Having lived many years as a professed member of the Carmelite Order, the natural tendency would be for me to look back into the past, whereas the title of this reflection points me towards the future, as a pilgrim of hope. It is said the future grows out of the ‘seeds of hope’ planted in the past.
I must begin with an experience from long ago. I discovered while celebrating my twenty-first birthday in the novitiate, that I was born on the day Carmel celebrates the feast of the Prophet Elijah, the great spiritual father in our tradition. I believe, this enabled me to situate my story within that of the witness of the prophet and our spirituality. It led me to a world, a space, a relationship, a spiritual treasure that gave meaning to my Carmelite journey. To this day, Elijah remains a powerful spiritual figure for me. I would like to think that this enabled me to ‘drop anchor’ within our tradition. The door of my memory now opens to this great treasure, its people and places.
The symbol of an anchor is the symbol of hope, found on the epitaphs of many of the Roman catacombs, linked to the hope of eternal life. We drop anchor in the midst of many storms of life or as the Letter to the Hebrews puts it: “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (6:19) Pope Francis writes “The image of the anchor is eloquent; it helps us to recognize the stability and security that is ours amid the troubled waters of this life.” (Spes non confundit, 25) A ship’s anchor is dropped in order to stabilize it on the water, and hold it steadfast. These are uncertain if not turbulent days for our planet and for the peace of world. My desire looking to the future of Carmel would be that it continues to drop anchor into something much deeper in life, a contemplative stance. I wrote once about the great challenges facing us now, among the dangers, would be “to drop anchor into the quicksand of superficiality.” The great figures of Carmel have made their journey and their stories bring depth and hope as they ‘walked’ (Rule 20) their pilgrim way.
Carmelite, John Welsh, reminds us that “the first group of people to be called Carmelites made…. a journey to a place apart.” Any journey, any pilgrimage indicates something that is incomplete, a void to be filled. We may not see the point of arrival ahead of us but the great figures tell us we are not travelling alone, the incompleteness is filled by their voices that speak of God’s love. These Carmelite women and men share their intimate story, often poetically, with us. They have climbed the mountain, endured even darkness. Their journey is ours now, rooted in a profound experience of love while reminding us that any journey is a pathway through Calvary and beyond. We are not afraid, for our anchor is fixed, holding firm to the hope of eternal life.
The Friar’s formation document begins with this virtue of love, for without love there is no transformation. Like the prophet Elijah, and indeed the saints of Carmel, we move forward. It reads, “there, the living flame of God’s love transforms us, stripping away all that is not of him and all that obscures his gift, allowing the ‘new creature,’ the new human being in the image of Christ, to emerge and shine forth.”
One writer on the Rule sees the pathway as a continuous daily movement from ‘solitude’ to ‘assembly of praise’; entering this movement one finds a love story: ‘I will be love in the heart of the church’ (Thérèse), ‘where there is no love, put love and you will find love’ (John of the Cross), ‘love is not loved’ (Mary Magdalen de Pazzi). The ‘cell’ of the Carmelite becomes more and more spacious, filled with God’s gift of love. Thus, we find beautiful words and images to enrich the imagination, leading us to the hope that is constitutive of being human.
In 2020, Pope Francis spoke about Elijah in the midst of the then crisis. He tells us that “the voice of God is never the tumultuous voice of the crisis, but rather the quiet voice that speaks in the crisis…. Hope gives to our assessments an aspect that in our myopia we are often incapable of seeing. God replied to Elijah by telling him that reality was other than what he thought… God’s face came into focus for him (Elijah) as he walked.”
Our Jubilee pilgrimage, our walking, is a journey of hope, a time to renew of our desires, to ‘drop anchor’ into God’s future as Pope Francis said, while listening attentively to the thread of resounding silence.
John Keating O.Carm
