From
the Pastor
On October 7, 1864, Fathers Cyril Knoll and Xavier Huber arrived in Leavenworth by stage coach across northern Missouri to avoid harm's way during the volatile period of the Civil War. These two German Carmelite priests had left their monastery on the Danube River in Straubing, Bavaria earlier that spring, arriving in New York Harbor on May 22, 1864. En route to their first destination of Louisville, Kentucky, they met with a Leavenworth seminarian, Louis Guenther, at the Benedictine Abbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Guenther was studying there as a seminarian for Bishop Miege. The invitation to come to Kansas was later ratified by Miege himself, and so Knoll and Huber arrived in the bustling city of Leavenworth on October 7. On October 9, 1864, Bishop Miege transferred the administration of St. Joseph's Parish to the Carmelite Order, our first foundation in the United States. We have served here ever since!
In 1981, due to the clergy shortage in the Archdiocese, Archbishop Ignatius Strecker asked the Carmelites to administer Immaculate Conception Parish as well. Since then, our two parishes have established a collaborative relationship, sharing our Carmelite and lay staff.
The Carmelites who came here in 1864 brought with them a rich tradition of Carmelite spirituality, a legacy of faith dating to the origins of the Carmelite Order in the Holy Land in the early 1200s. Taking their name from the place of their first foundation, Mt. Carmel, the original Carmelites were hermits who gathered as a contemplative community during the era of the Crusades on a point overlooking the Mediterranean, near present-day Haifa, Israel. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Albert, gave the Carmelites a Rule of Life sometime between the years 1209-1214. Writing to the leader of this prayerful group, Albert refers to "Brother B."
The carved wooden altar at St. Joseph Church depicts Brother B. holding the Rule of the Order. It also depicts the Old Testament Prophet Elijah who lived on Mt. Carmel around 800 B.C. and became a spiritual patron for the Order. Most importantly, the altar depicts the patroness of the Order to whom the first chapel on Mt. Carmel was dedicated, "Our Lady of Mt. Carmel." The Latin inscription, "Ecce Signum Salutis," translates "Behold the Sign of Salvation." This is a reference to both Mary's gift of the Christ child and the devotion of the Brown Scapular. This weekend, let us celebrate her feast with great devotion.
God Bless you always!
