They called him Stock because, the old story says, he lived for years in the hollow of a tree. He ate wild apples and water. He listened. The forest was his first monastery.
When the hermits of Mount Carmel — Elijah’s mountain — fled the Holy Land and came to England, they were given land at Aylesford on the Medway. Simon recognised his own life in theirs. He took their brown habit. As an old man he was made Prior General, and when the new Order was misunderstood he prayed the Flos Carmeli: Flower of Carmel, star of the sea.
On 16 July 1251, the Carmelite family says, Our Lady gave him the working-apron of the habit — the scapular — with a mother’s promise, not a trick. Whoever dies clothed in this, dies as her own. The cloth went out from his cell into ordinary weather. It still sits against ordinary skin on ordinary Tuesdays.
This little book tells the story slowly, and admits where the parchment is thin. Family memory is how the Church has kept many of her dearest gifts. Read it once. Then wear whatever brown cloth you already have a little more thoughtfully tomorrow.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.