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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Alleluia! I’m saying that as often as I can these days
just because I can. Happy Second Sunday of Easter. Today we
come to the end of our Octave of Easter and continue into our
Season of Easter. Today is also Divine Mercy Sunday. On May 23rd,
2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship at the Vatican decreed
that “throughout the world, the Second Sunday of Easter will
receive the name Divine Mercy Sunday, a perennial invitation to
the Christian world to face, with confidence in divine
benevolence, the difficulties and trials that humankind will
experience in the years to come.” Devotion to the Divine Mercy
was promoted by St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish saint who was
canonized by our beloved late Pope John Paul II on April 30th,
2000. Here at St. Maria Goretti we will be celebrating Divine
Mercy Sunday with a special period of Eucharistic Adoration in
the main sanctuary today following the 10:00 Mass until 4:00
PM. At 3:00 PM, the hour of Divine Mercy, we will pray together
the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I’d like to encourage all of us to
stop by the church today to thank God for His mercy and patience
with us all. This is truly a beautiful new Feast Day and one
that is growing so quickly in popularity that it won’t be long
until
the entire Church all over the world will be spending the Second
Sunday of Easter in prayer. Come and join us this afternoon
BEFORE this Feast Day gets so popular that we won’t be able to
fit everybody in our church. Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!
I wanted to take the time to express my thanks and the
thanks of our community once again to everybody who made Easter,
last weekend, so special for all of us. I’d like to thank our
Liturgical Decorating Committee for all their planning and hard
work. The church is gorgeous and even smells wonderful. I’d
like to thank our musicians for providing outstanding music for
all of our celebrations. The music that was sung by our choir
during Adoration after Mass on Holy Thursday was some of them
most beautiful that I’ve heard in the new church. Thank you.
I’d also like to thank our Lectors, our Ministers of Welcome,
our Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, and our Altar
Servers, who all do their ministries every week without fanfare,
but all of whom put in extra time last week to make Holy Week
and Easter special for all of us. I’d like to thank our Temple
Knights of the Holy Eucharist, our high school serving squad,
for the outstanding job that they did at the Holy Thursday Mass
and at the Easter Vigil, and also our Seminarians, Josh Bennett
and Clayton Thompson, both of whom gave up substantial portions
of their Easter break to help out their Parish community. We
are so blessed! I’d like to thank the Boy Scouts for building
our Easter fire for the Vigil. And I’d also like to thank the
Holy Name Society for once again sponsoring the Easter egg hunt
for our youngest members.
In a very special way I’d like to thank Miss Emily
Domina. Emily, the daughter of Joe and Keltie Domina, filled
over three thousand plastic Easter eggs with candy and small
religious items for the Easter Egg hunt. This took her hours to
accomplish. I’m told that the Domina’s basement resembled an
Easter egg factory for several days. Emily’s loving and kind
spirit and her caring for the younger members of our community,
should be an inspiration to all of us, and certainly is to this
priest. Emily, you are one very special young lady and we look
forward to all of the good that you are going to do in the
future.
We pray this weekend for the ladies who are making the
Women’s Christ Renews His Parish weekend, both for Team #13 who
is putting the weekend on and for Team #14 who is making the
weekend. Miracles are happening over in our school as you are
reading this, on the Christ Renews weekend. Pray in
thanksgiving in advance for all of the good that is going to
happen.
Finally, this coming Friday is our annual Spring Fling
Dinner Dance and Auction. Pray also for this event. This is
one of the most important nights of the year for our Parish
family, as we get together for a good cause AND to have a good
time with one another. We also pray for the army of people who
are working so hard this week to get things ready for Friday
night. May God bless each of you and keep you healthy and safe!
Have a wonderful week! Let us continue to celebrate the
Resurrection of our Lord Jesus!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
It takes more oil than vinegar to make a good salad.
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