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The tabernacle overlooks not only the cells, but the whole valley.
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By: Reverend Gregory Houck, O.Carm.
The best description has got to be “busy bees.” James de Vitry (1180-1240) church historian and a patriarch of Jerusalem, when describing the first hermits on Mount Carmel, said, “they lived as busy bees.” According to Titus Brandsma, in his “Historical Mystical Sketches,” De Vitry was referring both to the cells the hermits lived, likening them to cells in a honeycomb, and to their determined prayer life. The same description applies today to the Hermits of Saint Mary of Carmel in Houston, Minnesota.
On Sunday, July 16th, the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, this community of five hermit-nuns and their chaplain celebrated their 25th anniversary of foundation. Soon after that foundation in Emory, Wisconsin, the community moved to their current location—a large (500 acre) parcel just north of Houston, a small town in the southeast corner of Minnesota. There they have a central building with a chapel upstairs, and offices, kitchen, etc., built atop the largest hill for miles around. The chapel has a floor to ceiling bay window overlooking the valley with a glass tabernacle (approved by the bishop) in the center of this window. In a semi-circle down the slope are nine identical hermitages, each the same distance from the central building facing that chapel window and that tabernacle. Throughout the night the tabernacle is illuminated and becomes the focal point of meditation from each hermitage—truly a “chapel in the midst of the cells” (Carmelite Rule, chapter 14) design. The whole area is extremely peaceful and quiet. The only sound heard outside throughout the weekend (other than the chapel bell summoning us to prayer) was the wind blowing past one’s ears.
Their official name is “Hermits of Saint Mary of Carmel” and they have their charter from the local bishop. Asked whether they were O.Carm., or O.C.D. (i.e., Carmelite or Discalced Carmelite) they replied that they were “amorphous Carmelites” in that they, years ago, sought affiliation to either group but were not recognized. They have a certificate of “spiritual affiliation” to the Discalced Carmelites but were reminded (and scolded) by the Superior General of the Discalced that the hermit life is not part of the discalced charism rooted in Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross.
Some O.Carm.’s may recognize Sister Rosemary in the photograph of the community (second from left) because she began her hermit life in Darien, Illinois, in a closed and converted gas-station that had stood next to where the current provincial offices now stand.
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The community with their chaplian.
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They have been “busy bees” (ala James de Vitry’s description of Carmelite hermits) constructing a successful Carmel with both long-lasting and newer vocations, a beautiful complex of hermitages modeled on the Carmelite Rule, an interesting history (including a brief foundation at Mukraka on Mount Carmel itself!), and recently they have become debt free — all this while keeping prayer and contemplation paramount. Father Killian Healy, O.Carm., (former General of the Order, now deceased) once noted that the average lifespan of a Carmel community is only seventy-five years. This Carmel has reached twenty-five and from all indications will be a permanent part of the Carmelite family.
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