The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross
by Saint John of the Cross, Aeterna Press
Category: Religion

THE Carmelite Order was originally devoted to a purely contemplative life. Its members lived as hermits on Mount Carmel, striving to imitate the holy prophets Elias and Eliseus. According to their Rule—which, given about A.D. 1210, records the customs observed by these hermits since they became a body corporate—they spent their time in or near their cells, meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, repairing only once a day to the oratory to hear mass. They said their office or their Paters privately, and took their more than frugal meals in solitude. James de Vitry thus speaks of these hermits: ‘Others, following the example of Elias, that holy anchorite and great prophet, embraced the eremitical life on Mount Carmel, chiefly on the part overlooking the town of Porphyry, now called Caiffa, near the fountain of Elias, not far from the monastery of S. Margaret, Virgin. There living in small cells, like bee-hives, they made a sweet spiritual honey Aeterna Press