Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

What a wonderful weekend! It is with great joy that we pray this weekend with the 110 young people who made their First Communions yesterday. Your joy and enthusiasm in receiving Jesus for the first time in the Holy Eucharist are a reminder to all of us of just how special this gift really is! Congratulations from our entire Parish family!

Lots of work and preparation have gone into getting our young people ready for both Reconciliation and First Communion. I would like to thank all of those who so generously gave of their time and talents to work with our young people, both in our school and in our Parish Religious Education program. It takes so many people to put on a quality program today. I am so grateful to each one of you. Thanks also to our parents for taking this preparation seriously and helping us to work with you to get your son or daughter ready for these important Sacraments. It is all worth it!

This Friday night is our Confirmation candidates’ turn to receive their Sacrament. Confirmation is at 7:00 PM in church. Twenty-four individuals will receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at this special Mass with our Bishop, Bishop William Higi. Bishop Higi is one of the busiest people that I know. We don’t get to see a lot of him. And so any time that he makes a visit to St. Maria Goretti, it is a big deal. I sincerely hope that as many of you as possible will join us for the Confirmation Mass on Friday night. First to support our young people who are being Confirmed; and secondly to support our Bishop and wish him well. It is always an awesome Mass. Sacred Chrism will be flowing!

We have so much to pray about. I’d like to talk a little bit about Eucharistic Adoration today. For a year and half, we have had the privilege of having on-going Eucharistic Adoration, Monday thru Saturday from 6:00 AM thru 9:00 PM. Miracles have happened. Prayers have been answered. And our community has been blessed time after time. We very much want to move to perpetual Adoration as soon as possible after we move into the new church. But I’ve got to tell you, we’ve got a long way to go. In order for on-going Adoration to work every week, it is so important to have strongly committed folks who are always going to be there for Jesus and for our prayer. We’ve got lots of committed people. We just need lots more committed people. And we need people who are always going to be there and who take the responsibility for getting someone else when they can’t be there. There are now several hours during the week that are regularly being missed. We need to all step it up. Everybody is busy. Everybody has lots of commitments. Sometimes we just have to make time for our Lord. Our regularly scheduled hour helps us to do this. If you don’t have a regularly scheduled time, now is the time for you to get one. We need your help. We need you to take just one hour a week. There are still lots of people who haven’t experienced the power of this important prayer. What are you waiting for? If you already have an hour, please take it seriously. We can’t let those temptations keep us from getting here and spending that time with Jesus. And believe me, there are lots of temptations not to come. There is nothing the devil would like more than to prevent you from spending an hour in prayer and Adoration. He will stop at nothing to do it. Don’t let him stop you. If you’d like to sign up for your own hour, please give Lisa and Pete Munson a call this week at 574-1696 and they will get you all set up. Eventually, all Catholics are going to be doing a Holy Hour each week. Why not get a jump on the rest and start doing yours now?

We wish all of our mothers a Happy Mother’s Day today. The vocation of motherhood is one that we would all be lost without. Let us pray for all of our mothers today then, both living and deceased. Our Pro-Life committee will be selling roses to give to our mothers after all Masses this weekend. This helps support their ministry right here at our Parish family. Life is a beautiful choice. Let’s thank our mothers today for all that they have done for us.

Well, that’s about it for this week. Let us keep one another in our prayers. The very best thing that we can do for each other is to pray. God bless you this week!

In Christ,
Fr. Kevin

Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.