In 2022, Pope Francis wrote an Apostolic Letter entitled Desiderio desideravi, addressed to the Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and the Lay Faithful on the topic of the liturgical formation of the People of God (i.e. all baptized members of the Church). In this letter, our late Holy Father asks the everyone to join in rediscovering the beauty and truth of the Liturgy of our Lord, and emphasizes to the clergy the importance of offering the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the exact manner that our Lord and his Church has commanded us to offer it, for not doing so would be “robbing from the assembly what is owed to it; namely, the paschal mystery celebrated according to the ritual that the Church sets down” (D.d., 23). He calls for celebrating a Mass that is filled with rich symbolism that points to the paschal mystery and invites us to engage with this transcendent liturgical action. He says, “Wonder is an essential part of the liturgical act because it is the way that those who know they are engaged in the particularity of symbolic gestures look at things.” (D.d., 26)

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.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference hosted by the Archdiocese of San Francisco entitled “Fons et Culmen”, which is a manner that the document Sacrosanctum Concilium from the Second Vatican Council used to describe the Sacred Liturgy. "Fons et Culmen”, Latin for "Source and Summit”, designates the liturgy as the "summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed" and the "font from which all her power flows." This means that the liturgy is central to the Church's mission and life, serving as the primary means through which the faithful encounter God. It is through the Eucharistic celebration that believers are united with Christ and each other, receiving grace and strength to live out their faith.

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.

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” 249 years ago, these words were inscribed in our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

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.

“These are the ones who, living in the flesh, planted the Church with their blood; they drank the chalice of the Lord and became the friends of God.”

This is the antiphon, sung at the beginning of the Mass on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, which describes the effect of their martyrdom: their blood being spilt planted the Church, and through their acceptance of martyrdom, they entered perfect union with God. The Church, since the earliest times to even today, is built and sanctified by those who give their life for Christ, and through this gift of themselves, they are joined in perfect communion with Him.

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.

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), a special day where we draw attention to our Eucharistic Lord, and was instituted as a Feast in the entire Latin Church after a Eucharistic miracle in Bolsena, Italy in 1263.

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.

In the beginning, there was a man named Adam, and he had a great deal going for him. He had an intimate relationship with God—the Lord walked in the same garden and called to him by name—and, as a result, he also formed a beautiful relationship with his wife, his own self, and his surroundings. But one day, leaning into a tree, he turned away from God, turned on his wife, and turned his life (and the world) upside down.

In the account of Pentecost as recorded in scripture, we’re told the fire of the Holy Spirit fell upon Our Lady and the apostles in the Upper Room, were they were not consumed nor harmed by the flame. Once we hear such a thing, we’re immediately led back to Moses before the burning bush at Mount Sinai. The bush was on fire, but was not consumed. The bush wasn’t consumed because the fire was expressing the presence of God. It led Moses to greater reverence. It was a sign of his purification and of his call to go and proclaim freedom from slavery and an exodus back to the Promised Land of his forefathers.

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.