Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Welcome to our Parish as we celebrate the Fifth Sunday of our 2005 Lenten Season. Both Fr. Dale and I are gone this weekend. I am with our RCIA class on their annual retreat at St. Meinrad. Fr. Dale is at a conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, representing Blessed Theodore Guerin High School. I feel like those announcements that they used to have before the late news came on TV, “Parents: It’s 11 O’clock. Do you know where your children are?” Only in this case, it would be: “Parishioners of St. Maria Goretti: It’s time for Mass. Do you know where your priests are?” We will both be back next weekend, and will look forward to seeing you and celebrating Palm Sunday with you next Sunday. I would like to thank Monsignor John Duncan from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Carmel and Fr. Brendan Mbagwu from St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Carmel for helping us out with Masses this weekend while Fr. Dale and I are gone.

You know, each Lent, we spend time examining and praying about our relationship with God. Hopefully, when Lent concludes, we are that much closer to God and are more ready to renew our Baptismal promises at the Easter celebration. However, Lent is not just about our relationship with God. This is also a time for us to examine our relationships with all of our brothers and sisters, and how we treat those around us. I would really like to challenge you to do this, this week. In the Gospels, Jesus makes it very clear that if we are going to say that we love God, then we are going to have to love and care for our brothers and sisters. How we treat one another has great ramifications for our spiritual lives. I think that it is time that all of us re-evaluated how we treat one another. Individual Christian’s lack of kindness and respect has always been the greatest stumbling block to non-Christians. They rightfully ask how people who profess to follow the way of Jesus Christ can treat one another and others with such cruel and hateful intentions. Guys, we’ve got to be better. We must allow the love and mercy of Jesus the Christ to infiltrate our hearts and change our attitudes and judgments. We cannot stay the same. You cannot get close to the love of Jesus and not be changed. This Lent is the perfect time for us to examine our own lives for this.

Of particular concern for us, has to be gossiping. I find it so interesting that good people who would never think of stabbing somebody in the back with a knife, have absolutely no problem at all with stabbing somebody behind the back with cruel words, which oftentimes contain little or no truth. We’ve got to stop this. There is no greater danger to a Christian community than the cancer of gossip. Perhaps we would do better if we would all just remember our mothers’ advice that if we can’t say anything nice about a person, then perhaps we shouldn’t say anything at all. Gossip cannot be taken back. It can’t be controlled. It can’t be fixed. Once you damage the reputation of another, irreparable harm has been done. Plus, how many times have we found that our judgments of others have been wrong? We don’t know everything that is going on. We hear a piece of information from somebody else and we think we know the whole story. Our judgments and our gossip are not the way that we should be living as a Christian community. We can be so much better. Our young people are watching and learning from us. How can we expect our children to learn real, Catholic Christian values concerning how we treat one another, when we ourselves aren’t willing to love our brothers and sisters?

Plus, isn’t it ironic, that we can be so loving and kind to strangers, and then we can turn around and be cruel and mean to a brother or a sister in Christ? I’ve seen it! Some stranger will come into the food pantry and we will fall all over ourselves being loving and kind to them, and then later on out in the parking lot for school pick-up the same people will be butchering someone that they are supposed to love. What gives? This isn’t Catholic Christianity. How can anybody justify or make sense out of this behavior? We can do a lot better. All of us can. Think about this. Pray about this, this week, in your life. I will too.

Have a great weekend. Please keep our brothers and sisters in the RCIA in your prayers. We are getting a really awesome group of people in this year’s class. It will be a great honor to welcome them into the Faith and the Church in just two weeks!

In Christ,
Fr. Kevin

Kindness is difficult to give away because it keeps coming back.