Fr. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.
(Edited transcript of the lecture recorded at the national meeting of tertiaries in Kostelní Vydří on June 16, 2007.)
The general superior in Rome and the brothers abroad have decided that this year 2007, we will experience in Carmel as a year to commemorate the anniversary of the writing of the Carmelite Rule – the text according to which the Carmelites followed on Mount Carmel at the very beginning when their community was founded, and which they carry through history as a constant source of inspiration.
Thus, I would like to reflect on the text of the Rule with you now. Let us meditate on these basic rules that the Carmelites have preserved for 800 years – from the year (let's say) 1207 to the year 2007, to our present. Let us discern the important themes that belong to the Christian life forever. This text places them on our hearts, but they are important in general – even for those who do not live in the family of Carmel or are in any way obliged to engage with our order or even to adhere to it.
Engaging with a text that is 800 years old is a form of courage, because the temporal barrier and the distance between the then environment of Mount Carmel and our environment, in this country in 2007, are quite large. Many things in human life have changed since then. Yet in the prescriptions of the Rule, we find prompts for us. In our community of Carmelite religious, when we once considered this, Father Ivan spoke on this topic and very clearly and understandably urged us that we Carmelite cannot stop engaging with this text of Saint Albert – the bishop who wrote these first rules for the Carmelites! Because our family received these rules as a "legacy," and in them is reflected how the first community of our brothers lived. It is like the root from which we grow, and which we must never deny. On the contrary: we will return to it again and again.
At the ceremony of the tertiaries' profession, the celebrant asks those who want to take the vow: “Brothers and sisters, what do you ask of us?” And they (or one of them on behalf of all) respond: “We ask for permission to live according to the gospel in the spirit of Carmel, according to the Rule approved by the Apostolic See.”1 And this is primarily this Rule, complemented later by other instructions. Many of you know that we, for our internal needs in our third order, have published a booklet that we named: Rules for the Life of Carmelite Tertiaries. And there are three documents:
- this short Rule of St. Albert of Jerusalem, which comes from around 1207,
- the worldwide Rule of the Carmelite Third Order (approved in 2003),
- the statutes of the Carmelite Third Order in the Czech Republic, which are even younger (from 2004).
In this reflection, I will stick to the first of those texts, which is 800 years old, and according to which the Carmelites still strive to live. I would first like to remind you, for the sake of repetition, how it all was with us Carmelites at the very beginning. At the time of the founding of our community – at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries – throngs of Crusaders were streaming into the Holy Land, who were trying to – as people thought back then – politically reclaim the Holy Land out of love for Christ, which was surely sprinkled with the blood of Jesus! They sought to regain this Holy Land into Christian hands and establish there an ideal Christian kingdom where people would live according to Christ’s principles. They hoped to establish a model kingdom showing the whole world how it is supposed to be among people here on earth.
A ceiling painting in the sacristy of St. Wenceslas Church in Prague depicts a scene from the early days of the order:
boats on the shore of the Holy Land.
(Photo by Vlaďka M. Polišenská.)
And with these Crusaders, who wanted to fight for it, traveled others who wanted to settle there and who wanted to live in this new kingdom as craftsmen, traders, or as people dedicated to a life of prayer. Right in the Holy Land, on holy ground. Among them were men who later settled in a small valley in the Carmel mountain range at a spring called Elijah's. At a place where it was evident that someone had lived before, where there had once been a monastic colony. (In those caves in the slopes of this valley, Greek monks had lived several hundred years earlier – in the 5th and 6th centuries.) For those future first Carmelites, it was a special place. Despite the influence of Islam, this place remained associated with the prophet Elijah and the prophet Elisha. And the spring that was a source of water there was called "Elijah's spring" even before the arrival of Muslims, and one of the caves was called "Elisha's dwelling." So this place had a very strong charge and great attraction, aside from the fact that it was and still is naturally beautiful – even from a natural perspective.
In this valley, around the year 1190 or 1200, a group of men settled who began to live as a community. And these men created their way of life here and wanted to continue it, and thus turned to the bishop under whose jurisdiction they fell and asked him to "write rules for life." We also say: "What is written is given," and they wanted him to summarize for them what they should adhere to in their way of life on Mount Carmel, or to complement and adjust their current practice.
It is worth noting that the bishop – St. Albert of Jerusalem – was a very capable man, who had experience with these things, and had even been a papal adviser beforehand. Moreover, we know for certain that he himself lived for some time in a community in Italy and that he wrote similar "rules for life" by commission of the Pope for some religious communities.
So when the brothers from Carmel turned to him with their request, it was not at all a new task for him, one he would not know how to handle. He therefore responded to their request and wrote a text for them, by which the Carmelites still live today and which we thus also call "Albert's Rule." This St. Albert was a bishop of Jerusalem (let us not forget: all this took place in the Holy Land), although by title. Jerusalem was not then controlled by Christians; it was in the hands of Saracens. Albert was appointed by title as bishop of Jerusalem, even though he had to reside outside this city.
This St. Albert thus wrote short "rules for life" for the brothers, for simplicity, let’s call it a Rule. (Before these rules received official recognition as a Rule – with a similar seriousness to that which was accorded the Rule of St. Benedict or St. Augustine – the Carmelites had to strive for decades, but we will not delve into those historical details now.) This Rule was then kept by the brothers. The community grew to such an extent that they established new houses – first in the Holy Land and then even overseas – first in Cyprus, then in Sicily, in southern France near Marseille, and in England. Because they traveled by ship from the Holy Land, the first new monasteries were located on Mediterranean islands and along the southern coast of Europe and (when the ships sailed around Spain) also in England. A little later, the Carmelites settled in Germany as well.
The first General Chapter – that is: the gathering of superiors from all Carmelite religious houses – took place in England at a place that some of you may have personally visited. Today, a community of Carmelite brothers still lives there; it is a lovely pilgrimage site in Kent called Aylesford. In this Aylesford, the General Chapter took place in 1247, which tasked two brothers to go to Rome and turn to the then Pope to reaffirm the Rule. So that he would officially indicate that these rules are correct and that he, as Pope, confirms the Carmelite community as such. Pope Innocent IV. did this in the same year, thus Albert's Rule gained even greater significance. It was confirmed not only by the bishop but also by the then Pope, the highest authority in the Church. (Pope's had approved it before, but it was common at that time to request such confirmation and approval repeatedly.) And this confirmation in 1247 was very important also because Pope Innocent IV. amended the original Albert's Rule at the request of the brothers in several respects and presented it to the Carmelites for adherence.
I mention this short summary of history because I want us to understand why the Carmelite Rule is also referred to as “Albert’s Rule” or “Innocent’s Rule”.
And now, let us focus on the content of the text itself. The Rule begins with the very name of the bishop who wrote it. He first introduces himself and then adds a greeting: “Albert, by the grace of God called to be patriarch of the church of Jerusalem, greetings in the Lord and blessing of the Holy Spirit to my beloved sons in Christ (...), who dwell by the spring on Mount Carmel.” And this is the first point I would like to underscore in our Rule: Bishop Albert wishes the Carmelites greetings and blessings. It is evident that our entire Christian life is a participation in salvation, in the fact that God is dedicated to us, in the fact that God bestows His love upon us, and that our lives flourish through this. Through faith in the Lord Jesus, we experience liberation, healing, fulfillment with light, strength – or however else to express it. (The Scriptures speak about this in imagery.) Thus, this is God's basic intention for us: our salvation, blessing. That goodness should enter our lives.
I would like to add one critical caveat to these thoughts. Even our participation in the family of Carmel, in the third order, is a gift from God; it does not come from us. Unfortunately, it sometimes happened and can still happen today that we conceive our place and our involvement in the Church and in Carmel as our prestige. That we boast of it, or are so blindly proud of it, as if it were "ours." And I want to emphasize in this context: if our life in Carmel is a participation in salvation – in what God does for us – then it is a gift from God. Our life in Carmel is a gift from God. That we are in this church, that we live in a community that is internally united, that we listen to the words of the Rule and the other treasures of Carmelite tradition, and wish to let them penetrate deeply into our hearts – this is not ours! This is a gift that we have received. When Jesus speaks of salvation, He pronounces beatitudes. In everything we have received, we as Christians are truly people who, to a large extent, still do not have what we could have (we are poor), we are people who do not assert themselves violently (gentle), we are people who weep, who strive for justice, and occasionally "get hurt" because of it, we are people who in the eyes of the world are so "foolish" that we are merciful... But Jesus leads us to participate in salvation precisely this way! Not as those who are "smiling" and proud of themselves. So when Albert wishes us: “Greetings and blessings,” we receive it in this way – in the spirit of the beatitudes. He does not say this to inflate our egos but to direct our focus to Christ, from whom our faith originates (Hebrews 12:2). And so that through what is given to us, but also through lack, persecution, and tiresome service, we may follow Jesus into the fullness of His Kingdom.
