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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Welcome to our celebration of the Feast of Christ the King! Today we remember
and give thanks for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Who is the King of our
hearts and our lives forever! This is a great day. Today we all look forward
to that Kingdom that we have all been called to be a part of. Today’s
celebration is about our future and where we are headed. What a perfect way to
start our last week in Ordinary Time. Next Sunday, Nov. 29th,
is the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of our new liturgical year.
On
December 8th,
the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we will also be celebrating the Fifth
Anniversary of the Dedication of our church. In many ways it seems hard to
believe that it has really been five years, but calendars don’t lie. We will be
celebrating this special milestone with a special, all-Parish Mass for the Holy
Day at 7:00 PM. The 7:00 PM Mass will be the ONLY Mass that St. Maria Goretti
offers for the Holy Day and the Anniversary. The Rosary will be prayed before
Mass. And an anniversary reception will be held in the Parish Hall after Mass
with refreshments and entertainment. Please get this date and this special
event on your calendars now. We would really like to have as many of us as
possible there and together for the anniversary celebration. It’s going to be a
great night!
As
the church building gets a little older, we all have to put a little more effort
into taking care of it. You may have noticed that the entire church narthex and
north and south entrance ways have just recently been painted and look
brand-new. I need to enlist everybody’s help with another area of concern this
week. Several of the book or hymnal holders on the back of the pews in the main
sanctuary, are getting damaged by the improper placement of the hymnals in their
holders. We need to all be aware of this so that we can together correct this
problem. Each of our hymnal racks is designed to hold three of the red Gather
hymnals/missals and three of the blue St. Maria Goretti Praise Books that were
recently re-done. You CANNOT put even one of the blue Praise Books in front of
the Red Gather books. There is not room. Instead, the three Red Gather books
should be side-by-side with each other and right next to the three blue SMG
Praise books, all three of which will stack on top of each other in the hymnal
rack. What is happening is that some individuals are trying to force the blue
Praise books to fit in the holder in front of the Red Gather book. This is
tearing up all of the books way before their time, including the brand-new blue
Praise books. And even more serious, it is also now damaging several of the
hymnal racks on the back of the pews. This is a serious matter and can prove
very costly to our Parish family, if we don’t get a handle on it right away.
This weekend, both Fr. Dale and I will be saying something about this before our
Masses begin. We are calling on all of us to solve this problem. Each one of
us needs to do our part to make sure that the books are returned to the hymnal
rack in the correct order, protecting both the books and the hymnal racks.
Don’t try to force the books into the racks when they clearly will not fit.
There is an order that works. We’ve just all got to get it down. This is just
another way for all of us to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with.
We need to together take care of God’s house. Our church is where we come
together to meet God, to bring Him our prayers, and to offer Him our praise. We
all have a special obligation to work together to take care of this very special
building that we worked so hard and so long to build, and that we are still
struggling to pay for as a community.
Now is
probably also a good time to remind all of us that we all need to keep our
buildings and our grounds as nice and as clean as possible. St. Maria Goretti
is our spiritual home. We share this space with a few thousand of our brothers
and sisters every weekend. We are blessed to have a wonderful maintenance and
janitorial staff here at St. Maria Goretti. These individuals work very hard to
keep things nice and clean for all of us. We can do a lot to help them out by
picking up after ourselves and working together to keep St. Maria Goretti’s
building and campus looking great. Please lend a hand whenever you can. If a
piece of trash is on the floor, pick it up. It is the job and responsibility of
all of us to keep our church and school looking its best. Please help us to
work together to accomplish this task!
If you
are going to be traveling this week for Thanksgiving, have a safe trip. If
you’re going to be around here for Thanksgiving, please consider joining us on
Thursday morning for Mass at 9:00 AM. It is one of my favorite Masses of the
year because everybody is there because they want to be there and they want to
say “thank you” to God first, before the turkey, and pumpkin pie, and football
games.
Have
a great Thanksgiving! Enjoy this entire week!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
For the
Christian, the bottom line can never be the bottom line. |
