St. Simon Stock

Who they were

Simon Stock was an English prior general of the Carmelites in the order's precarious first European generation. The hermits of Mount Carmel, displaced from the Holy Land, were nearly legislated out of existence, and Simon's steady governance through those decades, winning papal protection and planting the order in the university cities, is his documented achievement.

The tradition that made him beloved arrived later: that in 1251, at Cambridge, the Virgin appeared to him holding the brown scapular with a promise attached to those who die wearing it. The documentation for that story is late and debated among historians, and that belongs in the record. The scapular devotion itself is ancient, Church approved, and worn by millions, and the Church's own teaching about it is sober and worth stating plainly. The scapular is not a talisman. It is a habit in miniature, a commitment worn on the body, and what is promised belongs to a life of devotion rather than to the cloth apart from it.

Why people turn to St. Simon Stock

The scapular wearers, who deserve one honest and warm account of what they are wearing and why. He stands behind five Carmelites already here: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Therese, Teresa Benedicta, and Titus Brandsma.

How to ask their intercession

If you wear it, wear it awake: renew the meaning with one decade on the day you notice it. If you are curious, ask him for the honest version rather than the superstitious one, in either direction.