4. The Holy Rule of Jerusalem

The Holy Rule given them by St. Albert emphasized the nature of solitude and that we hear God in the “gentle whisper.” The brothers and sisters renounced their inheritance, lived in separate cells, left the things and persons of the world behind them, lived under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, prayed, fasted, practiced silence and a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary as well as abstained from meat, and underwent voluntarily other penances as a community and individually for their sins and those of the world. This spirituality characterized Carmel.
imageADOPTION OF THE RULE
However, in 1434-1435 the Rule suffered a series of changes that were approved by Pope Eugene IV. The most observant of the friars did not like these changes, as the mitigations relaxed the ascetical lifestyle they believed themselves called to live. Despite the reforming efforts of Bl. John Soreth (1451-1471), dissatisfaction grew and the Order as a whole became more worldly and drifted away from what appeared to the world and even some of their own to be the rigid, ascetical lifestyle of their founders and saints.