My Dear Friends,

Today we celebrate with joy the diaconate ordination of one of our seminarians: Deacon Jonathan Sanchez was ordained on Saturday morning, and this weekend he will be preaching at some of our Masses and celebrating his first baptisms. God willing, Deacon Jonathan will be ordained to the priesthood 13 months from now and celebrate his first Mass here in our parish. Please pray for Deacon Jonathan as he begins ordained ministry in the Church, and pray for all of his classmates. Also, I ask you to pray for the 9 young deacons who will be ordained priests next month at St. Mary’s Cathedral. We are blessed with a large number of ordinations this year, but we must never cease to pray for more vocations to the priesthood.

Easter is a time for many sacraments. Our catechumens spend months preparing for Easter so that they may be welcomed into the Church through the sacraments. You may have read or seen in the news that the Catholic Church throughout the United States has welcomed a record number of new Catholics this year. Here at Little Flower it was no different. We had around 75 adults in our adult formation program back in September attending our Tuesday night classes with Deacon Fleitas. During the Easter Vigil, we baptized 19 adults and children into the faith. There are a few more who will be baptized in the coming months, and many more who will be doing their Profession of Faith, their First Communion, and/or their Confirmation during this Easter season. It is indeed a springtime of renewal here in our parish and throughout the Archdiocese of Miami. In addition, our school students will receive their First Communion this coming Saturday. We never stop doing infant baptisms, and as for our weddings, more and more young couples are seeking the Sacrament of Marriage. Just consider this statistic from last year that blew my mind: even though our church was closed for 5 months in 2025 for renovations, we still celebrated over 90 weddings last year and are on track to celebrate well over 110 weddings this calendar year, and will probably receive more that aren’t even scheduled yet. Yes, we are indeed blessed as a parish with all these sacramental graces.

In other news, our contractor finished the last of the major restoration work in our church this past Friday. The railing was installed in the balcony, and on Monday the process of voicing the organ begins, which will take us through the end of the summer. The church will be closed for most of the day between Masses as these brilliant people start bringing our pipe organ to life sometimes working after hours when all is quiet. Which leads me to my next piece of news which I wanted to wait until after Easter to share with all of you: the big pipes that will be the façade of the pipe organ were being manufactured in the Netherlands in a town called Zeist, just to the south of Amsterdam, by world renowned organ maker Jacques Stinkens. They supply pipes to organ manufacturers around the world. On the morning of Saturday, March 21st a fire broke out in their office park which destroyed everything. Thankfully, no workers were injured. We didn’t get confirmation that our newly fashioned pipes were incinerated until late in Holy Week. So, now we, along with our organ builder CB Fisk, have to pivot, and thankfully a solution was found rather quickly. The 70 or so large pipes that were being fashioned overseas will now be manufactured here in the USA by Taylor and Boody Organ Builders based out of Virginia. While we won’t know a timetable for completion until midsummer, we thank the Good Lord for allowing us to find a quick solution to an unforeseen situation. In the parish office, the restoration of this church for its centennial has been one obstacle after another that has been met with resilience on the part of our staff and the workers who have labored hard to beautify and enhance this sacred worship space. So now we wait, and we pray, but everything continues to point to our Parish Centennial Mass with the archbishop on Saturday, October 3rd at 7:00 p.m. Nothing will deter us from celebrating this milestone for the glory of God.

God bless you all,