Message from Fr. Manny Alvarez

Church of the Little Flower

My Dear Friends:

It’s almost here! Next weekend, we celebrate our parish’s centennial with the most important thing we do as a parish: the celebration of the Holy Mass presided by our archbishop. This past week we began the final preparations for all the events that will transpire during the month of October. For the last three years, we have been preparing for this coming month!

Thursday is the feast of our patroness, St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. We are blessed to have a Doctor of the Church as our patron saint who oversees all of our endeavors as a parish as she spends her heaven doing good on this earth and showering us with roses and graces from heaven.

Next Saturday is our Centennial Mass with Archbishop Wenski where we will offer praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God at our altar for a century of blessings bestowed on our parish over the last century. During that Mass, Archbishop will bless our new pipe organ. This past week, the last of the pipes (and the biggest of the pipes!) finally arrived in the nick of time. You may recall that the original façade pipes were burned in a warehouse fire outside of Amsterdam back in March, and our organ builder thankfully was able to find a manufacturer here in the USA who fashioned those majestic pipes that will be leading us in song for generations to come. We are grateful to the care, fine craftmanship, and love with with CB Fisk built our beloved Opus 166. I encourage you to go on our Instagram page where our organist and music director, Luis Cuza, has been posting some enlightening videos explaining the beauty of our organ and why it was built so deliberately and on such a grand scale. We are listening to the type of organ that St. Therese heard when she would go to Mass at the cathedral in Lisieux with her family.

Next month also brings our Centennial Gala and Centennial Organ Concert that I will write about more as we get closer to those grand events. But this weekend, I wanted to focus on, as I wrote back in August, on our spiritual preparation for this once in a century jubilee. I invite you to read up on St. Therese and meditate on her short but powerful life. As a community of faith, God has brought us to this pivotal moment in the life of our parish.

What is he calling us to do as we begin a new century of missionary work here in our corner of God’s vineyard?

To that end, I encourage all of you, my beloved parishioners, to dedicate yourselves to prayer all the more this coming week as we approach this month of celebration. This month is not to merely pat ourselves on the back for reaching 100 years but to give thanks and praise to our God for allowing us to live this moment and to ask for his guidance as we begin the next century of parish life. Please visit the Adoration Chapel this week and spend time with the Blessed Sacrament. Make a good confession. Pray for the repose of the souls of the priests, religious, and generations of lay people who served our parish and worshiped here. And again, meditate on the life and work and words of the Little Flower.

Yes, there is much to celebrate in the coming month. One hundred years is certainly a milestone that deserves great fanfare. We were led to this moment by the gentle and provident hand of our Father in heaven who has smiled on this beautiful parish, so now, it is only right and just to give Him thanks and praise!

God Bless You All,

Fr. Manny Alvarez
Pastor