Our Lady of Mt Carmel Feast Day

Happy Feast Day! Today is the beautiful, marian feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel and this title is special to me, as my parents are third order Carmelites, my only sister was named in honour of Our Lady under this title (Carmen) and my confirmation saint is a Carmelite nun, St Teresa of Avila.

Two years ago I made a scapular cake. This year we were able to make another one, keeping it simple, I didn't make the cake, but bought 2 round chocolate mud cakes. I cut them both into rectangles and with some of the cake left over I decided to make the scapular straps from the cake as well. Below you can see a pattern of how I cut the two cakes in order to arrange it as I have above.

I printed up two images, the traditional images connected to the scapular. I laminated them for future use and placed the images on the cakes. Next year I'd like to make the cake and go to the sort of artistic effort that Jessica does. But for those in a rush, this is a statisfying result!

I love this particular image of Our Lady of Mt Carmel. When my father died in the year 2000 (interestingly enough a local Carmelite nun chose dad to pray for during the Jubilee Year that year.) we had ordered this rarer Our Lady of Mt Carmel holy card for his memorial card...all the way from Rome! The priest who arranged the order in Rome was a priest that had orginally lived in our city and knew my parents well...this same priest now lives at Mt Carmel itself in the Holy Land at the original Carmelite monastery and I chanted with him in our choir last week, when he was back in Australia for a visit.

My father was dying of cancer, something he had battled for 6 and half years, we had started a novena amongst family and friends to Our Lady of Mt Carmel 9 days before he died. The reason we chose the date that we did because we knew that we could offer two novenas (one of petition, one of thanksgiving) to finish on the feast day itself. Little did we know that heaven decided dad was going to be called to heaven right at the end of the first novena!

Our Lady of Mt Carmel definately holds a special place in my heart.

I wore this beautiful, blessed medal of Our Lady of Mt Carmel today!

To learn more about Our Lady of Mt Carmel and her scapular I highly recommend a little book but one packed with lots of stories and pictures, Garment of Grace. If you don't have a copy, here is the pdf file of this book to read online. This is one of my favourite read-alouds with the children.