Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Today we conclude our Octave of Easter with Divine Mercy Sunday. We celebrate the love, the grace, the mercy, and the peace that the Risen Jesus bestows on each of us when we open ourselves up to Him. This is a great day. In honor of Divine Mercy Sunday, there will be a Eucharistic procession at the end of 10:00 AM Mass today that will be followed by Eucharistic Adoration in the main sanctuary of our church until 4:00 PM. At 3:00 PM, the hour of God’s great saving action, the Divine Mercy Chaplet will be prayed in church. This is a beautiful new feast in the Church. I sincerely hope that you take advantage of this opportunity and stop in church to pray at some point this afternoon. You’ll be glad that you did.

This coming Friday evening is our annual Spring Fling. The 2006 Spring Fling, “A Time to Dance”, promises to be one of the best yet. I hope and pray that you can join us. This is actually our only designated fundraiser of the year. The Spring Fling has enabled our Parish to do many things that we would not normally have been able to do with a tight operating budget. The school’s kitchen was built with Spring Fling funds. The rectory was built with Spring Fling funds. The two, beautiful statues in our new church, that are true works of art, were also provided by the Spring Fling. The Spring Fling has done miracles. Plus, it is a very fun evening! Who knew that raising money could be so much fun? It is like a pep rally for St. Maria Goretti. And there are few evenings each year that make me more proud of our Parish family than the night of the Spring Fling. The committees have been working for months. Everything is almost ready. What we really need now is YOU to come and join us on Friday evening. It’s still not too late. If you’ve never been, you’ve got to come and see how much fun it is. Don’t know anybody? No problem! We’ll put you at a table with some awesome people. There are no strangers at the Spring Fling! There will be great food, great music, great fellowship, and we’ll be raising funds for the new maintenance garage and fire system for our Parish educational facilities. Don’t miss it. We’ll see you there on Friday night.

If you were at our 8:00 AM Mass last Sunday morning for Easter, we had some very severe sound problems. I apologize for this. Getting the sound right in the church has been a very difficult thing, and continues to be a priority for all of us here at St. Maria Goretti. Three weeks ago, a new digital audio processor was installed to make things better. After our experience last weekend, I think we need to re-examine how much it has helped us. There are very clearly real problems and they are being addressed as you read this. From the very beginning, we knew that sound was going to be an issue in such a big church. That’s why even before the architects designed the building, a sound engineer was hired to help us design the best system that we could get for sound, both for music and for the spoken word. We have one of the best systems available. We just continue to struggle to learn how to use it well. Certainly a big part of the challenge is how many different people with so many different voices use the system each weekend. Some people are naturally “loud” and others are naturally “more soft-spoken”. The same system has to enable us to hear everybody. I would ask for your patience as we continue to work on this. I know that some of you are probably getting as frustrated with this as I am. It is my hope that we will see a vast improvement in the next few weeks. Pray lots! I wonder who the Patron Saint of sound systems is?

Even with our challenges, we continue to be a most-blessed Parish. Thanks again to EVERYBODY who worked so hard to make our Holy Week and Easter Masses and services so nice. The Tridium and Easter are really the nicest times to be Catholic. Our prayer is so rich in symbolism and Tradition, that you cannot help being moved by the powerful liturgies. And it’s not over yet. We will continue to celebrate the Easter season for the next several weeks. During that time, we look forward to our First Communion Mass on May 6 th and our Confirmation Mass with Bishop Higi on May 19 th. This is a great time of the year.

Have an awesome day today! May you share your Faith with at least one person that you come in contact with today. The world needs the Risen Christ.

In Christ,

Fr. Kevin

The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.