The Church commemorates the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on July 16.

Mount Carmel is the mountain in the centre of the Galilean plain where the prophet Elijah commanded the Lord to perform a fire miracle in order to demonstrate to the wandering Israelites that "The Lord is God!" and that the prophets of Baal were falsely worshipping an idol.

Though there is no proof for this, there is a tradition that links the prophet Elijah to the unofficial founding of the Carmelite Order.

The official origins are traced back to a community of monks who started to live and pray atop the peak in the 13th century. Their devotion to the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Mount Carmel gave rise to the term "Carmelite."

Pope Honorius III accepted the order's rules in 1226, and 21 years later, an Englishman named St. Simon Stock was chosen as the order's superior. Simon was given the brown scapular by the Blessed Virgin on July 16, 1251, and she also vowed to protect everyone who wears the brown habit.

The Blessed Virgin's grace was extended to everyone who wore the Our Lady of Mount Carmel medal, according to a decree issued by Pope Pius X in the early 1900s.

The Carmelites established the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel sometime between 1376 and 1386.