Flos Carmeli ('Flower of Carmel')

The 'day with Mary' (see yesterday's post) featured enrolment in the 'scapular' of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Carmelite Order has a unique, historical connection with England and I have decided to provide the whole subject with its own tab: Flos Carmeli ('Flower of Carmel'). There you will find information on the history of the English Carmelites and the Scapular.

To show how the English connection is unique and to encourage readers to study the matter further, consider the following:

1. Of all the kingdoms of Europe, England was the first that admitted the religious men of the Order of the blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, when the the persecutions of the Saracens obliged them to fly from Palestine, their native soil.
2. It was to an Englishman that the sacred Virgin gave the Scapular with her own hand.
3. The apparition of the Virgin took place in England in the Carmelite Convent at Cambridge.
4. It was in England that the Scapular wrought its miraculous effect.
5. It was in England that the devotion of the Scapular had its beginning, the Confraternity of the most blessed Virgin being erected there before any other place in the world. King Edward I procured himself to be enrolled in it.

[Source: A Short Treatise on the Scapular. Thomas P Colgan, Philadelphia. 1847]