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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today we continue our Advent season by lighting our second candle on our Advent
wreath and concentrating on Faith. Faith is a gift from God. True Faith will see
you through anything. There are many who search their whole lives for Faith and
are unable to find it. You can’t buy Faith. You can’t make people have Faith.
And yet, if you have the tiniest amount of Faith, Faith the size of a mustard
seed, the Gospel says, that will be enough to move mountains. Advent is our time
to grow our Faith. The best way to grow our Faith is to experience God alive and
very active in our lives. The best way to experience God is by staying close to
Him in prayer. If you are staying close to Him in prayer, you are going to see
many amazing things and your Faith will grow by leaps and bounds every day! Do
you see how this all works together? It is awesome!
This Tuesday is a big day for all of us here at St. Maria Goretti. It is the
Feast of the Immaculate Conception, our nation’s feast day and a Holy Day of
Obligation. Here of course, it is also the Anniversary of the Dedication of our
church. In fact, it is the Fifth Anniversary of the Dedication of our church.
Yeah, can you believe it? It has been five years since that cold, clear December
night in 2004 that Bishop Higi was here to bless and dedicate our new church. It
was a wonderful night. This Tuesday everyone is invited to a special Mass
celebrating the Fifth Anniversary of the Dedication. The Mass will be at 7:00 PM
and it will be our only Mass for the Holy Day of Obligation. We want all of us
together Tuesday night, just as we were five years ago. The Parish Council
invites the entire Parish to a dessert reception immediately following the Mass
in the Parish Hall. Everyone is invited to bring a dessert to share. You can
drop off desserts in the Parish Hall before Mass, and the Parish Council will
have everything organized for us as soon as Mass gets done.
A couple of our teens have asked me if we were going to have fireworks again on
the Anniversary, as we did five years ago for the dedication. Those of you who
were here five years ago may remember, and if you weren’t here five years ago,
I’ll catch you up, but at the end of Mass five years ago, which was at
approximately 10:15 PM, we had ten minutes of fireworks announcing to the world,
the Dedication of our new church. The fireworks were a big hit with all of us
who had worked so hard for so long, to get our new church. The fireworks were
not such a big hit with some of our neighbors, who called and left terrible
voicemail messages at our Office, threatening to do things to me that I can’t
repeat here. With the goal of being good neighbors to all AND to not have those
terrible things done to me, we won’t have fireworks on Tuesday night. I’d like
to suggest that we not plan on having fireworks again until the one-hundredth
anniversary of the Dedication of the church, which will be in 2104 AD. By then,
all the parties involved will most likely be gone, and nobody will remember what
we did at 10:15 PM on Dec. 8th, 2004. They were very cool. I’m glad the teens
remember them that night. I do have a couple boxes of sparklers left over from
the Fourth of July. If we want to get really crazy this Tuesday night, I donate
my sparklers. And we can play some Van Halen music really, really loud.
Come and join us on Tuesday night. It’s a big night for all of us. We need to
give thanks to God for all that He has done for this Parish family in the last
five years. We are indeed blessed! And each one of you is one of those
blessings!
Next Saturday, Dec. 12th, is our Christmas delivery to the 165 families that St.
Maria Goretti adopted to help this Christmas. All food and gifts will be
delivered at that time. It is extremely important that all of us get our gifts
from the Advent Angel Trees back in this week, so that they can be packed and
organized for delivery next Saturday. Please help us out. If you volunteered to
drive and deliver on Saturday morning, we see you next Saturday. Thanks to
everyone who works together to help these families. I know this is a massive
effort. It really shows the great love of this community, even for those that we
don’t know personally. I am so proud of all of you! It is an amazing thing!
Have a great week! Don’t forget, it is still Advent and we are still two weeks
away from Christmas. It’s not Christmas yet. Don’t jump the gun!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
The best way to prepare for the coming of Christ is never to forget the presence
of Christ. |
