Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Sometime between the year 1247 and 1265, St. Simon Stock, the head of the Carmelites, prayed to Mary, asking her to grant a special

privilege for his religious order. Mary answered by appearing to him with a multitude of angels,

holding in her hands the scapular that she would give his order.

She said, this will be for you and for all Carmelites the privilege

that he who dies wearing this will not suffer eternal fire.

Now the scapular, which comes from the Latin word for shoulders, is a garment worn by monks

and nuns that goes over the head and covers the front and back but has no sleeves.

Sometime before 1322, Mary appeared to Pope John the 22nd with the message that

all the faithful, not just the Carmelites, who wear the brown scapular while striving to live a

life of faith and virtue, will also gain their purification from purgatory

by her merits and intercession on the first Saturday after their death. This is where we get the

Sabantine privilege. Sabatine for Saturday.

Pope St. Pius the 10th in the early 1900s then extended that promise to all those who wear

the scapular medal.

After this apparition of the Feast of Our Lady Mount Carmel was extended to the Universal Church,

and all were encouraged to wear the scapular faithfully, and then it's interesting.

It seems as though Mary confirmed all of this when, during her apparitions at Fatima, on October 13th, 1917,

she appeared as our Lady of Mount Carmel holding out to us the brown scapular.

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