Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Every July 16 we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. July 16 this year falls on a Sunday. The Carmelites may hold the solemn celebration on the next day Monday so they can use the proper liturgical texts for the occasion.

Associated with this devotion to the Mother of Our Lord Jesus is the practice of wearing the small brown scapular as part of a devotee’s inner garment. The bigger scapular or scowl in color brown is the official habit of the Carmelite monks and nuns.

Marian Carmel devotees have popularized the brown scapular devotion because they believe and experience the graces and blessings promised to those who wear them when certain obligations are fulfilled. The scapulars are blessed and imposed on July 16. The Carmelite tradition recalls the apparition on this date of Our Lady dressed in brown habit to St. Simon Stock, OCD, an English Carmelite, to whom she gave the brown scapular and assured him of those special blessings.

In our Archdiocese the Carmelite Fathers have a novitiate in Tugbok District. The monastery of the Carmelite nuns is located in Bajada where the celebrations are held in the spacious public chapel. But the nuns live in the enclosed cloister and spend most of their time in prayer and contemplation as well as in the ascetical observance of fasting and abstinence. All these they offer for the Church, society and the world. To generate funds for their material needs they do manual work like making hosts, rosaries, Mass vestments, etc.