Carmel seeks to gaze upon God and love God with mind and heart. What Mary represents is the soul itself. As the soul is united to Christ, so Carmel is hidden in Mary. For Carmel, Mary is, beyond any doubt, the infinitely admirable and lovable Mother, the all-merciful Mother, but deeper than this, she is the one who was chosen and formed by God to be the Mother of the Savior; she is the purest, highest, and most perfect expression of the soul that is open to the divine action and lives in Mary’s light and in Mary’s love. She is, par excellence, the contemplative soul.
This mystic and filial intuition was to be confirmed in the centuries that were to come. In a critical hour, [according to tradition] our Lady herself answered the trusting, insistent prayer of Saint Simon Stock. She appeared to him, holding in her hand the scapular of the Order, and said: “This is the privilege that I give you and all Carmel’s children. Whoever dies clothed with this habit will be saved.”
Paul-Marie of the Cross, O.C.D.
III. The Rule and its Spirit
of the Cross, P-M, Payne, S 1997, Carmelite Spirituality in the Teresian Tradition, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Carmelite Quotes 
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