Dear friends,

Welcome to the month of September, our Stewardship Month here at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish! As I shared with you last year, the month of September, every year, will be dedicated to reflecting on Stewardship so as to make it a culture here. And so, during this month, I am very excited as we embark on this journey of reflection, gratitude, and generosity. Let this be a special time for us to recommit to living out our faith by sharing our time, talent, and treasure with God and with our parish community.

Dear friends,

This coming week, we will be celebrating the Feast of St. Monica and her son, St Augustine of Hippo, as well as the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. These memorials, coupled with today’s readings, ought to become for us an affirmation of faith, a strengthening of hope, and a build-up of prayerful trust in the Lord. We are all people of God: As the Prophet Isaiah proclaimed, "Nations of every language...shall proclaim my glory among the nations" (Isaiah 66:18-19). In our way of life and the manner in which we interact with other people, we should be able to recognize God's goodness and His universal Love.

Dear friends,

These past couple of months, I have been dealing with the challenges of accompanying parishioners and my dear ones who are in various stages of illness, both physical and mental, providing them with both spiritual and emotional support. For those of you who have gone through the same experience, you will acknowledge how heart-wrenching and painful it can be to see a loved one who was once full of life and in control gradually deteriorating and losing this control. This has made me reflect deeply on suffering from a Christian perspective.

Dear friends,

As July draws to a close, my heart is filled with deep gratitude for the summer I’ve spent with the community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This final month has been nothing short of transformative, marked by unexpected moments of surrender, powerful encounters with Christ, and profound witness to the love and faith of this vibrant parish.

Dear friends,

Beginning on July 16th, the Community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel leaped for Joy with Solemn Vespers and Mass, for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, culminating with the 34th Holy Priesthood Ordination Anniversary of our dear Pastor, Rev. Fr. Robert Seraph Aliunzi on Sun, Jul 20. The Teens and our Seminarians sang the tune of the Angels, and the Christian faithful resounded with joy. Like those who received the investiture of the Brown Scapular, we say, 'Yes, we commit ourselves to Mary's protection.'

Dear friends,

Here at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, my mission as I see it, and as I have shared with you several times, is to guide every one of you who walks through our doors toward the path of eternal life with God, in other words, to heaven. As your pastor, I am committed to facilitating this journey through creating an environment for holistic education, sacramental preparation and celebration, and a lively worship experience. One vital aspect of this mission, which I would like to focus on in this article, is the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, commonly referred to now as OCIA, formerly RCIA.

Dear friends,

As I reflect on this month of July, I'm filled with great joy and gratitude for the blessings I have received in my life and also for the gift of our parish, whose feast we always celebrate this month. This weekend specifically marks for me two significant anniversaries – the day I arrived in the United States to begin my pastoral ministry in the Diocese of Phoenix on July 19, 2004, and my priestly ordination 34 years ago, on July 20, 1991. These two years have had a deep impact on my priestly ministry here among you in ways I cannot express.

Dear OLMC,

As I come to the middle of my summer assignment here at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, I have had the opportunity to reflect on my experiences, which I would like to share with you in this short article.

Under the mentorship of Father Robert Aliunzi, our Pastor, it has been so far a grace-filled time of learning how Jesus reveals His pastoral heart in a living, vibrant parish community, and I have enjoyed every bit of it.

When we hear the word ordinary, we often think of terms like typical, routine, or even boring. So why would the Church set aside an entire season called Ordinary Time?

In the context of the church’s Liturgical Year, ordinary doesn't imply dullness or lack of significance. Instead, it comes from the word ordinal, meaning numbered or sequential. That’s why we hear references such as the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, and so on. (Interestingly, there’s no First Sunday in Ordinary Time—it's replaced by the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.) Ordinary Time isn’t about ranking importance but simply refers to the sequence of Sundays that fall outside the Church’s major liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

Dear Friends,

The month of June (dedicated to the two hearts: The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary) is coming to an end, but God's Love has no end! May the Heart of Jesus, formed in the womb of the Virgin Mother by the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.

The heart is one of the symbols that is to be found throughout the world. It is a symbol of love.

Dear friends,

Saints Peter and Paul, whose feasts we celebrate this weekend, are perhaps two of the greatest apostles, though called under different circumstances. Their feast, this year, is one of those liturgical feasts that replaces what should have been the ordinary Sunday of the Year, in this case, the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

I greet you all and wish you good health and happiness. When I visited Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in early 2023 and stayed for two months, I so enjoyed my stay with you that I could not hide my wish to one day be part and parcel of your faith Community. By God’s grace, this wish has been granted to me, and I am so grateful to God and to all those who made this possible. I am so excited to be among you. Here is something brief about myself:

Dear Friends,

Every year, during summer, the vocations office of the Diocese of Phoenix assigns theology seminarians to certain selected parishes so as to experience what a typical parish life looks like. Our parish has been fortunate to have been selected two years in a row, beginning with seminarian Max Rich last year. This year, we are blessed with the assignment of seminarian Steven Gutierrez, who will be with us from June 2 - August 4. This is an opportunity for us as a parish to participate in a crucial stage of his formation for the priesthood.

Dear Friends,

“The Holy Spirit leads us like a mother. He leads His child by the hand…as a sighted person leads a blind person.” -Saint John Vianney

As I grow in my journey of faith, discernment of God’s will, and in my relationship to God as an adopted son through Jesus Christ and as one of his little priests, I continue to learn how to trust in his providence. In the good, the bad, and the ugly of life the Lord has worked to bring me to where I am today and to embolden me in my faith.