“This living in the presence of God, this placing himself before the face of God, is a characteristic which the children of Carmel have inherited from the great Prophet: Conversatio nostra in coelis est. ‘Our conversation is in heaven.’ Elias was not taken up to heaven, but here on earth he lived in heaven and …
“To what degree of contemplation Elias was raised on Horeb, is an academic question. There are some who say he saw the Lord face to face as we hope to see Him in Heaven. All spiritual writers number Elias among the most favored mystic seers. His experience on Horeb was a reflection of what he …
“When Elias was being taken away from the earth in a fiery chariot, Eliseus, his faithful disciple, begged of him the inheritance of his double spirit. In the mantle which he received and with which he covered his shoulders, Eliseus received the inheritance he had asked for. The Prophet’s mantle was to him a symbol …
“However, the double spirit of the prophet is spoken of in a third sense as the harmonious union of the human exercise of virtue and the divine infusion of the mystical life; the union of the via purgativa and illuminativa with the via unitiva. It is in this third sense that the old institution of …
“Another sense (of the double spirit of Elias) is given to this double spirit: namely, the marvelous mixture of contemplative and active life in the great prophet. He was, above all, the great contemplative, but God called him many times from his contemplation to the active life and his place in the history of Israel …
“The first (of the three-fold sense of the double spirit of Elias) is the double portion of the inheritance of the Father, the portion of the first-born son, the portion of the privileged children. The Carmelites are the privileged children of the great prophet and ask from him the portion of the primogenitus. But only …
“Also, we may mention here an old manuscript, the Institutio Primorum Monachorum, which contains the oldest tradition of the Order. It was probably written late in the 13th or at the beginning of the 14th century after the dispersion of the monks to the West, but was formerly ascribed to a much earlier date. It …
“When Europe was full of the battle cry of the Crusaders, ‘God wills it,’ and the Crusaders set out to recapture the holy places, Carmel was one of the first places to be won back. There they found the ruins of the old sanctuaries, and we are told some of them remained to restore the …
“The memory of the great spiritual warfare of Elias still clings to (Carmel). It was here he gathered together all Israel and flung reproach at their heads. ‘How long do you halt between two sides? If the Lord be God, follow Him.’ Here Israel heard his challenge in words of flame, as a burning torch. …
“Carmel is the natural retreat of the contemplative, and it is not unfitting that on its slopes should stand the Cloister of Carmel, the cradle of the Order. It stands above the turmoil of life, above the world’s stormy sea; its solitude is beyond the reach of ‘life’s fitful fever’; it is wrapped in the …