Greater-Double
White Vestments
According to a pious tradition authorised by the Liturgy, on the day of Pentecost a number of men who walked in the footsteps of the holy prophets, Elias and Eliseus, and whom John the Baptist had prepared for the advent of Jesus, embraced the Christian faith, and erected the first Church to the Blessed Virgin on Mount Carmel, at the very spot where Elias had seen a cloud rise, a figure of the fecundity of the Mother of God (Lesson of Second Nocturn at Matins).
They were called: Brethren of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel (Collect). These Religious came to Europe in the 13th-Century and, in 1245, Pope Innocent IV gave his approbation to their rule under the generalship of Simon Stock, an English Saint.
On 16 July 1251, Mary appeared to this fervent servant [Simon Stock] and placed in his hands the habit which was to be their distinctive sign. Pope Innocent IV blessed this habit and attached to it many privileges, not only for the members of the Order, but also for those who entered the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. By wearing the scapular, which is in smaller form than that of the Carmelite Fathers, they participate in all their merits and may hope to obtain through the Virgin a prompt delivery from Purgatory, if they have faithfully observed abstinence, chastity (according to their state), and said the Prayers prescribed by Pope John XXII, in the Sabbatine Bull, published on 3 March 1322.
The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, at first celebrated only in the Churches of the Order, was extended to all Christendom by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726.
