The Prayer, alluding to our Baptism, when He implanted in us a love of His Name (which means “to save”) beseeches God to foster and then to protect “what is good.” What is “good"? It is to “foster” the “new life” in Christ Jesus begun at Baptism (Epistle); “dead to sin” is its negative side; “alive to God” is its positive. To “protect” and to nourish this Life is the object of the Eucharist, which is its food.
A hunger for the Divine Life and “Goodness” is universal to all times and places, as prefigured in the Gospel, “Can anyone fill them in the wilderness” of life, where the mind hungers for Truth, the will and heart hunger for Love? At the altar of sacrifice God will not “allow the hopes of anyone to be in vain” (Secret). Only at the altar of the Sacrament are we really “filled” (Postcommunion).
Sunday 16th July is the Feast of Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel honouring the appearance of Our Lady to St. Simon Stock on this day in 1251, the English General of the Carmelites. Our Lady promised many spiritual blessings to those who clothed themselves in the brown habit. For the laity, it was necessary only to wear the brown scapular.
Under the newer rubrics of the Missale Romanum, the Feast is not commemorated in the Sunday
Mass. Yet, the faithful may honour Our Lady by wearing the brown scapular!