The Church celebrates the life of St. Simon Stock on May 16, a life that every day touches a significant percentage of Catholics worldwide, because he is remembered especially for the popular brown scapular devotion.<\/p>\n
His scapular and the Carmelite spirituality that he personally brought to prominence worldwide in the 12th century was popular in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s time, and she shows precisely the kind of attitude one should have toward it.<\/p>\n
St. Simon is one of those saints whose life story largely escaped record keepers during his lifetime<\/strong>.<\/p>\n But since his story was so loved, repeated, and rich in detail, the Church gave him a feast day to meet the overwhelming demand.<\/p>\n He was born in 1165 in Aylesford, a landlocked town in England\u2019s seaside county Kent, not far from Dover and its port. As the tale is told, at age 12 Simon went to live in a hollowed-out tree in the forest as a hermit, praying and fasting, and was over 30 when he emerged again into civilization.<\/p>\n At this point, stories of his life diverge. Some have him heading to Jerusalem where the crusaders were defending the city and meeting the Carmelites there; others have him meeting Carmelites who accompanied crusaders returning from Jerusalem. Either way, Carmelites landed in County Kent and Simon joined them.<\/p>\n The Carmelites were a strict, contemplative order from the Holy Land intensely interested in the Blessed Mother and the Prophet Elijah. St. Simon Stock joined them in their prime. They would later slip in their asceticism, and undergo the celebrated reform of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, both doctors of the Church from the late 16th century.<\/p>\n Here we do have records of Simon: He joined the order in 1212 and studied in Oxford, before being appointed vicar general in 1215. In 1237, he welcomed more Carmelites from the Holy Land as Muslim invaders took the holy places there and persecuted Christians.<\/p>\n St. Simon\u2019s greatest managerial act was installing the Carmelites in the great university towns of Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris, a key move that established the order\u2019s influence in Europe.<\/p>\n But what he is best known for is the brown scapular.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s the name for the large monastic garment that hangs from the shoulders of friars, monks and nuns \u2014 but quickly began to refer more often to the small woolen devotional squares worn by Catholics for centuries, right up to today.<\/p>\n The most frequently quoted story of St. Simon Stock receiving the scapular says, \u201cTo him appeared the Blessed Virgin with a multitude of angels, holding the Scapular of the Order in her blessed hands, and saying: \u2018This will be a privilege for you and for all Carmelites, that he who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The scapular devotion in its purest form reminds professed Carmelites to be faithful to their vows until death. In its most widely used form, however, it is an informal sign of one\u2019s faith and devotion that most users wear without an official enrollment.<\/p>\n As St. John Paul II described<\/a> it: \u201cTwo truths are evoked by the sign of the Scapular: on the one hand, the constant protection of the Blessed Virgin, not only on life\u2019s journey, but also at the moment of passing into the fullness of eternal glory; on the other, the awareness that devotion to her cannot be limited to prayers and tributes in her honor on certain occasions, but must become a \u2018habit,\u2019 that is, a permanent orientation of one\u2019s own Christian conduct, woven of prayer and interior life.\u201d<\/p>\n Citing the \u201cFormula of Enrollment in the Scapular,\u201d he added: \u201cThose who receive it are associated more or less closely with the Order of Carmel and dedicate themselves to the service of Our Lady for the good of the whole Church.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, the scapular promise has given rise to the worry that it is a superstitious \u201cCatholic good luck charm.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n It is easy to misunderstand the devotion since, on many scapulars, only the last words of the promise to St. Simon are quoted: \u201cWhoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s community was very much alive to the promise of the scapular. The attitude of her Sisters of Charity toward the scapular \u2014 and the general attitude of Catholics of the 19th century \u2014 can be seen in Sister Rose White\u2019s journal. In it, she mentions the death of Elizabeth Ann Seton\u2019s sister-in-law, Harriet Seton, who had become a Catholic, and was dying of tuberculosis when she came to Mother Seton\u2019s community. Before she died, Sister Rose reports, Harriet received the consolation of two sacraments and one sacramental: her first communion, anointing of the sick \u2014 and the scapular.<\/p>\n Of the three, according to the Catholic Church, the two sacraments guarantee saving grace, but the scapular, a sacramental, merely disposes the user for grace with no<\/a> guarantee. In her own musing on salvation, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton makes it clear that she has the right attitude toward the scapular.<\/p>\n In a remarkable letter to Father John Hickey in 1820, not long before her death, Mother Seton writes \u201cyour letter and Scapulars came\u201d in time for use by one dying sister. But with her own death approaching, she in no way sees the scapular as her ticket to salvation. \u201cOh my father friend could I hear my last stage of cough and feel my last stage of pain in the tearing away my prison walls, how would I bear my joy-thought of going home called and by his Will! What a transport! But they say, \u2018Don\u2019t you fear to die?\u2019 Such a sinner must fear, but I fear much more to live and know as I do that every evening examine finds my account but lengthened and enlarged. I don\u2019t fear Death half as much\u201d as her own sinful nature, she wrote.<\/p>\n Mother Seton saw the scapular as a pathway to a spirituality of surrender, not as a way out of a lifelong way of the cross.<\/p>\n Mother Seton understood the scapular because she understood Carmelites.<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann kept in touch with former students of hers who entered the Carmelites and had great respect for the Carmelites\u2019 fervor.<\/p>\n She writes in her commentary on St. Ignatius of Loyola\u2019s spiritual exercises that spiritually zealous young novices can be tempted to neglect their mundane duties and take on too much \u2014 and \u201ctake a disgust to their situation because they are not Carmelites or Trappists.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Elizabeth Ann’s own spirituality was deeply influenced by St. Teresa of Avila. Sisters of Charity Regina Bechtle and Judith Metz, the editors of Mother Seton\u2019s spiritual writings, note echoes of St. Teresa of Avila when Mother Seton directs her advisees\u2019 imaginations to Jesus: \u201cSee, he holds a paper in his dear hand \u2014 what is written on it? \u2018Speak little, my child; pray much; cherish no attachment; keep close to me; let everything that passes, pass; mind nothing but what is eternal. I never take my eyes off of you night or day. How can you forget me so often?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the right attitude to have toward the scapular, a perspective no doubt shared by St. Simon Stock. The scapular isn\u2019t meant to be the last word on our thoughts of heaven; it is meant to remind us daily to look to Jesus and offer him our lives, now and forever.<\/p>\n TOM HOOPES<\/strong>, autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em><\/p>\n