St. Mary of Mt. Carmel / Blessed Sacrament Parish

Saint Mary of Mount Carmel / Blessed Sacrament Parish is a combined parish community in the city of Utica, New York. Founded in 1896, the original Mount Carmel parish community merged with the former Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Utica in the early 2000s as part of the reconfiguration of Catholic parishes in the city.

The parish is well-known throughout the city and the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, in which it resides as a welcoming community marked by thoughtful and carefully-crafted liturgical celebrations and a dynamic music ministry. In an area known for its population loss and declining participation in Catholic parishes, Saint Mary of Mount Carmel / Blessed Sacrament Parish has trended in the opposite direction and has a growing, vibrant and increasingly diverse faith community.

Liturgical Consultant (2002 – present)

I have been fortunate to have been associated with this parish for many years beginning in my mid-twenties and have forged many meaningful personal relationships with the people in this community. It has also been a place where I have matured as a Catholic lay minister and a liturgical consultant, providing a range of services from detailed consultation on various liturgical celebrations throughout the year, to serving as Master of Ceremonies for Holy Week for over 10 years, and participating in the parish’s music ministry which features an all-volunteer choir that is renowned not only for its embrace of contemporary liturgical music that is chosen based on the desire for full assembly participation, but also for its creative and attentive combination of word and music to foster a deeply ecclesial spirituality.

I have served as a ministerial consultant to this parish community and its leadership for its key celebrations of the liturgical year since 2002.

Most recently, I consulted for their 2016 and 2017 Holy Week services, and you can read about those activities, here, here, and here.