Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Welcome as we gather together to celebrate the third Sunday of our Easter season! God is good… All the time! This is such an exciting time. The steel of our new church is coming together more and more every day. The Spring Fling, one of the coolest Parish events every year, is next Friday evening. And our celebrations of First Communion with our second graders and Confirmation with our high school students are now just weeks away. These are awesome days!

You may have noticed that several times in recent weeks, when it comes to our weekly giving and collections, we have not only hit our budgeted weekly target but we have surpassed it. This is great news. My sincerest thanks and appreciation go to everyone who is sacrificing to make this happen. Because it is extremely easy for us all to see these new numbers and have a tendency to think, “Gee, we’re doing all right, I think I will back off my tithe”, I’d like to really challenge each of us not to do that. Oh yeah, I know how we can think, because I can think that same way, too. Please remember that we are also in the process of building the largest Catholic church in the state of Indiana. And while most of us have made extremely generous pledges and contributions to make this happen, we are all well aware that, when we get done, we are going to have over three million dollars in debt that we will need to pay down as soon as possible. So let’s start now! For each week’s overage (the amount we collect in the weekly collections that is over the weekly budgeted need), we will save that money and at the end of our fiscal year, June 30 th, we will transfer all of the overage into the building fund, and thus lower the amount that we will have to borrow in the end for the construction of the new church. It is wonderful to be in a position to be able to do this. The fact is that overages already received this year have helped us to delay by a couple months dipping into borrowed funds, the first draft on our construction loan, for construction costs. This is saving all of us money in the end. And yes, this is remarkable, considering all that we are trying to do financially as a Parish family. Please help me to keep this up. The more we can pay towards the new church now, the less we are going to have to pay later. If you can kick in some extra money on any given Sunday, please do so and we’ll pay this new church off even sooner than we expected. This is great news for all of us!

Both Fr. Dale and I have had the opportunity, this past week, to meet with our new seminarian, Jack Weldon. He is a great guy and it will be a real blessing to have him with us this summer. Jack will be ordained a transitional Deacon on Saturday, June 5 th, at our Cathedral in Lafayette. Please mark this on your calendars because I really hope that as many of us as possible will be able to make the trek to Lafayette for the ordination. If you have never been to a Diaconate ordination, they are very beautiful and moving. Jack Weldon’s Diaconate ordination will get us ready for our own Steve Miller’s Diaconate ordination that is anticipated to be in the fall of 2005. In discussions with our new seminarian, it has been decided that he will be called “Deacon Weldon”. This is in anticipation of his ordination to the priesthood in June of 2005 when he will become “Father Weldon”. It is going to be a wonderful summer with Deacon Weldon and we look forward to his arrival at the end of May.

We offer our congratulations to Steve Miller who, just last weekend, was installed in the ministry of Lector. If you recall the discussions concerning the changes to the Mass that were made last year, the people who read at Mass are no longer called Lectors, they are called “Readers”. This is to distinguish between people who have been installed in the ministry, as Steve just was and as priests and seminarians are during their formation, these are now “Lectors”; and all of the other kind and generous souls who volunteer to read at Mass every day in parishes, are now referred to as “Readers”. Well, Steve is now official. This is an important step on his way to ordination for the Diaconate. You will be seeing Steve reading more and more at Masses. He is now a regular minister of the Word. This is similar to the new distinction that is being made between Eucharist Ministers, who are now bishops, priests, deacons, and seminarians, and Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion who are the trained and commissioned lay folks who voluntarily serve and help out at Mass. We are going to get all of this down eventually. Congratulations, Steve. We are proud of you!

Speaking of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, the training sessions to help out and serve in this capacity are now going on. Why don’t you consider doing this? We are facing an ever-growing demand for additional help in this area. This will be made even more acute when we move into the church. So how about it? Why don’t you pray about becoming an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion? It’s that time of year. Commissioning will take place on the Feast of Corpus Christi in June.

Lots of things are going on. There is so much good happening. Have a great week!

In Christ,
Fr. Kevin

How come we choose from two people for president and
fifty people for Miss America?