Re-Appropriating an Ancient Symbol for a Modern World

It was a Friday afternoon, I can remember it very clearly though it was over forty years ago; a May afternoon when the air was heavy with lilac and the drone of bees clustering around the blossoms that lined the path to the little clapboard church.  We were only seven years old -- probably about seventy-five of us boys and girls, who two days later were to receive Jesus in Holy Communion for the first time.  We marched to the church, in straight lines, under the unsmiling scrutiny of women who were called, not without irony, Sisters of Mercy.

That morning we had been to church for our first confession.  Sins, the horrid sins that only seven-year-olds are wicked enough to commit, were covered over in the darkness of the confessional.  Sins of the flesh:  "I peed behind the garage."  Sins of sloth:  "I forgot my night prayers."  Sins of rage:  "I called my sister 'a snot'."  Sins of indulgence:  "I ate candy in lent."  Sins that cry to heaven for vengeance:  "I farted in church."  We knelt before an invisible judge and opened up the depths of our depraved little hearts, expecting wrath to fall on us in the form of innumerable Hail-Mary's that would keep us in church for hours, exposing us to our classmates for the wicked fiends we had become now that we were accursed with the "use of reason."

Now, shriven and restored to God, and having had our lunch, we were back.  We each clutched our "first communion kit".  It contained treasures indescribable:  a prayer-book, bound in white; a rosary (black, for us boys); and a scapular tied with white ribbons.  Monsignor stood at the altar gate and mumbled prayers in Latin and shook a silver wand that sprayed us all with holy water as Sister Serena barked out the orders as to which item we were to hold up.  I remember that the scapular was the last item to be blessed.  And I remember that it was special.  I didn't understand the mumbled prayers, but I knew this item was my ticket to heaven. Sister Cecilia had told us all in class -- "wear this scapular and the Blessed Mother will get you out of purgatory.  She stands next to Jesus and when she sees a scapular, she tells Jesus 'this one is mine -- let him in'." Sister even told us the story that when Jesus would tell someone "Sorry, you're not on the list," Mary would give the signal to an angel who would lead the person 'round back where she opened the kitchen door to let him in -- all because he wore the scapular.

I am not making up this story.  I am not above inventing a story to make my point, but I have no need here.  I remember my introduction to the scapular far more clearly than I remember bigger and more recent events in my life.  What is more, I bet most of you who are, as we say, "of an age" remember your particular story just as well.  What was not part of the story for most of us was that there was some connection between this scapular and the Carmelite Order.  Nobody mentioned the Carmelites to us then. And when I go around visiting our Lay Carmelite groups and talk about the scapular I find that very few people were introduced to the scapular as having any Carmelite connection.

The scapular is the most popular devotion in the Catholic Church, yet it is widely misunderstood. Our "knowledge" of this sacramental is a confusion of popular legends, papal forgeries, stolen stories, and "can you top this" approach to the Blessed Mother.  It sounds not unlike a late-night cable program. I will try in this article to recover a more balanced approach to the scapular; it is necessary if the scapular is to be taken seriously by Catholics.  Our Christian faith is not unreliable legends or incredible stories. Our Christian faith is soundly rooted in sacred scripture and reliable tradition.  It is meant to appeal to the intellect as well as to the emotions.

The first step that we need to take in approaching the scapular is to change our basic perception of the mystery revealed in the scapular from stories about a vision to a confidence in God's grace.  The scapular is not about a vision, it is about the mercy of God and how that mercy is mediated in our lives.  This vision, as a historical event, is not essential to our faith.  Our faith is built on the Church's teaching on grace as defined in scripture and tradition.  After all, the mission of the Church is to teach doctrine, not history. Augustinian Father George Tavard, a periti at the Second Vatican Council, writes regarding visions:

 Approval of a doctrine as correct is one thing, approval of visions as authentic facts is another.  Doctrine and piety are endorsed by authority, but apparitions and other extraordinary happenings in the lives of visionaries are not thereby guaranteed.  [1]

Tavard's quote is crucial to this talk -- we do not want to focus on the historicity of the scapular vision, but on the faith that the scapular can stir up to live within us if we understand its authentic meaning.  This shift fails to please many people, however, as the excitement of a vision is far more appealing than the soundness of a doctrine.  This presentation is going to be based on doctrines that the Church proposes in the scapular devotion, not in the historicity of the vision.  I am by training a historian, but let me assure you in the words of Henry Ford: History is bunk.  History is not worth our undivided attention; our faith must be our object of study.

I have six subjects that I would like to deal with in this presentation:  (1)  an overview of Marian devotion in the Church to understand the context of the scapular in the Church's tradition; (2) the Carmelite habit -- its evolution and the place of the scapular; (3) Mary and Carmelite Spirituality; (4) Carmel and the Laity; (5) the witness of Marian devotion in Medieval Carmelite Churches; (6) towards a future of this devotion.