|
 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Happy Fourth of July Weekend! Thanks for joining us for
Mass today. Today we celebrate the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary time. We also
continue our novena to St. Maria Goretti. Today is the last day of the Novena.
We will be praying the Novena after Communion at all Masses again this weekend.
The Feast of St. Maria Goretti is tomorrow, July 6th.
We will have a special Feast Day Mass tomorrow evening at 5:30 PM in the main
sanctuary. It is my hope that many of you will be able join us for this
tomorrow. It is a very special day for our entire Parish family.
Our celebration of the Feast Day also means that we are
getting close to our 2009 Italian Festival. Indeed, the Festival is NEXT
SATURDAY, JULY 11TH,
beginning with 4:30 PM Mass and continuing until 10:00 PM. Lots of music, food,
games, and good times are planned for all! Please come out and join us next
Saturday, and bring your family and friends. It is going to be great day. We
will have a great number of chairs and tables available, but you are more than
welcome to bring chairs from home for your comfort and convenience. Our 4:30 PM
Festival Mass will be held inside the church once again this year. As many of
you remember, we used to have the Festival Mass outdoors on semi-truck trailer.
That was because the Parish Hall could never hold all the folks attending that
Mass. The new church accommodates everybody just fine. You might want to come
a little bit earlier to get a good seat. I am really looking forward to next
Saturday night!
This weekend, we are trying to wrap up our 2009
Diocesan Seminarian Campaign. We will have a second collection again this
weekend to do our part. We’ve come along way in the last week or so, but we
also still have a ways to go, to reach our goal. If you haven’t had a chance to
help out yet, or even if you have, and maybe you could do a little more, please
help us out and be generous when the baskets are passed around again today, for
our second collection, after Communion. Thanks for your generosity!
With the Italian Festival coming up next weekend, and
with many new families arriving every weekend during this time of the year, this
is an especially important time for us to remember hospitality. Jesus calls us
to be “welcoming” people. In the Letter to the Hebrews, it says “Do not
neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”
(Heb 13:2) How important it is for us to get out of ourselves and greet one
another, most especially when the community gathers together for the Eucharist.
We are NOT strangers. We ARE brothers and sisters. Wouldn’t it be a shame if
you missed out on meeting a really great friend, all because you were too busy
or too shy or too proud to introduce yourself? Say “hello” to the people
praying next to you Mass. Introduce yourself to them. Shake their hand. Ask
them where they are from. Hospitality makes or breaks a community. And each
one of us has a responsibility to be hospitable. It’s not just the priest’s
job, or the Ministers of Welcome’s job, or the Parish Council’s job. We can all
be better at getting out of ourselves and greeting our brothers and sisters,
even if we ourselves are new to the community. Some Catholics sit back and wait
way too long, for someone to reach out to them. Sometimes all of us have to
reach out first.
This community is made up of thousands of wonderful
people of all different ages. Our greatest asset as a Parish is the
extraordinary group of individuals who make up this community. I so look
forward to every Sunday just to get to see ALL of you at Mass. You’ve got to
meet as many of these people as you can! There are real saints right here among
us. And I promise you, I’ve never met anybody here who bites when you greet
them. Meeting Tom Derksen for the first time was NOT one of the most pleasant
experiences of my life, but even Derksen didn’t bite. He growled. But he
didn’t bite. Come to think of it, and as all the folks who have been through
RCIA here at St. Maria Goretti already know, you might want to put off
introducing yourself to Tom Derksen until after you’ve been here for awhile.
Besides Derksen, you should be O.K. being hospitable to everybody else.
Have a great weekend! Eat some ice-cold watermelon
today and remember why this is such a great country!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe
they are free.” |
