My dear friends in Christ, happy Sunday!
One of the great blessings of being a Parochial Administrator is the opportunity to meet wonderful and hardworking people. Even more so, it is a particular joy when one has the opportunity to thank certain individuals for their labors.
Today, I have the pleasure not only to thank one such person for her work, but also to announce some exciting news in her regard.
Connie Salazar, who until now has served as our Music Coordinator, is a wonderfully kind person and a talented musician. Known for her patience and her spirit of joy, Connie is exactly the kind of employee who not only knows how to create a hospitable work environment but who is also thoroughly competent in her job. I am most grateful to her for all that she does.
With that in mind, I am thrilled to announce that this past week Connie has agreed to become our parish Music Director with immediate effect. Connie will now be the supervisor of all parish musicians, and the overall director of our musical life here. I am most grateful to Connie for accepting this new role, and I pray that under her leadership the musical life of our parish will continue to develop, thrive, and mature in beautiful ways. Thank you, Connie!
Oremus pro invicem—let us pray for each other—that our common celebration of music in our parish life will, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, add to our “full, active, and conscious participation” in the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium §14).
Speaking of exciting news for our parish’s life, I have yet more joyful tidings to share with you. As a means of doing so, please allow me to present to you here the letter that I sent on 11 August 2023 to all the parents of children in our catechetical programs.
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Dear Parents of Children Enrolled in Catechesis at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church,
First and foremost, thank you for entrusting our parish with the education of your children in “the faith delivered once and for all to the saints” (Jude 3).
I am excited to announce that, with the support of the Bishop’s Office, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church will be transitioning our whole Faith Formation Program to the “Pathways Formation Suite” designed by Faith and Family Life Catholic Ministries (
https://www.fflcm.org). FFLCM is a dynamic organization based in the Diocese of Orange that seeks to partner with parents and churches in returning the main role in faith formation to the parents of the children in faith formation. It is a “parent led, church supported” hybridized catechumenal model, which follows the guidelines for catechesis from the Holy See and is in conformity with the local norms of our own Diocese of Orange as well. FFLCM’s “Pathways Formation Suite” is currently used in over 100 parishes in 20 dioceses throughout the United States, serving more than 7,000 families nationwide. I am thrilled that we will be the first parish in the Diocese of Orange using the “Pathways Formation Suite” in full.
Wonderfully, the Founder and President of FFLCM, Fr. Timothy Donovan, is a priest of our own Diocese. Fr. Donovan has been assigned by the Most Rev. Kevin W. Vann, Bishop of Orange, to lead and run FFLCM full-time, and as part of that assignment Fr. Donovan is free to live at any parish in the Diocese. I am overjoyed to inform you that beginning in October, Fr. Donovan will be living here at Our Lady of Guadalupe. It will be a tremendous blessing to have the Founder and President of FFLCM in residence at our parish, and we look forward to working under his guidance to rebuild our faith formation programs using his “Pathways Formation Suite”.
We will have more information for you in the near future. In the interim, however, we would like you to know that our faith formation programs will be shifting dates. We will begin our program with the first part of the “Pathways Formation Suite”, known as “Seek”, in October of this year, and parents will be able to choose between meeting here with their children and/or teenagers on either Sunday or Monday nights beginning in October 2023. In addition, beginning in September 2023, our priests will be meeting with each family in faith formation individually for 30-minute sessions, known as the “Visit”. We will send out a calendar to schedule those “Visits” soon.
Thank you for your patience as we partner with FFLCM to enrich our catechetical programs at OLG to the greater glory of God.
Yours sincerely in the Lord,
Fr. Will