La sorgente del supplicante.` עֵין הַקּו̇רֵא En haqqore

Abstract

The ancient Carmelite Rule is not a wonderful antique but rather a gift, still very much alive, from which modern responses, fully in  tune with the sentire cum ecclesia, can emerge. Read in symbolic mode, it allows one to recognise and construct a theology of  Presence that leads and pushes one beyond, to a fullness of life and of self-giving. It is the same Presence that, precisely in the  symbol, we find expressed in the Menorah, the seven-branch candlestick. In the Rabbinic tradition the human face has seven  apertures, in line with the seven branches of the Menorah such that the person turns into a living Menorah, on fire to the extent that  its heart is on fire as it receives the light, and is extinguished when it is closed to the light and consents to being saddened by the darkness.