Our reading from St. Peter today can be applied very well to this feast.  St. Peter says that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people he claims for his own, and we should proclaim the glorious works of the one who has brought us from the darkness into his marvelous light.  We could take each of those praises and apply it to today’s feast and our Order of Carmel and see how aptly it fits.

Are we, Carmel, a chosen race?  There is no doubt about it.  Carmel is a chosen race, and I am sure that every saint in Carmel would affirm this.  They see now in a light that we cannot see indeed how chosen we are.  It is a beautiful word, chosen, if we look into its real meaning.  Chosen means that someone is particular, that they have been favored from out of the assembly, from out of the multitude.  These are the chosen ones.  We choose something:  a man chooses a wife, we all choose or are chosen for a vocation, a work to do on earth.  There are many things in human life that we can apply ‘chosen’ to, which means they are special.  For us to think Carmel is special in the Church and in heaven in indeed appropriate.  Of course, this is a mercy of God as the last sentence in this little scripture excerpt tells us.  It is not of any merit of ours that we are chosen, but in the inscrutable wisdom of God.

So we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood.  To the priesthood belongs the office of sacrificing to God.  But this priesthood has an adjective:  a ‘royal’ priesthood.  We are indeed set apart, chosen to offer sacrifice with the great sacrifice, and we are able to do this in a royal manner, which means in a kingly or queenly way.  A royal priesthood is the Order of Carmel.  It is a holy nation.  God showed his holiness to  us through Jesus, so if Carmel is going to be true to its designation as a holy nation, we must find in it the holiness of Jesus, which is mirrored in the holiness of Mary.  And this is the holiness that is proper to Carmel.

We should cherish the fact that we live in Carmel, that we belong to this great family, the blessed of whom we are celebrating today.  Each of them had to carry out this description when they were on earth.  They had to strive for and attain to the holiness of God himself.  They had to remember that they were set apart, that God had claimed them for his own.  And what is all of this for?  Why all of this specialty?  So that we might proclaim the glorious works of the one who called us from darkness into his marvelous light.  How dark the world is.  We hear and see that with greater emphasis day by day.  We have been called apart.  We have been called out of this darkness into the marvelous light of Carmel.  The Carmel that shines with the light of the Mother of God, the fearless one, the immaculate one.

This feast should give us, if we meditate on its significance, a deeper appreciation of this gift that God has gifted us with. It should stir up in us a new ardor, a new desire to fulfill this description of what Carmel is and strive to become a member of this blessed company in heaven that we are celebrating today.  The Saints of Carmel proclaimed the work of the Holy Spirit in their souls by traversing the interior castle, by becoming a flame of love and following the little way, that is a sure way, and that would lead us to be a member of that blessed company in heaven.