit of Elias. In these great souls have been fulfilled the Prophet’s words which encircle the Order’s escutcheon, ‘With zeal I have been zealous for the Lord God of Hosts.'”
Bl. Titus Brandsma
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