Isaiah 7.1-9; Psalm 47; Matthew 11.20-24
Carmel is associated with Elijah; indeed in Arabic the mountain is called “the mount of Saint Elias.” Elijah apparently lived in a grotto on Carmel, and it was there that he summoned the priests of Baal to a contest, to determine whether the people of Israel would worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or the foreign deities imported by Ahab and his Sidonian wife Jezebel. [I Kings 16.29-34; 18.16-40]
During the Crusades, Christian hermits established themselves in caves on Mount Carmel; a religious order was established there in 1209. They claimed that they were the spiritual descendants of Jewish hermits who had lived on the site without interruption since the time of Elijah. They dedicated their new monastery to Our Lady, Star of the Sea—Stella Maris, possibly because Carmel is geographically close to Nazareth. “Mother of Christ, Star of the Sea: pray for the wanderer, pray for me.”