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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today we celebrate the Feast of All Souls. We pray
today for all of our deceased brothers and sisters,
especially the Poor Souls in Purgatory, and also especially
for all of those who have died in this past year. This is a
somewhat somber Feast. We have this Feast Day every year,
on the day after All Saint’s Day. We don’t usually get to
all celebrate it together, but because it falls on Sunday
this year, this time we do. What our nation and civic
organizations try and do at the end of May each year for our
deceased military personnel, with Memorial Day, the Catholic
Church does for all of the dead every November 2nd.
Be assured that the Catholic Church has been doing this a
lot longer than we’ve been celebrating Memorial Day. It is
important for us to remember those who have gone before us.
Today, you will notice at Mass, that our petitions, or
general intercessions of the Mass, will be replaced by a
reading of the names of all of the people who have died in
the past year, who were connected to our Parish family. Let
us remember to pray for our dead brothers and sisters, not
only today, but every day!
Our Parish Council invites EVERYBODY to stop out in
the Church Narthex after Mass for this year’s Ministry
Fair. We’ve been having these on the Feast of Pentecost, in
May or June each year. The Parish Council determined that
this was not the best time, and so the Ministry Fair is
being moved to the Fall of each year, probably in early
September. Since the move missed September this time
around, we are having it this weekend, to help all of us get
plugged in to helping out with SOMETHING! Every member of
the Parish should be helping in at least one ministry. What
are you doing? Which one are you going to sign up for and
help out with?
As members of St. Maria Goretti, we are all
committed to supporting and furthering the Mission of St.
Maria Goretti Parish by sharing and living the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. We are committed to praying for our Church
and fellow members regularly, especially in Eucharistic
Adoration. We are committed to be present every Sunday at
Mass and other Parish events on a regular basis. We are
committed to support our Parish with our spiritual and
financial gifts. And…And…We are all committed to find an
area of ministry through which we can serve Christ and
others. I especially this week draw your attention to this
last commitment/ expectation of membership in our Parish
family. We need you to find your area of ministry, for God
and for the Church. The Ministry Fair is here to help all
of us to be able to do just that.
So if those are the expectations of ALL members of
St. Maria Goretti Parish family listed in the paragraph
above, what expectations can you have of our Parish
family? What am I going to “get” from belonging to this
community? Well, as your Parish family, we are committed to
providing a variety of different opportunities for you to
live out your Faith in prayer, in worship, in service, in
education, and in community building. We are committed to
providing the Sacraments and plenty of other Faith-building
opportunities for you to grow in and learn about the
Catholic Christian life. We are committed to providing a
variety of different opportunities to help you develop deep
and lasting friendships in our community with your brothers
and sisters in Jesus Christ. We are committed to providing
multiple educational opportunities for all ages for
increasing and deepening your understanding of our Faith, of
the Sacred Scriptures, and of all the teachings of our
Church. And finally, as a Parish family and as the
leadership of our community, we commit to you to always be
good stewards of our finances, of our facilities, and of our
time, talent, and treasures. We will use our gifts well and
for the building up of the Kingdom of God. As your Pastor,
I promise you that we’ll keep up our commitments to you. I
fully expect that YOU will also keep up your commitments to
this Parish family. For that to happen, you’ve got to get
involved. You can’t just sit in a pew for an hour on Sunday
any more. And we have hundreds of members that we can’t
even get to do that!
My brothers and sisters, we’ve got a lot of work
to do! We are working for God. We are fighting the devil.
We are building a community, a family, that lasts way beyond
this world. Maybe there’s a great significance to our
having our Ministry Fair on All Soul’s Day. We need to
stay busy while we’re alive!
Have a great week! Next weekend most of us will
get our first chance to make our two-year pledge to the new
2008 Fruitful Harvest / Angels in Action Campaign. Let us
pray about this this week.
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are
generally afraid of.
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