“I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to suffer. I chose my community because it takes a joyful approach to God and the world.” The Vocation Director and I were walking back from our lunch meeting. It was an uncommonly clear January day in Portland, and, although he belonged to another order, I had just told him I was seriously considering the Carmelites and would be visiting them in February. ...

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to suffer. I chose my community because it takes a joyful approach to God and the world.” The Vocation Director and I were walking back from our lunch meeting. It was an uncommonly clear January day in Portland, and, although he belonged to another order, I had just told him I was seriously considering the Carmelites and would be visiting them in February. ...

De Vitry (Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1228 and wrote of the hermits in Palestine) would seem to indicate that western hermits settled on Mount Carmel from the beginning of the Frankish conquest of Palestine, yet indisputable evidence occurs only in the 13th century. Two earlier references must be discarded. In 1163, the Spanish rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela, saw near the cave of Elijah a church built by two Christians and dedicated ...

De Vitry (Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre from 1216 to 1228 and wrote of the hermits in Palestine) would seem to indicate that western hermits settled on Mount Carmel from the beginning of the Frankish conquest of Palestine, yet indisputable evidence occurs only in the 13th century. Two earlier references must be discarded. In 1163, the Spanish rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela, saw near the cave of Elijah a church built by two Christians and dedicated ...

It’s 3am on a Wednesday night. The dark stillness of the house is interrupted by a logging truck thundering through the trees past my house, roaring toward a clear-cut somewhere in the pitch-black hills, its empty trailer clanging behind. By the time they have arrived at the landing to pick up the logs, it will be dawn. Their work day has already started and so has mine. I live with my brother and ...

It’s 3am on a Wednesday night. The dark stillness of the house is interrupted by a logging truck thundering through the trees past my house, roaring toward a clear-cut somewhere in the pitch-black hills, its empty trailer clanging behind. By the time they have arrived at the landing to pick up the logs, it will be dawn. Their work day has already started and so has mine. I live with my brother and ...

It was The victory of Saladin at Hattin in 1187 put the quietus on religious life, cenobitical and eremitical, in Palestine. So After Hattin, the eremitical life in the open countryside became difficult, if not impossible, for Latins. One place remained where hermits might follow their vocation undisturbed: Mount Carmel until the end of the kingdom lay within the sphere of Frankish power. Carmel offered an ideal setting for retirement and reflection. Its rugged slopes, dense ...

It was The victory of Saladin at Hattin in 1187 put the quietus on religious life, cenobitical and eremitical, in Palestine. So After Hattin, the eremitical life in the open countryside became difficult, if not impossible, for Latins. One place remained where hermits might follow their vocation undisturbed: Mount Carmel until the end of the kingdom lay within the sphere of Frankish power. Carmel offered an ideal setting for retirement and reflection. Its rugged slopes, dense ...

"Others, in imitation of the holy anchorite, the prophet Elijah, led solitary lives on Mount Carmel, especially on that part thereof which overhangs the city of Porphyria, now called Haifa, near the well called Elijah’s Well, not far from the Convent of St. Margaret the Virgin, where in little comb-like cells, those bees of the Lord laid up sweet spiritual honey. The Carmelites follow a rich heritage of hermetic figures from Palestine, including Hilarion, Cariton, ...

"Others, in imitation of the holy anchorite, the prophet Elijah, led solitary lives on Mount Carmel, especially on that part thereof which overhangs the city of Porphyria, now called Haifa, near the well called Elijah’s Well, not far from the Convent of St. Margaret the Virgin, where in little comb-like cells, those bees of the Lord laid up sweet spiritual honey. The Carmelites follow a rich heritage of hermetic figures from Palestine, including Hilarion, Cariton, ...