New Staff Member Joins OLMC!

Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

OLMC is happy to announce that a new Carmelite Deacon, Anthony Armstrong, O.Carm. will be moving to Our Lady of Mount Carmel this July and joining our Parish staff! Check out a little bit about Deacon Anthony and his vocational journey to Carmel.

My vocation journey began 23 years ago and has been a real story of God writing straight with crooked lines. Friends and priests had been encouraging me for years to think about priesthood but I had been fighting God for years but, after an overpowering awareness of God’s unconditional love for me had been growing in me for some months, I finally said yes to considering religious life at the age of 30.

Immediately I was strongly drawn to the Carmelites, thanks to my visits to our house in Aylesford in the UK. I started my novitiate in the British Province in September 1996 and took my first vows 12 months later. I completed my studies in 5 years and so had the opportunity to come over here to the US in 2002 to do Carmelite Studies for my final year of studies with Fr. Emmett as my formator. It was the best year of my life and one that was key to my return here years later. I returned to the UK a year later but, sadly, it didn’t work out as I had expected and so I was not able to remain with the British Province.

After this, God guided me in a very clear way to working with the homeless in central London where I spent the next 7 years doing a job I loved, and one in which I changed and grew greatly. But, totally unexpectedly, the doors to religious life reopened. I had always said to God that I would consider religious life again only if He opened the doors clearly and He did! My heart was pulling me towards the Spiritual Life Institute in Ireland, a community of Carmelite-inspired apostolic hermits but, over time, I was being pulled more and more to rejoin the Carmelites here in the US, thanks in no small part to the encouragement and support from Fr. Emmett.

Again, there were a number of clear God-incidences clearly drawing me back here to the US. And so I arrived in August 2011, and took my temporary vows one year later. I completed my studies in Washington DC at Christmas  2014 and, since then,  have been doing full time ministry in our Carmelite parish in South Central LA! I made my lifelong profession of vows in January 2016 and was ordained a deacon in June 2016.

I have had a blessed 3 1/2 years in South LA but I look forward to getting to know you all in the coming months and years!

Anthony Armstrong, O.Carm.

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