Pilgrims visit Carmelite monastery for the universal jubilee for consecrated religious

Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

SALT LAKE CITY — Pilgrims from the Diocese of Salt Lake City joined the nuns of the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to celebrate the universal jubilee for consecrated religious on Oct. 8 and 9.

Before his death, Pope Francis dedicated 2025 as a jubilee year. It is the 2,025th anniversary of the Incarnation of Christ, an “event of great spiritual, ecclesial, and social significance in the life of the Church,” he said. 

During the year, various dates have been set aside to recognize various groups, such members of armed forces, artists, deacons, volunteers, health-care workers and teenagers, to name a few. The Oct. 8-9 celebration was for “all consecrated men and women from all forms of religious life,” according to the Vatican.

On both days at the cloistered Carmelite monastery in Salt Lake City, pilgrims had the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Confession, attend Mass and venerate the monastery’s almost 200 first-class relics.

For the Jubilee Year of Hope, Bishop Oscar A. Solis designated five churches across the Diocese of Salt Lake City as pilgrimage sites, which can be visited at any time. In addition, at the request of the Carmelite nuns, he granted the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary three days as a pilgrimage site. On the first pilgrimage day, July 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pilgrims overflowed the small chapel for the celebratory Mass.

Crowds also came for the two Masses in October. Father Adrian Komar, pastor of Saint Thomas More Parish in Cottonwood Heights, celebrated the Oct. 8 Mass. The presider of the Oct. 9 Mass was the Very Rev. Matthew Williams, OCD, Provincial of the Discalced Carmelite Order, Western Province.

In his homily Fr. Komar referenced Jonah 4:1-11, which was the first reading for the Mass.

“Jonah knew his God,” he said. “When he was praying, he knew to what God he was offering his prayers. When he was escaping, he knew from what God he was escaping. He knew all those things because he knew his God. God was not for him just some kind of idea. … For him, it was a true relationship.”

Like Jonah, the Carmelite nuns, who are perceived by some as “a crazy couple of ladies” in their willingness to retreat from the world in God’s service, undertook their vocation “because there is someone behind those bars [of the cloister],” he said. “If I know that behind those bars I may have better contact with God, I may have more time to spend with the one who I know is the living God, then they are not crazy anymore. They are actually, we can say, one step ahead of us with the relationship with God.”

Fr. Komar encouraged those present to follow the example of the Carmelite sisters and develop a deeper relationship with God. 

Following the Mass, Fr. Komar led those present in a special prayer for the Jubilee of Hope.

During the two days, “More people showed up for Confession and visiting the chapel then I had expected,” said Carmelite Sister Therese Bui, speaking on behalf of the nuns. “It was wonderful to see how much God has been honored here.”

Among those attending the Oct. 8 Mass were Rob and Diana Silon, parishioners of St. Ambrose’s in Salt Lake City, who also were in Rome for Jubilee Year 2000, Rob Silon recalled.

“It was an amazing experience,” he said. “We were there with our daughter and they just took us in completely. On buses they would just grab my wife and daughter to come and share the experience with them. It was everywhere you looked; you couldn’t escape it.”