Faith Filled Friday: Our Feast of Mt. Carmel, 2025

The actual feast day for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel was Wednesday, July 16^th, but we celebrated it with a Mass, an Italian marching band, a procession, and then a parish BBQ on Sunday the 13^th. 

 

The feast day is a special to the Carmelite Order, commemorating the giving of the brown scapular in 1287 by Our Lady to St. Simon Stock, an English member of the Carmelite Order.  

Our pastor, Fr. Eugene, is also a Third Order Carmelite, and we had many from his chapter at the Mass.  We also had people attend from the Padre Pio Society and of course the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel organization which is located in Brooklyn, NY.  We also had an Italian band.

Fr. Eugene, who is Italian-American, included in his homily a funny little story.  I’ll put this in quotes, but it’s not a direct quote.  He said, “so deep is the Italian devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, that his mother once asked where in Italy is Mt. Carmel located?”  The love of this feast is so pervasive among Italians that his mother assumed the mountain was in Italy.  But it’s not.  It’s in Isarel.

Now back in 2017, I posted that year’s procession with plenty of pictures.  If you want to see stills, go here.  

For this year, I’m going to post three videos from the procession.  First coming out of Church.

 

 

The grand exit of our beloved Lady and being put on the rolling cart.

Viva Maria!

 

And finally the procession.

 

Seminarians and altar servers in the front, banners and flags next, the rolling cart, the band, and finally the parishioners.  That’s Fr. Eugene in his vestments directing the rolling cart.  We processed about two blocks, up an avenue, and then back around.  As you can see, our parish is not just full of Italian-Americans but quite diverse. 

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us!