Quote of the day, 3 May: Anders Arborelius, ocd

In Mary, we see the true face of the Church, for Mary wants to prepare us for the perfect union of love with Christ and to give us a part of her own relationship with Him. The scapular is the symbol and sign of this common vocation of all the members of the Church who are all called to holiness. In Mary, the Immaculate One, we see the perfect realization of this universal vocation of the entire Church.

“From the overflowing heart of the Virgin Mary, blessed by God, streamed the exultant hymn of the Magnificat,” Edith Stein says. The core of our ecclesial life is to live in praise and glory of God, just as Mary did.

This vocation to glorify God means that we, through grace, take part in His salvation of mankind. We can also say that letting ourselves be saved by Him means that we participate in His work of salvation—or rather, that His redemptive love given to us overflows to others. In the Church, spiritual treasures belong to all of us in common.

Mary lives this life of continuous adoration that implies a partaking in the act of salvation by letting herself be saved. The holy scapular reminds the Carmelite of this fact of our Faith, helping us to rely upon Mary’s maternal and sisterly care in the midst of all the hardships of life.

The scapular is a sign that we, just like Mary, are totally dependent on Jesus and His redemptive love for us and for the entire world. It helps us to see that life in the Church entails adoration and salvation at the same time.

The very act of adoring God implies an apostolic participation in Christ’s act of redemption. Thus, my more or less self-centered longing for my own spiritual fulfillment can be transformed and healed.

We could even say that the scapular, this humble little sign of Mary’s maternal protection, could help our contemporaries to be healed from the wounds of total independence, the main dogma of the pervasive individualism of our day.

The scapular helps us to find our true happiness in loving surrender and confident dependence on Jesus, through Mary. Of course, this truth needs to be explained very carefully in order to avoid the accusation of being mere sentimental and childish wish-wash.

However, I think it would be worthwhile to help our contemporaries, who desperately long for true surrender to God, to find their way through this humble and simple little object that we venerate in Carmel as the holy scapular of Carmel.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius, o.c.d.

Chapter 11, The Church in the Carmelite Tradition

Arborelius OCD, A. 2020, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation, EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama.

Featured image: Cardinal Anders Arborelius, o.c.d. is seen in this 2025 file photo, courtesy of the Discalced Carmelite General Curia (Used by permission).

⬦ Reflection Question ⬦
Where is Jesus inviting me to grow in loving dependence on Him, like Mary did?
⬦ Join the conversation in the comments.

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