Our Lady, Queen of Mount Carmel

It is July 16 ... IT IS THE FEAST OF OUR LADY, QUEEN OF MOUNT CARMEL

Do we call her Mother? For St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face Mary is "much more Mother than Queen."

"If a child is to cherish his mother, she must cry with him and share his sorrows." 

Knowledge and love can only deepen for our tender Mother Mary when we seek wisdom about her from her Sacred Spouse: Spirit Lord. 

In prayer, He may direct our thoughts by drawing us into the revelations about our Beloved Mother that He has inspired in holy souls throughout the centuries. Through His Wisdom, revealed through them, a contour of her gentle, sweet features begins to take shape. 

Mary was described by St Louis de Montfort as "our powerful Sovereign, our beloved mistress, ... the world of God."

We have therefore a world of reflections to explore in our search to glimpse her beauty: her interior silence, her profound humility, the light of her faith that will shine through the darkness of our mind, her total self-emptiness, her willing enslavement to God's Will. When we accept Mary as our Spiritual Mother, she will "reveal our thoughts" (Luke 2) to us and we begin to grow in self-knowledge, that gift which gives us deep humility under the Gaze of God. 

There is an abyss between God Who is Infinite, Numen, and we, who are finite. The depths of the abyss are highlighted in a conversation between Our Father and St Catherine of Siena. The Father asked her: "Do you know, my daughter, who you are, and who I am? ... You are she who is not; I am He Who is."

1200 years before God illumined Catherine about her finiteness, her nothingness, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the  Annunciation. When we stand, in unobtrusive silence listening to their dialogue, it becomes clear to us that Mary, the Immaculata, the God-bearer, the Hodogetria, was fully aware that she was the one "who is not."  We hear her describing herself  as the "handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38).

This word, "handmaid", holds profound meaning. We remember that this was the same ancient word that St. Paul used to describe the Savior in Philippians 2:7: Jesus "emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, (doulos) being born in the likeness of men..."

Mary His Mother, the self-described handmaid, the douly of the Lord, the bondslave of God, His total possession, the one whose Owner had all rights to do with her as He willed, even and including should His Will be to take her life. 

Mary was empty of self. She was, as it were, the "prelude" (St John Paul II) to her Son's total self-emptiness, God's Doulos. 

And God accepted His Son's self-sacrificial death on the Cross, Christ, the Saving Victim. 
 
Mary, Queen of Carmel, embodies the beauty of a Carmelite heart and life in her love for the Saving Victim. In her self-emptiness, Mary embodies the being who could be filled with God. It is Spirit Lord Who "opens her lips and her mouth declared His praise" at the Visitation. 

Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD wrote that, "prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." Because she was totally empty of self, Mary's prayer was filled with supernatural efficacy, with a faith that animated every thought, word, action that she made.  Mary will gently mother us into an awareness of the abyss of our finiteness, helps us to offer ourselves as God's doulos/douly, leads us into the wisdom of self-knowledge where our awareness of our nothingness deepens in the perspective of the Infinite Who is God. 

If the awareness of our nothingness nips at our spiritual pride and disheartedness begins to lurk in the depths of such self-knowledge. St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face encourages us:

"You, Lord, will descend to my nothingness and transform that nothingness into living fire.....and even when I have nothing....I will give Him this nothing."

And so, we may stand gazing into the vast abyss between the Infinite Who is, and the finiteness of we, "who are not". With St Therese, we may humbly offer all that we are to God ... and give Him our nothing. 

With Mary as our Queen of humility, we offer our Yes, ourselves, to be His douly, His doulos, to do with as He Wills.

And the mighty power of Spirit Lord will rush into our depths, fill our souls with Himself to the capacity pre-ordained by God, and transform our "nothingness into living fire". 

All who meet us, every moment of our days, will touch God as He moves in and through us and all will taste His sweetness as He transforms us into His own Image. And He will draw souls to God through our "nothing" that He fills with Himself. 

How?

When He fills the measure of ourselves that we give to Him, that measure becomes the property of Spirit Lord. He has one Desire....to draw us into winning souls for God and that Desire begins to propel us at disconcerting moments. We may be watching a tense TV movie when we feel His unmistakable invitation to join Him in prayer. Ten minutes before the exciting conclusion  of the movie. 

We obey, take ourselves off into solitude with Him and at the knee of Mary, we pray an urgent Decade of the Rosary......and our great, great grandchild, yet to be born, who will only ever see photographs of us, will be snatched by God away from a life of drugs, or pornography, or alcohol. St Therese teaches us that prayer soars beyond space and time and God already owns the decades where our great grandchild moves. What was, what is and what is yet to be are all one in Him. Through our small sacrifice, united with in and through Christ Jesus'  ultimate Sacrifice, we have won the soul of our loved one. 

 God has gratefully accepted the little space of ourselves that we have given Him, filled it with Himself and His Desire for souls,  and then waits to reward us in unimaginable ways for doing something that He gave us the power to do in the first place.

And we begin to understand how he transforms our “nothingness into living fire”, even beyond space and time.

More words from St. John Paul II come to our mind: “Prayer united with sacrifice is the most powerful force in human history.”

Mary was filled with self-emptiness. And filled with God.

Mary: "zealous for the glory of the one true God and the sanctification and salvation of souls"; Mary: the "Woman"-made-prayer; Mary: whose sacrificial suffering from the "sword" that pierced her heart so that she could reveal our thoughts to us;  Mary: "united with Christ Crucified and His omnipotent prayer as Saving Victim"; Mary: the pure and most powerful intercessor for all of God's children for whom the Savior shed His Precious Blood; Mary: whose "adoration and contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity" is inexhaustible; 

                                                Mary, filled with Love Himself ...
                                                Mary, Mother, Queen of Mount Carmel, pray for us. 

(Quotes used in the final paragraph are from the ancient charism of the Discalced Carmelite Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel)