Is there a relation between Carmelite Liturgy and Carmelite Spirituality? In order to find an answer to this question, it is necessary to go back to the early days of the Order, to a time between 1206 and 1214, when Albert Avogrado, Patriarch of Jerusalem, proposed a way of life to a group of hermits. The hermits were living on Mount Carmel in Palestine, near the fountain of Elijah, and they had requested St. Albert to prepare a rule of life for them. The way of life which Albert wrote out for the hermits has inspired many people, religious and lay, male and female. Throughout the centuries and down to the present time, it has led them to an intimate contact with God. Not only was Albert Avogadro Patriarch of Jerusalem, he was also a member of the Canons Regular who lived according to the Augustinian Rule. As such, he was familiar with religious life.
From ancient times, there were two churches in Jerusalem, both erected on sacred sites: The Basilica of the Martyrs at Golgotha and the Anastasis Rotunda which was built over the tomb of Jesus, and was therefore also sometimes called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Church of the Resurrection.[i] In this church the liturgical services were conducted by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, who originated in France and had accompanied the crusaders.[ii] Their rite was originally Roman, the rite which was in use in almost all Western European regions. It is understandable that the presence of sacred sites, especially the Tomb from which Christ arose, should exert a strong influence on the liturgy of the canons. For this reason, the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre did not celebrate the tomb of Christ as the place of burial, but as the place of resurrection. “From this tomb the Lord arose,” as we read in a liturgical manuscript used by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,[iii]
Around this tomb, a number of liturgical customs originated which later developed into a special Liturgy: the Holy Sepulchre Liturgy, and later, into the Resurrection Liturgy of the Carmelites. One of these customs was that every Saturday, in preparation for Sunday, the day of the Resurrection of the Lord, a solemn procession to the chapel of the Resurrection took place, where, on Sundays, the High Mass was solemnly celebrated in honour of the Resurrection.[iv] Throughout the entire period from Easter to Advent, the night between Saturday and Sunday was, to all intents and purposes, controlled by the commemoration of the Resurrection. Furthermore – and this was very special – on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, namely the Sunday before Advent, the Resurrection of the Lord was again solemnly celebrated as a great feast, just like Easter Sunday.
It was this liturgy that the Carmelites adopted and took along with them when they were obliged to flee from the Holy Land. In imitation of the Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, the early Carmelites attributed a special significance to Sunday by solemnly commemorating on that day the Resurrection of the Lord in Holy Mass and in the Liturgy of the Hours. Furthermore, during most of the ecclesiastical year, the Resurrection of the Lord was commemorated each day at the Conventual Mass and the Divine Office, and on the last Sunday of the Ecclesiastical Year the Carmelites solemnly commemorated the Resurrection of Jesus, just as in the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre.[v] On this Sunday, all of the texts of the Liturgy of the Hours and of the Solemn Mass were taken integrally from the formularies of Easter Sunday. It was a sort of second Easter, but now celebrated at the end of the Ecclesiastical Year.
About the year 1312, this liturgy was described and reintroduced into the Order by the famous Carmelite, Sibert de Beka, by means of an Ordinal, a sort of ceremonial for the celebration of liturgical rites. Since that time and for many centuries afterwards, the Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Resurrection Liturgy, was the way in which the Carmelites celebrated the Liturgy of the Hours and the Eucharist. Nevertheless, down the centuries, this Liturgy underwent many adaptations. Due to many excesses, the Council of Trent, held in the sixteenth century, felt the necessity to reform drastically the Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre. Even so, the remembrance of the Resurrection Liturgy continued in the Liturgy of the Hours of the Carmelites until the second Vatican Council in the twentieth century.
After this Council, the Carmelites abandoned their own Liturgy and adopted the Roman Liturgy. In doing so, they renounced a part of their proper spiritual patrimony, that patrimony which had inspired the Carmelites throughout the centuries and had influenced their spirituality. Nevertheless, it is gratifying to note that, in recent years, there is within the Order an increasing interest in the Resurrection Liturgy. At the Liturgical Seminar held in Rome in July 2008, Carmelite liturgists verified that, in many parts of the Order, the Resurrection Liturgy had become the common property of all members and was seen as a part of the spirituality and identity of Carmel, with special emphasis on eschatological aspects[vi]. Before analyzing this bond with the spirituality of Carmel, it is necessary to explain how the veneration of the Holy Cross developed throughout the centuries.
[i] Louis van Tongeren, Exaltatio crucis. Het feest van Kruisverheffing en de zingeving van het kruis in het Westen tijdens de vroege middeleeuwen; Een liturgisch-historische studie (Tilburg: University Press, 1995) 27.
[ii] Postquam igitur (Godefridus Bullionis) regnum obtinuit (an. 1099) paucis diebus interpositis, sicut vir religiosus erat, in his quae ad decorem domus Dei habebant respectum, solicitudinis suae coepti offerre primitias. Nam protinus in ecclesia Dominici Sepulcri et Templo Domini canonicos instituitY ordinem et institutionem servans, quas magnae et amplissimae, a piiss principibus fundatae ultra montes servant ecclesiae. So we are told, at the end of the twelfth century, in the Historia Hierosolymitana by a certain William, archbishop of Tyrium. Cf. Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum, 1 (1909-10) 64.
[iii] ms. Barberini Lat. 659 (Rome: Biblioteca Vaticana) fol. 80.
[iv] Edmund Caruana, The Ordinal of Sibert de Beka with special reference to Marian Liturgical Themes. An historical-liturgical-theological investigation. (Rome: Anselmianum, 1976) 7-8.
[v] James Boyce, “The Liturgy of the Carmelites,” Carmelus, 43 (1996) 9.
[vi] Eschatology is a part of theology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred as last things: death, resurrection, heaven.
