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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today we pray for and welcome home our high school students
who have been on their Confirmation retreat this weekend down at
Bradford Woods in southern Indiana. Our Confirmation candidates are
going to be joining us at our 10:00 AM Mass this morning. Please
keep all of them in your prayers as they make their final decisions
and head towards Confirmation on Friday evening, May 9th.
Likewise, the first half of our candidates for First Holy Communion
had their retreat day yesterday. The second half of this year’s
class will be in next Saturday. Please also keep our First Holy
Communion candidates in your prayers also. First Communion this
year takes place in just two weeks, on Saturday, May 3rd.
This is such a beautiful time of the year, as we prepare to
celebrate with our youth and our children, these very important
steps in their Faith and for our community.
This Friday evening is our annual Spring Fling at the Ritz
Charles. It is my sincere hope that you will be able to join us for
this fun and important evening for our Parish family. This is not
only our biggest fundraiser of the year; it is really our ONLY
fundraiser of the year. In one evening, over a $100,000 is raised
for St. Maria Goretti. In the past, the Spring Fling has helped to
fund the school kitchen, the rectory, the grand piano for the new
church, the two extraordinary statues on both sides of the main
sanctuary, it has helped fund the Adoration chapel/bell tower
project, and just last year it helped provide additional fire and
security systems for our campus, including the new defibrillators in
the church, the gym, and the school. The Spring Fling has always
helped our Parish to do and to afford things that we would never
have normally been able to do as a young parish. This makes Friday
night an outstanding opportunity for all of us. Rod and Kara Clarke
and Chris and Shari McGrath have provided outstanding leadership for
this year’s event. Dozens of individuals from our Parish have
already put in hundreds of hours of service to make this event
happen. A huge number of us have donated items and services to be
used for the success of the Spring Fling. Everything is now nearly
ready for the event and the raffles. I thank everyone who has
worked so hard to make this happen. Let us also keep this week’s
Spring Fling in all of our prayers.
Something else that we need to continually all work on as a
community, is keeping an eye on our children, while they are here on
Parish grounds. This continues to be a challenge for our community,
where one in every five members is under that age of 12. This
Parish loves kids. This priest loves kids. We want our kids to
grow up praying and being at home here at their church. But we also
want our kids to grow up respecting the sanctity of holy space and
holy things. Children must be taught these things. In recent
weeks, this has become a particular challenge in the Adoration
chapel. We are asking everyone’s help to please keep children under
control in the Adoration Chapel. Too many times, young children are
allowed to “wander” behind the Altar and up into the sanctuary of
the Daily Mass Chapel while their parents are praying. The Missals
and Christian prayer books have been treated as toys, with their
marker ribbons moved or torn out. We continue to find crayon marks
and permanent ink marker scribbles on the chairs and kneelers.
There have been numerous complaints from others trying to pray.
Clearly, we must do better. I’m calling on all of our parents to
help us out with these issues, in the Adoration Chapel, in the main
sanctuary, and throughout our campus. I believe that it is very
difficult for any adult to really pray in for an hour of Adoration,
while they are also caring for their young children. Not to mention
the fact that it is nearly impossible for a really young child to
sit still and be quiet for an hour while mom or dad prays. Please,
let’s all pray about this and look at all of our options with our
children at Adoration. We want this Parish to be EVERYBODY’S home.
We also want our children to have real respect for God’s house and
to have a beautiful, safe place to pray for many years to come. We
can do better.
We’ll see you next Friday at the Spring Fling! Have a
great week and enjoy these last days of Pope Benedict’s visit!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
Old people know more about being young than young people know about
being old. |
