Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Pointing to his disciples he said, 'here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. Matthew 12:48b-50

N MORE THAN one of these services in Hereford we have honoured Mary, the Mother of God. A few years ago I spoke to you about Mary as Mother of the Church and Symbol of the Church. Last year I spoke to you about the dormition of Mary and her assumption into heaven. This year I want to speak to you about 'Our Lady of Mount Carmel', an optional, rather low-key feast which the Church sometimes keeps on 16th July.

It's not a feast I have ever known much about: we know that in the twelfth century a group of hermits set up a community at the Wadi-'ain-es-shiah, a ravine on one of the western slopes of Mount Carmel, three miles South of Haifa. This was the beginning of the Carmelite Order, whose members lead a contemplative life under the patronage of Mary, Mother of God. We know too that Mount Carmel was where Elijah took on the prophets of Baal, in that thrilling story we heard as our first reading. Elijah, for the Carmelites, is a sort of honorary founding father. It is no accident that, around this time, the Office of Readings gives us the Elijah stories: today, the story of how Jezebel brought about the death of Naboth so that her husband King Ahab could commandeer his vineyard. It falls to the prophet Elijah to warn King Ahab of the dire consequences for his kingdom of behaving unjustly.

We perhaps know too something about the most famous Carmelite saints: St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross in the sixteenth century, St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Elizabeth of the Trinity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and Edith Stein and Titus Brandsma, killed in Nazi concentration camps.

On a personal note, I have regularly said Mass for the Fairacres Community in Oxford, the Sisters of the Love of God, whose brown habits and beautiful statue of the Mother of God reveal a close affinity with Carmelite spirituality.

Carmelites have much to teach us: for one thing, there is this strong strain of social justice, rooted in the prophetic ministry of Elijah, such as his confounding of Ahab in the story of Nahob's vineyard. The original Carmelite hermits were penitents, people seeking to live the eremitical life in order to atone for their sins, to seek to be right with God. We see the same concern for truth and justice in the life and witness of the Carmelites who perished under the Nazis. Edith Stein - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, as she is now known - was a convert to Christianity through her pursuit of philosophy. Of Jewish family background, she lost her life in Auschwitz in 1942.

Another thing we can learn from the Carmelites, is the tension between the solitariness of the contemplative and the shared life of a community of hermits. This tension between solitariness and the shared life was found first in Mount Carmel but has been part of later Carmelite communities. We can see the solitariness in the life of Elijah. 'It is enough: O Lord now take away my life' prays Elijah as he discovers that only he is left and that they seek his life. That loneliness, that total dependence on God, is the experience not only of the prophet in the desert but of the Son of God on the cross. It is at the heart of the solitary life and it is what each of us experiences, to a greater or lesser extent, perhaps supremely at the hour of death, the one thing we undergo on our own. Most especially it is at the heart of the spiritual life as we learn it from the Spanish mystics, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, the most famous Carmelites of all.

A third thing we can learn is a radical response to the Gospel. Elijah, and the Carmelites, each of them, has responded radically to God's call. We naturally think about our family allegiances - very important as they are - and refer to 'family values' and even organise 'family services'. We sometimes forget that, in the Gospel, Jesus points us beyond the commitments of family to the life of the Kingdom:

Pointing to his disciples Jesus said, 'here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

This was not a rejection - as is sometimes thought - of his mother and his brothers. I am sure Jesus was as fond of his human extended family as any of us is. Rather, he was pointing to the new commitments and the new values of the Kingdom. And one of our experiences, often enough. is that, however close we are to members of our family, they don't always share our - we don't always share their - values and beliefs. This can be heartbreaking for parents and for marriage partners but it is there in the Gospel: we go where our intellectual, moral and spiritual integrity leads us. Sometimes, as the Carmelites show, we are led to belong to entirely new and radically different communities of people, indeed every Christian congregation is actually or potentially a new and radically different community of people.

As we celebrate Our Lady of Mount Carmel, therefore, we not only remember the passion of the prophets for justice, the search of all those who live the Carmelite life for the peace of God's Kingdom, but we also remember with gratitude the mystical tradition - the life of the Spirit - in such wonderful teachers as St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, a tradition which teaches us how the Holy Spirit tends the desert of loneliness and turns it into the garden of solitude. We remember too the radical response to the Gospel, which makes us look beyond our own family circle to the community of God's Kingdom. It is those who do the will of the Father in heaven who are mothers, brothers and sisters of Christ.

Perhaps all of us - each of us - can take away one of these things with us tonight. Are we - am I - passionate for peace and justice, doing all within our - within my - power for the Kingdom? Are we - am I - turning towards God the heavenly gardener, asking him to plough and plant the wilderness of my lonely spirit so that it becomes a flowering interior garden of solitude and delight? In short, for this third point sums up the other two, are we - am I - up for radically responding to God's call, so prepared to do his will that we are truly - I am truly - the mother and brother and sister of Christ?

+Andrew Ebbsfleet

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet
Bishop's House, Dry Sandford, Abingdon, OXON OX13 6JP
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 390746

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