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 9^th.  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 3^rd.  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.