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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Welcome today to our celebration of the Sixth Sunday of
our Easter season! We continue to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus
Christ, and earnestly seek to put that mystery into effect in our lives. Next
weekend, we will be celebrating the Ascension of our Lord. The Feast of the
Ascension has been permanently transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter.
This is still a little hard for those of us who grew up with “Ascension
Thursday” to get used to, and yes it does mean that we have one less Holy Day of
Obligation to remember, because we should all already be here for the Sunday.
We look forward to next week’s celebration.
St. Maria Goretti is in the process of switching to a new
Liturgical Ministers Scheduling service. I know that this does not affect many
of us, but for the literal hundreds of us who do serve our community at our
Masses by being Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Lectors, Ministers of
Welcome, musicians, Altar Servers, and Sacristans, this is a big deal.
Coordinating this many people over the three months of our liturgical schedule,
has become a great challenge. For the past couple years, the awesome Sue Treida
has done this for our Parish community. We owe her, and all of those who have
done this thank-less ministry for our Parish in the past, a great debt of
gratitude. Sue will continue to oversee our new process on-line, but a great
deal of the responsibility for the now falls on the individual minister to let
the program know when you are going to be able to serve, and most especially,
when you won’t be able to serve. All of this was presented to the Liturgical
Ministers of the Parish at last weekend’s Liturgical Minister’s Day. IT IS
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT ALL ST. MARIA GORETTI LITURGICAL MINISTERS WHO SERVE AS
EXTRAORDINARY MINISTERS OF HOLY COMMUNION, LECTORS, AND ALTAR SERVERS GO ON-LINE
TO REGISTER IN THE NEW PROGRAM, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. With regards to the Altar
Servers, we are asking that parents, who generally know their son or daughter’s
schedules better than they do, go on-line to register them as Altar Servers, and
to input the dates that they WILL NOT be available for this summer. You can go
to :
smgonlineorg.ministerscheduling.com/register.php
…to accomplish this task. The
Ministers of Welcome, the Sacristans, and the musicians are all scheduled
differently, and will not be involved in the new on-line registration. We do
anticipate some challenges with the switch to this new format, but we hoping to
keep them to a minimum. Scheduling coordinators from each of the three areas,
again Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Lectors, and Altar Servers,
will be in touch and will assist you in making the transition to this new
scheduling process. But central to this whole change, is that each individual
liturgical ministers takes serious responsibility to get registered and to get
us your information in a timely fashion. Extraordinary Ministers of Holy
Communion, Lectors, and Altar Servers, please take this seriously, as this is
the only way that you are going to be able to continue serving in your
ministries. Thanks for all that you do to help us to pray better together!
It is getting warmer outside. We would like to ask
everyone to prayerfully consider what is and what is not appropriate dress for
coming to Mass. We’ve all got to remember that coming to Mass is unlike
anything else that we do. We come to Mass to encounter God and to offer Him
sacrifice and worship. Beach, athletic, and/or swimming attire is NOT
appropriate dress for Mass. Remember the guy in the Bible who got kicked out of
the wedding feast because he was not appropriately dressed? It does matter to
God. We want to offer God our very best when we come here on Sunday. Are we?
Most especially, in God’s house, we want to all continue to dress modestly, so
that we never become a distraction or an occasion of sin for others. As you
well know, St. Maria Goretti is blessed with an extremely good air conditioning
system. We won’t let you get too warm this summer, even if you have enough
clothes on to cover your entire body. You can really trust me on this one.
These are great days! We are very blessed and we have
so much to pray for and about! May we never fail to be able to see BOTH our
blessings and our challenges clearly!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all.
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