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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today we come to Mass and there’s no special Feast Day.
We’re not in any particular, special liturgical season. We’re just here on the
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary time, which is where we enter the cycle after the
Easter season and the special Feast Days after Easter. The green vestments are
back. Our prayer settles down a bit. I love these Sundays. There’s something
exceptionally calming about the regularity of these next twenty-one Sundays of
Ordinary time, as we delve deeper into what it means to be a follower of Jesus
Christ. These are great days. These days are times for holiness and
perseverance. As our Church calendar settles down and gets down to business, so
do we.
This weekend, we begin our part of our “Answered God’s
Call” Diocesan seminarian campaign. Today and for the next two weeks we will be
taking up a second collection after Communion in support of the education of our
Diocesan seminarians. The Diocesan total goal for the 2009 Seminary Fund Appeal
is $450,000. Each parish in the Diocese has been given a set amount that we are
to give as our portion, of the Diocesan total. St. Maria Goretti’s portion this
year is $23,742.00. In the next three weeks, together we must come up with this
amount AND still keep up our weekly giving to the Parish. This is not an easy
thing to do. It is going to require sacrifices on the part of all of us.
You might ask, “Why are we trying to do this now?”
“Doesn’t anybody in the Church read the papers?” “There’s a very severe
recession going on. How can the Church keep asking for money?” “We are
struggling to pay our own bills here at St. Maria Goretti, why do they keep
expecting us to pay for everything else?” There are a lot of questions. The
first answer, is that “they”, the Church, is actually, “we” and “us”. Times
like these demand that we remember that we are all Catholics and that as
Catholics, we have to keep a Catholic ecclesiology or vision of Church. We’re
supposed to be working together to build the Kingdom. We are NOT
Congregationalist. We are Catholics. These are tough economic times for
everyone, and must more severe for some than others. These are also tough
economic times for us as “Church”. The Church, just like your family at home,
also has higher bills to pay and is also being asked to do more and more with
less resources at a greater cost. We can get through this, but the only way we
can get through this is together. That’s why we all have to do our part, or
parts. In 1998, it cost our Diocese $66,636 to educate our seminarians, which
at that time I believe we had only three. Next year, in 2009 and 2010, it will
cost our Diocese nearly a million dollars to educate our projected twenty-eight
seminarians! Believe it or not, this is great news! Most Dioceses in this
country, including the other four dioceses in Indiana, would kill to have our
problem! We are not going to have the closed parishes and consolidated
communities that so many U.S. Catholics are going to face, because we are going
to have enough priests to take care of our Diocese. It is going to cost us more
now, but the pay-off for down the road is one we can all look forward to.
To be real honest, this Campaign is a much easier sell
here at St. Maria Goretti, because this Parish currently has three young men
studying for the Diocesan priesthood. We are going to more than get our money’s
worth back in the education of our own young men from the Parish. And this
Parish knows better than most, the quality of the guys who are in formation. We
have truly been greatly blessed!
I need each of us to really pray about what we can do
to help out with this Campaign. We must reach our goal in the next three
weeks. Please help us out with this effort.
We are looking for additional volunteers for the 2009
Italian Festival, coming up on July 11th.
We are also looking for families to take the Elijah Cup at ALL Masses. And we
are also looking for individuals and groups of folks who can take an hour of
Eucharistic Adoration in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. To help with the Italian
Fest, please call Greg and Kim Stanley at 580-9185 or Kevin and Abby Kovacs at
573-7114. To sign your family up for the Elijah Cup, please call Ann Worchester
at 669-7095. And to find out more about Eucharistic Adoration, please call
Carol Alvarez at 843-2530. Please consider helping out. We need you!
Have a great week! And Happy Father’s Day!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on
tiptoe.
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