This paperback by Wilfred McGreal, Prior of the Friars, Aylesford, is part of the Orbis series "Traditions of Christian Spirituality" edited by Philip Sheldrake. The earliest Carmelites were pilgrims and hermits who settled on Mount Carmel, to the east of Haifa, at the end of the twelfth century. It was the home of Elijah the Prophet and is regarded to be a sacred site.
McGreal delineates the key themes of Carmelite spirituality as allegiance to Christ, the undivided heart, and openness to scriptures and the sense of silence and solitude. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, two sixteenth-century Spanish mystics, brought the tradition of Carmel alive in the popular imagination. Both emphasized ways to draw closer to the Divine. In the seventeenth century, Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God continued this emphasis. Therese of Lisieux, known as the Little Flower, was recently declared a Doctor of the Church alongside Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Her great gift was devotion to Christ and the love that can thrive in a community. McGreal closes this survey of the Carmelite tradition with Titus Brandsma and Edith Stein who died in Nazi concentration camps. They carried on the prophetic mission of Elijah.