Happy Birthday, OLMC! This weekend we celebrate the feast of our patroness, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. While not the official date of the founding of our parish, I’ve always seen our feast day as our birthday celebration. Our proud parish really began with a promise.
According to tradition, the first Carmelites living and praying on the original Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel dedicated their hermitage to the Virgin Mary. “The lady of the place,” they used to say. Hundreds of years later, an English Carmelite by the name of St. Simon Stock had a vision of the Virgin Mary holding our beloved child Jesus and dressed in the Carmelite brown habit. She offered something to him. She gave him a scapular, essentially a medieval apron, a sign of protection and service. She offered it with a promise: “This is for you and yours, a privilege, whosoever dies wearing it shall not suffer eternal fire. It shall be a sign of salvation, a protection in danger and pledge of peace.”
That promise may sound slightly piercing in our modern ears and certainly for decades we may have worn our scapular out of fear as opposed to pride, but I love the image. As a theater director, I can’t help but think of the power of the prop: Our scapular, our symbol is a simple apron, a costume piece that denotes a profession and offers protection from the commonplace splatters and spills of everyday life. It boldly tells us that it is literally our job to serve one another. I think that it is my privilege that my literal job is one of service to my beloved pastor and parishioners.
I can remember the exact pew I sat in, in front of the tabernacle, while I awaited my first interview to work at OLMC, never knowing the journey I was about to go on. My thoughts on that hot and dry evening are with that young man and with all the countless men and women, priests and religious from whose hard work I’ve benefited. The countless students who passed the halls, the endless stream of nameless men and women who donated their hard earned money, all those who “we look back on because they looked forward to us” (Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, 55). I’m thinking of Ed Reilly, Joe Vergona, Tom Salem, Valerie Reilly, Bob Rush, Fr. Leonard J. Gilman, O.Carm., Fr. Peter Byrthe, O.Carm. and many, many more. On this evening, I’m very thankful to all of them and thankful to all of our parishioners today, the men and women who quite literally pay my rent! Thank you Mount Carmel. You have given me a wonderful life. I am forever indebted that I, like you, can add my small contribution to the great history of the Catholic community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Happy Birthday! You look great for 143!
I’ll be seeing you,
Elliot